Introduction

Introduction Michael Butter (bio) Conspiracy theories have never been regarded with as much concern as now. Brexit, the Trump presidency and its violent ending with the storm on the Capitol, the COVID-19 pandemic, and, most recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine have not only sparked a plethora of conspiracy theories in North America, Europe, and other parts of the world, ranging from absurd claims of child abuse by satanic elites as in the QAnon superconspiracy theory to more understandable anxieties about globalization and the future of national economies, as in conspiracist claims about a "Great Reset." What is more, they have also alerted the public and politicians, the media and academics, to the potentially harmful effects of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories can be a catalyst for radicalization and lead to violence; the way some of them reject established medical knowledge endangers the lives of those who believe in them and those in contact with them; and they can also be a danger to democracy because they have the potential to undermine trust in elected officials and democratic institutions and processes. In the United States in particular, concerns about the harm that conspiracy theories can do to democracy are well founded, as Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum show in a book on conspiracism during the Trump presidency reviewed in this issue. They anticipate but do not quite foresee (who could have?) the degree to which the Republican Party has embraced the conspiracy theory of the "stolen election," which is indeed worrying. Trump might not make it back into office, but Trumpism is very much alive and kicking. But however worrying this mainstreaming of conspiracy theories in American politics in recent years is, it does not mean that the US has entered an unprecedented age of conspiracy theorizing. In fact, compared to most of American history, conspiracy theories are still rather marginal at the moment. As far as we know, conspiracy theories are not an anthropological given. They do not occur in all places and at all times. While scholars have identified End Page 1 some examples in antiquity, they have been a permanent part of Western societies only since the early modern period. Importantly, from their emergence in the early sixteenth century to the 1950s, conspiracy theories were regarded as a legitimate form of knowledge. They were firmly anchored within the mainstream of society, believed by ordinary people as well as elites, corroborated by scholars, and spread by the media. Had there been polls trying to capture a conspiracy mentality as they are conducted now, probably more than 90 percent of Americans would have affirmed their belief in conspiracy theories. Virtually every American president from George Washington in the 1790s to Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s believed and articulated conspiracy theories. Thomas Jefferson did this just as much as Abraham Lincoln. Consequently, such theories significantly shaped the course of the country. Without them, historians like Daniel Walker Howe have argued, there would have been no Revolutionary War and no Civil War, at least not at the time. It was only after 1945 that conspiracy theories underwent a process of stigmatization in the United States, as Katharina Thalmann shows in a meticulously argued book, reviewed by Todor Hristov. However, that conspiracy theories moved from the mainstream to the margins of society, from congressional debates to clandestine meetings of the John Birch Society, does not mean that they became entirely unpopular. While the number of those who believed in them surely decreased considerably, they remained attractive to a significant minority. But unlike before their stigmatization, they now flew under the radar of public attention. There was no place for them in political or academic discourse or in the serious media. The rise of the internet did not change this, but rather made conspiracy theories more visible and more easily available, which led to a probably moderate increase in believers. But their status as an utterly derided form of knowledge only began to change when the "birther" conspiracy theory questioned the legitimacy of the Obama presidency, and when one of the most outspoken birthers rose to power: Donald Trump. The current mainstreaming of conspiracy theories in the United States therefore is...