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Conspiracy Theories: A Primer
Conspiracy theories are a part of the human condition. Everyone believes at least one, but given the number of conspiracy theories, it is more likely that everyone believes a few. Some people have a worldview defined by them. Conspiracy theories are just another reminder that people disagree about many things, including truth. These disagreements have always existed and always will. We have to live with conspiracy theories and with the people who believe them. The only way to do this is have compassion and tolerance for others, and to hold our own beliefs to high standards. This book introduces students to the research into conspiracy theories and the people who propagate and believe them. In doing so, it addresses the psychological, sociological, and political sources of conspiracy theorizing
Uscinski rigorously analyzes the most current arguments and evidence while providing numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the current debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.
Uscinski rigorously analyzes the most current arguments and evidence while providing numerous real-world examples so students can contextualize the current debates. Each chapter addresses important current questions, provides conceptual tools, defines important terms, and introduces the appropriate methods of analysis.
170 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 15, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 4, 2021
Conspiracies have been around for a very long time, to be sure, but it wasn’t until the last few years that I’ve heard them from friends and family, those who I love and respect.
I recently picked up this book by Professor Uscinski to help me understand the nature and draw of this kind of thinking. He does a great job of defining conspiracy, conspiracy theory, and conspiracy thinking. I recommend this book to anyone wanting a good foundation in this topic. It pairs well with The Death of Expertise.
I recently picked up this book by Professor Uscinski to help me understand the nature and draw of this kind of thinking. He does a great job of defining conspiracy, conspiracy theory, and conspiracy thinking. I recommend this book to anyone wanting a good foundation in this topic. It pairs well with The Death of Expertise.
May 16, 2021
I'm a little reluctant to give this just two stars given Uscinski's credentials. His knowledge of various conspiracy theories is evidently broad. Yet the reasoning he provides for his analysis often proves unconvincing, leaving me with little faith in his arguments.
A low threshold
In order to argue that nearly all of us engage in conspiracy thinking, he seems to use a very wide net when citing data. For instance, he uses one of his own studies as support, which includes as a conspiracy theorist anyone who believes that "corporations are likely to work in secret against the rest of us", which of course returns very high numbers.
But is it a conspiracy theory to believe in the likelihood (not the certainty!) of this happening, or is it a position that's relatively justifiable to hold for those who know the history of secretive corporate deals and the current mechanisms that obscure their working? Is it really more sensible to assume that corporations are acting transparently for the common good until we hear otherwise? What might assuming this prevent us from learning? Though I would never decide that a particular company is doing something bad without adequate evidence, I also think that this sort of evidence is more likely to emerge when people are suspicious and inquisitive about organisations which have many incentives to act poorly and secretively.
It leaves me wondering this: if conspiracy theorists' mistake is to label something as a conspiracy without adequate justification, then might it not also be a mistake to label things as conspiracy theories so quickly?
And here's the weird thing: when Uscinski directly discusses the threshold, he, too, sets it higher: the problem with conspiracy theories is when they're seen as facts without evidence. It's jarring, then, to see him support arguments with data which does not meet this standard.
Faulty debunking
The other greatest cause for concern is the inadequacy of his rebuttals of conspiracy theories.
There are so many ways of debunking false theories about JFK, 9/11, flat Earth, etc - yet Uscinski often resorts to counter-arguments that don't work. Consider two of many examples:
- 9/11 can't have been an inside job because "the American president has the power to go to war without any real pretense" (p. 80)
- population reduction can't be taking place because "life spans are increasing, as is the population" (p. 83)
Neither of these is serious. Conspiracy theorists, wrong as they are to believe the theories, would be correct in rejecting these rebuttals, which rely entirely on attacking the weakest version of the theory.
...and both at once
Elsewhere he uses similar arguments to attack the "one percent conspiracy theory". Sanders is wrong to claim that the rich are rigging the economy, apparently, because:
1. "the American economy is just too big to be rigged by a small clandestine group"
2. "today’s economic juggernauts are often tomorrow’s losers": if the economy is rigged, then how come MySpace and Kodak failed?
3. the 1% can't engage in "both free-market gambling and running a rigged system", etc...
Could Sanders be less vague in his rhetoric? Sure. But are any of the above genuine rebuttals? I think not.
