What makes a good conspiracy theory?

This is something of a tough one, given the vast range of different types of conspiracy theory out there, and the various styles of conspiracy writers. There are a couple of things that need to be clear though. There can be no doubt that there are conspiracies going on every day. From the covering up of mistakes, to corruption, to issues of national security and so on. For me, many of these are not conspiracy theories, but it is somewhat difficult to explain why I feel this. Personally I differentiate between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact For example it was widely suspected for many years that politicians in the UK overclaimed on their expenses as a matter of course. I well remember in the 1980's looking after a horse belonging to the mistress of an extremely prominent labour politician, and being initially surprised that her livery fees were being claimed as expenses by said politician. However this was conspiracy theory, because although it was widely known, it wasn't made public. Once the Telegraph newspaper broke the story of widespread expenses fraud in 2009 it entered the public domain and became conspiracy fact. It is still a conspiracy in that the MP's conspired to keep it secrey, but it is no longer theory because it has become a matter of record.

So, for me at least there are two aspects, the conspiracy, and whether or not it is established fact. Once a conspiracy is proven it moves beyond the interest of conspiracy theorists unless what becomes established is not the full story. Looking again at the MP expenses scandal we see that there are aspects that are still of interest in that controls to prevent expenses fraud have not been put in place, and it appears that fraud is still being committed, and the same excuses still being used. So what makes this interesting as a conspiracy? It is of public interest, and is something that the authorities would rather the public did not know. It reaches the heart of the political elite and it requires the collusion of multiple agencies and its uncovering was delayed in an interesting manner suggesting even further cover-up. This is one of the key features of a good conspiracy theory. It needs to have at its core the potential for truth, rather than simply being to incredible to be taken seriously. In order to establish this there must be some accessible evidence, although this need not be required to achieve the level of evidence required for, say, a criminal prosecution. A good example of this is the conspiracy over the War on Terror as an excuse to invade Iraq. It is a widely held belief that the reason for the invasion of Iraq was American and British oil interests, although there isn't enough evidence to arrest the protagonists, up to and including the president of the United States and the Prime Minister of Britain, although interestingly an attempt was made yesterday by an anti-war campaigner to do exactly that.

The other thing a conspiracy theory needs to be good is that it needs to really engage its audience. It needs to have importance and relevance to the day to day existence of people. This is where many of the more extreme conspiracies fall down. What is the point of a conspiracy about a global elite that is so powerful that one can do nothing about it? If they are unaccountable, uncontrollable, powerful beyond our ability to stop them, then the conspiracy serves no purpose other than to increase or feelings of helplessness. Further, conspiracies that descend into paranoid delusions suffer the same issue. Of course that is not to say that all conspiracies dismissed as paranoia are not relevant, that would make the game far too easy. Choose your conspiracies with care. Look for evidence outside the conspiracy community. Keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out, and most importantly, question everything. Look for the motives. Ask yourself, why would this conspiracy exist? Does keeping this secret serve any purpose, or is it just misdirection to stop me thinking about what is really going on?