How liberal conspiracy theories can be just as destructive as their extremist counterparts

• Liberal commentators frequently condemn conspiracy theories that threaten public safety.
• But what if liberal conspiracy theories can be even more wrong-headed and damaging than their fringe counterparts?

Conspiracy theories, right and left

• Liberal observers often present conspiracism as the preserve of right or left-wingers.
• Journalist David Aaronovitch and philosopher Quassim Cassam, for example, attribute fallacious conspiracy theorising to the political “extremes”.
• According to academic Grażyna Piechota, RT is guilty of “building a conspiracy message [and] using it as a political instrument”.

Combating Corbyn

• But this didn’t stop exaggerated and indeed conspiratorial antisemitism allegations emerging from the British political centre in the mid-2010s to discredit then-Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters.
• Sacks went further by likening Corbyn to the infamous racist politician Enoch Powell.
• Corbyn himself repeatedly denied accusations of institutional antisemitism in the party but was suspended for claiming that such charges were “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.
• Leaked documents from within Labour and an Al Jazeera investigative report found that antisemitism had been “weaponised” against Corbyn by his adversaries.

Trying to topple Trump

• There were even claims about Trump cavorting with Russian prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.
• These liberal conspiracy theories about Trump and Corbyn are as simplistic and fallacious as much leftist and rightist conspiracism because they too often ignore wider economic and political contexts.

Deadly dangers of liberal conspiracism

• Conspiracism from the centre can also have deadly consequences.
• For instance, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, described by US intellectual Noam Chomsky as “the worst crime of the 21st century”, was justified by western governments’ false claim that Saddam Hussein could deploy deadly weapons within 45 minutes.

Stephen Harper is affiliated with the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Tom Sykes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.