Funnily enough, they're often sourced from an article by Rich Lowry, whose The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free is full of vague and incorrect assertions which "to any serious thinker [...] should be an embarrassment" according to Charles King.
This doesn't prevent Uscinski from using argument (3) to say that Sanders' "scapegoating" contradiction is also "how Adolf Hitler attuned his anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to his audiences" (p. 96). I'll leave you to decide whether Hitler is better compared to a Jewish senator or to Lowry, a nationalist who voices concerns about "racial and ethnic intermarriage” and misses the days when immigrants were more European.
In conclusion, Uscinski's theories don't meet the threshold for being facts - and these theories take up far too much space in an already short book. A better primer would be a more neutral and thoughtful introduction, not a book that spends so much time on a controversial thesis. I'll update the review once I find such a book.
A low threshold
In order to argue that nearly all of us engage in conspiracy thinking, he seems to use a very wide net when citing data. For instance, he uses one of his own studies as support, which includes as a conspiracy theorist anyone who believes that "corporations are likely to work in secret against the rest of us", which of course returns very high numbers.
But is it a conspiracy theory to believe in the likelihood (not the certainty!) of this happening, or is it a position that's relatively justifiable to hold for those who know the history of secretive corporate deals and the current mechanisms that obscure their working? Is it really more sensible to assume that corporations are acting transparently for the common good until we hear otherwise? What might assuming this prevent us from learning? Though I would never decide that a particular company is doing something bad without adequate evidence, I also think that this sort of evidence is more likely to emerge when people are suspicious and inquisitive about organisations which have many incentives to act poorly and secretively.
It leaves me wondering this: if conspiracy theorists' mistake is to label something as a conspiracy without adequate justification, then might it not also be a mistake to label things as conspiracy theories so quickly?
And here's the weird thing: when Uscinski directly discusses the threshold, he, too, sets it higher: the problem with conspiracy theories is when they're seen as facts without evidence. It's jarring, then, to see him support arguments with data which does not meet this standard.
Faulty debunking
The other greatest cause for concern is the inadequacy of his rebuttals of conspiracy theories.
There are so many ways of debunking false theories about JFK, 9/11, flat Earth, etc - yet Uscinski often resorts to counter-arguments that don't work. Consider two of many examples:
- 9/11 can't have been an inside job because "the American president has the power to go to war without any real pretense" (p. 80)
- population reduction can't be taking place because "life spans are increasing, as is the population" (p. 83)
Neither of these is serious. Conspiracy theorists, wrong as they are to believe the theories, would be correct in rejecting these rebuttals, which rely entirely on attacking the weakest version of the theory.
...and both at once
Elsewhere he uses similar arguments to attack the "one percent conspiracy theory". Sanders is wrong to claim that the rich are rigging the economy, apparently, because:
1. "the American economy is just too big to be rigged by a small clandestine group"
2. "today’s economic juggernauts are often tomorrow’s losers": if the economy is rigged, then how come MySpace and Kodak failed?
3. the 1% can't engage in "both free-market gambling and running a rigged system", etc...
Could Sanders be less vague in his rhetoric? Sure. But are any of the above genuine rebuttals? I think not.
Funnily enough, they're often sourced from an article by Rich Lowry, whose The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free is full of vague and incorrect assertions which "to any serious thinker [...] should be an embarrassment" according to Charles King.
This doesn't prevent Uscinski from using argument (3) to say that Sanders' "scapegoating" contradiction is also "how Adolf Hitler attuned his anti-Semitic conspiracy theories to his audiences" (p. 96). I'll leave you to decide whether Hitler is better compared to a Jewish senator or to Lowry, a nationalist who voices concerns about "racial and ethnic intermarriage” and misses the days when immigrants were more European.
In conclusion, Uscinski's theories don't meet the threshold for being facts - and these theories take up far too much space in an already short book. A better primer would be a more neutral and thoughtful introduction, not a book that spends so much time on a controversial thesis. I'll update the review once I find such a book.
May 4, 2022
What I love about this book is that Uscinski starts by defining the terms he's talking about, noting that even these definitions might be controversial. A conspiracy, in Uscinski's eyes, is a plot that powerful people concoct in secret to thwart the common good and/or undermine established institutions, and a conspiracy theory is a theory about the existence of a conspiracy that contradicts the proclamations of epistemological authorities (and man, oh, man don't I wish I could easily fit that phrase into online conversations).
