Political thinking and rhetoric in conspiracy theories: Narratives of power, identity, and vengeance

In recent years, there has been a growing concern about the potentially harmful influence of conspiracy theories on democratic politics. Despite such concerns and increasing academic research on many aspects of conspiracy theory, the political thinking expressed in conspiracy theories has been under-researched. Too often conspiracy theories are viewed through the lens of epistemology rather than politics, or are assumed to express a uniform political outlook, regardless of their particular content or context. In this research project, I seek to move beyond epistemological and overly general approaches without succumbing to apologism, focusing instead on how conspiracy theories adjust to the specific political moments they address. Using a combination of Rhetorical Political Analysis and the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, I show that conspiracy theorists face a practical rhetorical challenge: how best to persuade an audience, when starting from a position of stigmatisation and marginalisation? The practical nature of this challenge requires us to analyse conspiracy theories in their specific contexts, and in this project, I focus on three cases: anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories, and COVID-19 anti-vaccination conspiracy theories. The analyses of these cases draw out the variety in the political ideas articulated in conspiracy theories, while also pointing to one recurring feature: a narrative of ressentiment, whereby an in-group is depicted as having been wronged by a threatening out-group, such that redress or vengeance is required. This narrative framework orders the political claims and identities articulated in a conspiracy theory, while also making a claim to victimhood. This thesis thus points to the benefit of taking conspiracy theories themselves as our object of study, examining cases’ political thinking and rhetoric in relation to their particular context, rather than limiting ourselves to a one-size-fits-all approach to analysing conspiracism.