Making sense of the madness

Populism and conspiracy theories are closely related phenomena, but their exact relationship has long remained understudied. Recent scholarship suggests that conspiracy theories should be considered a secondary feature of populism, as they occur in many but not all populist movements. Moreover, rightwing populism might be slightly more prone to conspiracy theorising than the leftwing variant.

Donald Trump claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán contends that a “Great Replacement” of the Christian population of Europe is underway. This is not a coincidence. Around the globe, populist leaders tend to employ conspiracist rhetoric far more frequently than other politicians, accusing allegedly sinister elites at home and abroad not only of neglecting the needs of the people but actively conspiring against them.

Moreover, the supporters of populist parties and movements—from the German Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) via the Italian Movimento 5 Stelle (Five Star Movement) to the Australian One Nation Party—are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than supporters of other parties and movements.

Defining Populism and Conspiracy Theories

Populism and conspiracy theories, then, are clearly connected. But before we can explore their relationship, we need to properly define these concepts. While almost any adult who follows politics will have a somewhat intuitive understanding of them, populism in particular is a contested concept in academic discourse.

Over the past twenty years, it has been defined as a rhetorical strategy, a discourse, a style, and a thin ideology. The dividing lines in these discussions run both within and between disciplines; frequently, they are related to more fundamental disagreements about, for example, the nature of democracy, representation, or ideology.

There is no need to get into these controversies here, however, because virtually all scholars agree that populism is about the antagonistic relationship between the elite and the people. Different forms of populism construct different notions of elite and people, often along ethnic, cultural, or economic lines. All populism, though, glorifies the people and critiques the elite, accusing it of acting against the interests of the people.

Conspiracy theory, by contrast, is a less contested concept. Different scholars have highlighted different aspects, but in general there is considerable agreement across the disciplines: A conspiracy theory is the usually baseless assumption that a group of evildoers, the conspirators, are secretly manipulating events to achieve sinister goals.

Moreover, conspiracy theories assume (1) that nothing happens by accident (everything has been planned), (2) that nothing is as it seems (the conspirators are operating in secret), and (3) that everything is connected, (that there are links between people, events, and organisations that escape those who do not assume a conspiracy).

Obviously, “everything” and “nothing” are not to be taken literally in this definition. Not even the most fervent conspiracy theorist would claim that the shorts they are wearing while surfing the net to connect the dots are linked to the plot they seek to expose. Rather, when compared to other explanations, conspiracy theories always overemphasise secret intentional action and connectivity and underestimate coincidence and structural factors.

Hand in Hand

Given the clear link between populism and conspiracy theories, it took scholars quite some time to study it thoroughly. In the past few years, however, both populism and conspiracy theory studies have taken up the task. By now, there is a growing agreement that conspiracy theories should be considered a secondary feature of populist discourse.

Conspiracy theories offer a specific explanation as to why the elites act against the interests of the people. This explanation tends to co-exist within a populist movement or party with other explanations such as negligence or personal enrichment. This means that not all populist movements and parties rely on conspiracy theories. Moreover, even if conspiracy theories are quite prominent in a populist movement or party, they are not necessarily believed by all members or followers.

How important conspiracy theories are to a populist movement or party is in large part determined by how stigmatised conspiracy theories are in the political culture at large. While it was completely normal to believe in conspiracy theories throughout the western world for centuries, their status changed after World War II.

For reasons that cannot be explored here, conspiracy theories moved from the mainstream to the margins of society then. They were no longer considered legitimate or orthodox knowledge but illegitimate and heterodox. This process of stigmatisation, however, was largely restricted to the western world. It did not occur to the same degree in the Arab world or Eastern Europe.

In some western countries—most notably in the United States—conspiracy theories have undergone a process of relegitimisation in certain parts of the public sphere in recent years. As a rule of thumb: The less stigmatised conspiracy theories are, the more prominent and popular they are in populist movements and parties.

Successful populist leaders are usually very much aware of the status of conspiracy theories. While Viktor Orbán knows that he can articulate them openly, politicians of the rightwing-populist Alternative for Germany, for example, are often much less explicitly conspiracist in their public communication than in internal conversations in order not to alienate voters who still feel appalled by conspiracy theories.

Weaponisation of Issues

Importantly, conspiracy theories that lend themselves to successful weaponisation by populist leaders are usually not about fringe topics, such as aliens or flat earth. Instead, they tend to revolve around topics that are controversially discussed in society, such as migration, climate change, or queer rights.

The Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which, in different versions, is very popular among rightwing populists around the globe, is a case in point. The theory claims that—depending on the version—the white or Christian population is being replaced in a process orchestrated by sinister conspirators, who are not always but frequently marked as Jewish. Not only does the conspiracy theory take up a controversial topic like migration; it also exists in a non-conspiracist version in which the replacement is not orchestrated but occurs because political elites do not act decisively enough.

It is no coincidence that I have referred throughout mostly to rightwing populist movements and parties. Conspiracy theories appear to be slightly more prominent in rightwing populism than in the leftwing variant. This could be because rightwing thinking tends to focus on individuals and not on structures, as left-wing thinking usually does, and thus might be more prone to conspiracy theorising.

However, as many of the contributions to a book on the relationship between populism and conspiracy theory that I recently co-edited show, leftwing populism is by no means immune to conspiracism, and such theories are absolutely central to some movements and parties.

Whereas leftwing conspiracy theories are usually—unless they are explicitly or implicitly antisemitic—a somewhat simplistic and confused critique of capitalism, they can often be considered less than rightwing populist movements and parties in which conspiracism is usually tied to racism, xenophobia, transphobia, nationalism, and other problematic ideas. It therefore makes sense that scholarship focuses on rightwing populism, but it should not entirely neglect the left-wing variant entirely.

This article was published by the Australian Institute for International Affairs.