Conspiracy and Politics: the origins and importance of conspiracy in politics

With a presidential election looming in the coming weeks, political conspiracy theories run wild and are spread through the campaigns and media we witness. Conspiracy theorist should appreciate this time of year as well, as they lobby their theories to the public to favor, or in spite of, one of the candidates, or even more times than not, neither one.

The relationship that conspiracy and politics share thrives this time of year.

But the conspiracy that seems to be most noted this time of year is that of a group of elites controlling the two party system, along with the candidates, to help them achieve complete global domination.

In my previous blog posts, I begin discussing this idea.  With different ideas of this group of elites doing whatever they can to establish control over people, we explore the behavior by politicians that is interpreted as conspiracy by these theorists.  Believe me, there is a lot to explore.

Not even mentioning the infamous assassinations (JFK, RFK, MLK Jr), this relationship that politics and conspiracy theory has is a very delicate relationship.  But to understand it, we must first look at how conspiracy theory came to be understood inside our realm of politics and society.

A famous researcher of conspiracy, Richard Hofstadter, has researched the paranoid style of thought in American politics.  This style of thinking forces people outside of what he calls the political consensus, or the group of people that agree with, and work with the current political system.  Those outside of this consensus are considered deviants, and labeled as paranoid because this consensus feels they are paranoid about the current way of life.

Hofstadter goes on to assert that, to a degree, conspiracy is a part of politics in the way that politics has to deal in secrecy.  By this assertion, we assume that the intent of secrecy within politics is in the dimension of campaign running as well as policy making.  But we also consider how conspiracy theory fills in the blanks of this secrecy that we as people yearn to understand.

People have, overtime, built a natural reaction to question what they don't understand or what they want to understand.  It is a desire to uncover truth or verify facts.

So naturally, questioning an entity that works within secrecy creates this desire to know and understand what they are hiding.  This is what creates the relationship between politics and conspiracy. Whether its necessary or not is another thing, but the fact of the matter is that this perceived relationship is what helps explain how politics creates conspiracy and how conspiracy works with politics.