Conspiracy theories are increasingly becoming a governmental problem. In effect, they are increasingly targeted by techniques of intervention, usually called debunking.
To debunk a conspiracy theory means to identify it as a conspiracy theory and, more importantly, to identify its subjects as conspiracy theorists.
Ideally, their identification should also work as a sanction because those who do not question their own rationality, or at least do not want their rationality to be questioned by others, should reject the theories and isolate or ridicule the theorists.
But debunking as a technique of intervention depends on questionable assumptions:1
Such assumptions are questionable for the following reasons:
More importantly, debunking is counterproductive because it ignores the dramatics of conspiracy theories and in effect repairs their infelicity.3
Rather than statements about facts, conspiracy theories are passing into acts of speech, i.e. infelicitous parrhesiastic acts motivated by suffering and overdetermined by desire which intend to tell the truth against the powerful but articulate instead only meaningless passion.
Since parrhesia is a form of passionate speech, its felicity depends on successfully addressing the other, demanding a response in kind and now. The conditions of felicity of parrhesia also include articulating rebellious knowledge, constituting oneself as a subject of this knowledge, and proving its truth by staying true to the act of its articulation, despite the price paid for it and despite the risks it incurs.
Conspiracy theories are infelicitous acts of parrhesia because they fail to meet one or more of those conditions of felicity. Conspiracy theories can fail to address the other, or fail to elicit actual response in kind; the knowledge they articulate can be commodified, sanitized from risk, and sold at a very affordable price as entertainment, emancipation, or techniques of self-transformation, and the fidelity to the truth of one’s act can become almost unfailing by recasting it as a self-reflexive imperative of staying true to oneself.
Debunking can repair the infelicity of a conspiracy theory because it constitutes society as the addressee of the theory and it responds in kind and now by calling for the social excommunication of the theorists, hence associating the conspiratorial act with risk and a price to be paid. More importantly, debunking frames the theory not as ignorance or foolishness but as a stubborn unwillingness to know the truth explainable only by its subject, by the dysfunction, deviation, or abnormality of the subject. Therefore, debunking treats the conspiracy theory as the truth about those who disseminate or consume it; in effect, it constitutes them as subjects of truth, as truly conspiratorial subjects, and it holds the truth about their conspiratorial acts against them as a weapon, even if they try to lose their fidelity.
Therefore, debunking transforms conspiracy theories into veridiction. Of course, it does not verify the knowledge claims of conspiracy theorists but transforms them into supposedly verifiable knowledge about the conspiracy theorists, and in the same stroke, it intensifies their efficacy as passionate acts of speech, the value of which depends on the response they elicit, on the risk run by their subjects, and on the truth effects exerted on those subjects.
Let me illustrate the counterproductive features of debunking with an example. In 2009, a vigilant conservative blogger noticed strange lines in the hair of Barack Obama, president of the United States. The blogger speculated that they could be scars from brain surgery, yet another indication that the president was hiding something. Two years later, another vigilant conservative blogger stumbled upon the post and speculated that the brain surgery was necessary because the president’s brain was damaged and that the secrets about his birth or health were so closely guarded that the public would not know anything, even if the brain surgery was done by aliens who replaced him with a cyborg remotely controlled from a distant planet (Hart 2011). The post was widely shared, in the process of its dissemination the question asked by the blogger was cast off as mere rhetoric, and it turned into a statement. Moreover, the timing of the post coincided with the announcement by a future president that he would hire detectives to dig up the truth about the birth of the current president, the publication of an odd-sounding interview with the president’s aunt, and the disclosure of official documents on United States contacts with aliens, eagerly anticipated by ufologists. For a couple of weeks, the post about the presidential haircut was among the top 10 results retrieved by a Google search with the words ‘Obama’ and ‘alien.’ In effect, the post became viral, and it overflowed into the entertainment sections of tabloids and news outlets ranging from Fox Nation to the Bulgarian newspapers. Trying to gain a competitive advantage over the other entertainers, a Daily Mail reporter asked the White House to comment (Daily Mail 2011).
Now, imagine that the spokeswoman debunked the question as a conspiracy theory. Since the reporter articulated an impossible knowledge claim, it would be impossible for the spokeswoman to say ‘yes’ in response. But then, it would make no difference if she was saying ‘no.’ Moreover, her ‘no’ could be easily circumvented by transforming the claim into a comment that nevertheless there was something wrong with the president, if his staff could not get even his hair right, as in fact many conservative bloggers did. Therefore, what would make a difference would be not so much the response but the act of responding, and since the claim would have managed to elicit a response from a spokeswoman, it would seem unusually felicitous, or at least less infelicitous than usual. Now, imagine that, being unable to respond effectively, the spokeswoman tried to silence the reporter. Would that not confirm that the reporter had something to say, that he risked being silenced by asking the question? Would the risk not be an indication of a hidden truth? Would the spokeswoman not be contributing to the reputation of the tabloid as a proponent of free speech, as a sort of entrepreneurial parrhesiast?
Since debunking unintentionally stimulates conspiracy theories, they will persist, and the debunkers will be able to explain their surprising persistence only with the need for more debunking. In effect, debunking will achieve nothing but an endless duel with conspiracy theorists.
If this endless duel crossed the threshold of war, it would constitute conspiracy theories as objects of security or medical interventions,4 and since they are woven into a web of acts of passion, representations of suffering, articulations of subjugated knowledges, stagings of desire, transformations of the self, and courageous speech against the powerful, in trying to capture their object, the interventions would unavoidably deviate into undue acts of medicalization of distrust or policing of dissent. In effect, debunking would not only transform conspiracy theorists into parrhesiasts, it would transfigure the debunkers into tyrants.
Therefore, instead of debunking conspiracy theories, we should try to understand their rationality. Otherwise, democracy is in danger graver than that from any rogue country or wicked dictator because it is founded on popular sovereignty, and if we fail to understand the rationality of conspiracy theories, given their popularity, we can easily end up treating democracy as sovereignty of paranoid people, as government by a mad sovereign. And then democracy will be already dead.
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Bensaid, Daniel. 2011. “Permanent Scandal”, in Democracy in What State? edited by Girogio Agamben et al., 16–43, New York: Columbia UP
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Daily Mail. 2011. “Mystery scars on Obama’s head prompt another question from conspiracy theorists—has the President had brain surgery?” Daily Mail, 06.04, Accessed 12.08.2018, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1373780/Mystery-scars-Obamas-head-begs-question—President-brain-surgery.html
Dean, Jodi. 1998. Aliens in America: Conspiracy Cultures from Outerspace to Cyberspace. Ithaca: Cornell UP
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Hart, Ben. 2011. “What’s That Huge Long Scar on Obama’s Head? And Is That Why We Can’t See His Birth Certificate?” Escape Tyranny, Accessed 16.01.2012, www.escapetyranny.com/2011/04/03/whats-that-huge-long-scar-on-obamas-head-and-is-that-why-we-cant-see-his-birth-certificate
Knight, Peter. 2000. Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to the X Files. London & New York: Routledge
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West, Mick. 2018. Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect. New York: Skyhorse