If you are willing to accept these definitions, it is easy to see that conspiracies have happened and continue to happen (e.g. Watergate and the Tuskegee syphilis study), that investigating conspiracy theories is not necessarily a bad thing (until Woodward and Bernstein broke the story, Watergate was a conspiracy theory), and, perhaps most crucially, that belief in conspiracy theories is universal. Think about it: surely there are things you believe that fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Of those, aren't some of them theories about powerful people (Big Pharma, the Illuminati, communists, capitalists, somebody) engaging in hidden malfeasance? I find that looking at conspiracy theories through this lens makes it easier for me to consider their existence and impact more rationally and less, er, conspiratorily.
By the way, this is a quote from the final chapter, where Uscinski talks about the implications of banning conspiracy theories from social media platforms:
If you are willing to accept these definitions, it is easy to see that conspiracies have happened and continue to happen (e.g. Watergate and the Tuskegee syphilis study), that investigating conspiracy theories is not necessarily a bad thing (until Woodward and Bernstein broke the story, Watergate was a conspiracy theory), and, perhaps most crucially, that belief in conspiracy theories is universal. Think about it: surely there are things you believe that fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Of those, aren't some of them theories about powerful people (Big Pharma, the Illuminati, communists, capitalists, somebody) engaging in hidden malfeasance? I find that looking at conspiracy theories through this lens makes it easier for me to consider their existence and impact more rationally and less, er, conspiratorily.
By the way, this is a quote from the final chapter, where Uscinski talks about the implications of banning conspiracy theories from social media platforms:
As much as the companies being regulated might outwardly claim to despise it, they benefit immensely because regulations provide them with monopoly protections that set a high bar for competitors to enter the market. Consequently, what seem like attempts at curbing the power of big tech complanies are really just policies designed to increase their market position. [emphasis mine]This is a copiously endnoted book, but there is nary a citation to be found for this extraordinary claim. Conspiracy theories: they're everywhere.
February 9, 2021
This book has a promising start, where Uscinski lays down some basic definitions and distinctions. But the rest of the book is a rambling mess. His entire focus appears to be to prove that everybody believes in conspiracy theories. That, while possibly true in a strict sense, makes the book pretty uninsightful.
December 29, 2023
This was seriously not a good book. It was however eye-opening in that it helped me become much more discerning of an academic’s so-called “expertise”.
The conspiracies that Uscinski mentions vary so greatly that the reader is left wondering what he thinks a conspiracy even is. It’s as if the only criteria as to what qualifies something as a conspiracy is that Uscinski himself is irked by it. For example, he mentions a conspiracy propagated by Bernie Sanders about the 1% Controlling the economy. Surely, this belief of Sanders is not supposed to be understood in an extremely literal sense? Even the most vehement opponents of Sanders can at least recognize the nuanced meaning of this belief. For uscinski to include this in his book about conspiracy theories is simply dumb and unfortunately shocking, coming from an academic.
I did not find that this book was written or researched in good faith. It absolutely does not stand up to academic standards of review. The only value this book provides is in exemplifying academic dishonesty, bad faith, and poor synthesis of facts. It is sincerely worthwhile to pick this book up for a lesson in poor argumentation. One chapter in and the lesson will write itself!
The conspiracies that Uscinski mentions vary so greatly that the reader is left wondering what he thinks a conspiracy even is. It’s as if the only criteria as to what qualifies something as a conspiracy is that Uscinski himself is irked by it. For example, he mentions a conspiracy propagated by Bernie Sanders about the 1% Controlling the economy. Surely, this belief of Sanders is not supposed to be understood in an extremely literal sense? Even the most vehement opponents of Sanders can at least recognize the nuanced meaning of this belief. For uscinski to include this in his book about conspiracy theories is simply dumb and unfortunately shocking, coming from an academic.
I did not find that this book was written or researched in good faith. It absolutely does not stand up to academic standards of review. The only value this book provides is in exemplifying academic dishonesty, bad faith, and poor synthesis of facts. It is sincerely worthwhile to pick this book up for a lesson in poor argumentation. One chapter in and the lesson will write itself!
