The inner life
Conspiracy Theory
Direct answer
Conspiracy Theory: A conspiracy theory explains an event as the secret work of a powerful group, without the documents, testimony or findings that establish a real conspiracy.
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At a glance
- Also called
- conspiracy theories
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Confirmation Bias, Falsifiability, Burden of Proof, Cognitive Dissonance
A conspiracy theory explains an event as the secret work of a powerful group, without the documents, testimony or findings that establish a real conspiracy.
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What is a conspiracy theory?
A conspiracy theory is an account that puts a hidden plan by powerful people behind an event or a state of affairs. Real conspiracies exist, and courts and inquiries have established many. The phrase is used for claims that lack that kind of proof, and above all for those built so that nothing could count against them: missing evidence is taken as a sign of the cover-up, and whoever disagrees is counted as part of it.
The label settles nothing by itself. A claim called a conspiracy theory may turn out to be true, as some have, and calling it one is no substitute for checking it. What matters is the evidence: who says so, on what record, and what would show it to be wrong.
On the tree of the hidden arts: Conspiracies, examined.
What sets Conspiracy Theory apart
What marks a conspiracy theory out is not that it alleges a plot, since plots are real, but how it handles doubt. A documented conspiracy narrows as evidence comes in: these people, this aim, these dates. A theory widens: each gap is filled by adding more plotters, and each denial is taken as confirmation. Popper's objection was to the assumption beneath it, that large events happen because someone intended them.
- Legal meaning of conspiracy: an agreement between two or more people to commit an unlawful act
- Critical sense: Karl Popper, a lecture of 1948 and The Open Society and Its Enemies
- Paranoid style: Richard Hofstadter, essay in Harper's Magazine, November 1964
- Not coined by the CIA: a 1967 agency memo used a phrase already in print for decades
- Typical defence: missing evidence is counted as a sign of the cover-up
Often mistaken for something else: A conspiracy is established by records, testimony or a court; a conspiracy theory asserts one without them, and often in a form that no record could contradict.
The story behind Conspiracy Theory
The phrase appears in print in the nineteenth century in its plain sense, a theory that a conspiracy took place. Karl Popper gave it its critical meaning in a lecture of 1948 and in The Open Society and Its Enemies, where he attacked the conspiracy theory of society, the view that whatever happens was intended by someone. Richard Hofstadter's essay of 1964 on the paranoid style carried the idea into wide use. A CIA memo of 1967 used the term but did not coin it.
Why Conspiracy Theory matters
The term draws the line this whole art turns on: between a plot shown by records and a plot only asserted.
How to read Conspiracy Theory
Careful writers keep it for claims that resist checking, and say plainly when a suspected plot has since been documented.
Conspiracy Theory in practice: an example
That tobacco firms hid what they knew is a proven conspiracy, shown in their own memos; that all doctors hide remedies is a conspiracy theory.
Where readings of Conspiracy Theory go wrong
Conspiracy Theory describes how a claim is built, not the worth of whoever believes it, and it should never be used to wave away a documented wrong.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
The Oracle examines a conspiracy theory: who first claimed it, what is documented, and where the claim outruns the evidence.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- conspiracy theories, what is a conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory meaning, conspiracy vs conspiracy theory
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
See Conspiracy Theory in your personal almanac
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Common questions
What is a conspiracy theory?
It is an explanation that blames an event on a secret plan by a powerful group, held without the records or testimony that would establish it. The phrase is most used for claims that no evidence could ever count against.
Did the CIA invent the term conspiracy theory?
No. The phrase is found in print in the nineteenth century, and Karl Popper used it critically in the 1940s. A CIA memo of 1967 used the existing term in discussing critics of the Warren Report.