January 16, 2021
This is a good overview of what conspiracy theories are and why and how they are popular in the United States. The author makes a strong case that they may not be as prevalent as major news sources may suggestion; especially when wielding criticism against conspiracy theories, or conspiracies themselves, are tactics of partisan politics. Some folks are more likely to embrace these beliefs than others. Although, it's likely that everybody believes in at least one.
The part that ruffled my feathers was the section on the internet. I appreciate the skeptical nature of the Uscinski's approach to not blame everything on the internet and social media, but the most recent books I've read lead me to believe that he's playing it a little too cool. At the same time, it's refreshing to have something that contrasts with the other mainstream theories to test articles and books for their journalistic merits. I just wonder if he would be writing that section now would he have at least considered that those technologies play a little larger role than he wrote in late 2019.
But hey, it boils down to the individual when everything is said an done. I get that and that's why folks need to make sure the information they ingest is backed by epistemological findings. It's up us in the end to make sure we are thinking clearly and avoiding bullshit.
The part that ruffled my feathers was the section on the internet. I appreciate the skeptical nature of the Uscinski's approach to not blame everything on the internet and social media, but the most recent books I've read lead me to believe that he's playing it a little too cool. At the same time, it's refreshing to have something that contrasts with the other mainstream theories to test articles and books for their journalistic merits. I just wonder if he would be writing that section now would he have at least considered that those technologies play a little larger role than he wrote in late 2019.
But hey, it boils down to the individual when everything is said an done. I get that and that's why folks need to make sure the information they ingest is backed by epistemological findings. It's up us in the end to make sure we are thinking clearly and avoiding bullshit.
April 3, 2025
Conspiracy Theories: A Primer by Joseph E. Uscinski is a really interesting and educational book. It does a great job of explaining why people believe in conspiracy theories and how these beliefs spread, especially nowadays when social media makes it easy to share ideas—true or not.
The book is especially relevant today because conspiracy theories have become a big part of politics, especially during the Trump era. Uscinski doesn’t just dismiss these theories as nonsense; instead, he tries to understand why people believe them. He explains that sometimes, conspiracy theories come from real concerns or a lack of trust in leaders, but they can also be harmful when used to manipulate people.
One of the best parts of the book is how it shows the impact of social media. In the past, conspiracy theories took longer to spread, but now they can go viral in minutes. Uscinski also looks at how politicians, including Trump, use conspiracy theories to rally support or discredit opponents.
Overall, this book is a must-read if you want to understand why conspiracy theories are so common today. It’s informative, thought-provoking, and helps make sense of how people think when it comes to these kinds of beliefs.
The book is especially relevant today because conspiracy theories have become a big part of politics, especially during the Trump era. Uscinski doesn’t just dismiss these theories as nonsense; instead, he tries to understand why people believe them. He explains that sometimes, conspiracy theories come from real concerns or a lack of trust in leaders, but they can also be harmful when used to manipulate people.
One of the best parts of the book is how it shows the impact of social media. In the past, conspiracy theories took longer to spread, but now they can go viral in minutes. Uscinski also looks at how politicians, including Trump, use conspiracy theories to rally support or discredit opponents.
Overall, this book is a must-read if you want to understand why conspiracy theories are so common today. It’s informative, thought-provoking, and helps make sense of how people think when it comes to these kinds of beliefs.
November 27, 2023
Read for a political science class. Interesting information presented in a very boring text
February 4, 2025
A good book on the nature of conspiracy theory and the reasons for its acceptance in societies
January 14, 2021
This is a fascinating and really helpful guide to understanding the nature and phenomenon of conspiracy theories. His definitions of conspiracy theory (something that isn’t necessarily false, but unverified) vs conspiracy (something that has been verified as true by the appropriate authorities) reveal that all of us believe in at least a couple conspiracy theories and perhaps we should be a little more aware of our own biases. Very timely and up to date, especially regarding conspiracy theory politics.
July 11, 2020
I learned a lot...
Conspiracy theories are pervasive, we all believe in a few. At times the can be very important and life afirming. This book helped me recognize a few I had accepted. I highly recommend it.
Conspiracy theories are pervasive, we all believe in a few. At times the can be very important and life afirming. This book helped me recognize a few I had accepted. I highly recommend it.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews