Ignore,Rebut or Embrace: Political Elite Responses to Conspiracy Theories

Abstract

The attention to and concerns about conspiracy theories have increased in recent years, fuelled by a surge in conspiratorial discourse during the Donald Trump presidency in the United States. Responding to this development, the scholarship on how democracies should deal with conspiracy theories has focused on what new regulations and institutions ought to be introduced to tackle its threats to democracy. In this article, I consider this practical question from a different angle by exploring the discursive strategies that are available to political elites when they encounter a conspiracy theory. I flesh out three general strategies – ignore, rebut and embrace – and identify the circumstances that shape when each strategy should be used in order to maximize the effects of discourse as an anti-conspiracy mechanism. This perspective thereby aims to reveal the elements of skill and nuance that are required of a politician who seeks to engage a conspiracy theory in a way that advances democratic values.

Conspiracism is a complex phenomenon (e.g. Cíbik and Hardoš, 2022; Rӓikkӓ, 2009), but it has been identified particularly with the effort to provide an unorthodox explanation of a prominent event, contradicting the official or immediately obvious explanation. Conspiracy theories often highlight secret scheming by powerful individuals. They also aim for a kind of proportionality between events and their causes, rejecting what seem like minor, trivial or merely coincidental causes of large events. This is why, for example, conspiracists suspect that a lone gunman could not have assassinated President John F. Kennedy. While the term ‘conspiracy theory’ today has pejorative connotations, this association is a modern development with origins in the mid-twentieth century (Koper, 2023). And the standard assumption that a conspiracy theory is always false, which underlies the suspicion of them, has been shown by high-profile examples of ‘conspiracy facts’ to sometimes be inaccurate (Cassam, 2019).

The Donald Trump presidency and its aftermath have given renewed prominence to conspiracism and its relationship to democracy (Muirhead and Rosenblum, 2019). As a candidate in the 2016 election, Trump propagated the ‘birther’ conspiracy theory, denying that the incumbent president, Barack Obama, was born in the United States and implying that his presidency was illegitimate. Trump tried to connect his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, with a human trafficking and paedophile racket via the ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory. After his election victory, President Trump railed against the powerful opposition he faced from the Deep State and intifada. Then, in the run-up to and following the 2020 election, Trump alleged, without evidence, that his opponents had ‘stolen’ the election (Longwell, 2022).

Still influential in the Republican party, Trump continues to circulate conspiracy theories, which many Republican politicians seem willing to tolerate and, indeed, sometimes echo; media outlets are prepared to disseminate such ideas; and many Americans (like mass publics elsewhere) are attracted to and may even believe conspiracy theories (Edelson et al., 2017). What’s more, while traditional conspiracies have been proper arguments, or theories, weaving together propositions and evidence (often from obscure and unreliable sources), Trump-era conspiracism lacks such coherence. As described by Muirhead and Rosenblum (2019), this ‘new conspiracism’ is substance-free and expressed through bold and repeated assertions and insinuations. This kind of communication, they explain, undermines the shared assumptions about information, evidence and argumentation that are necessary for democratic debate.

Countering Conspiracism: A Discursive Approach

So, what can be done to tackle conspiracism? Recent scholarship has mainly considered what policies, laws and institutions might be introduced (e.g. Cíbik and Hardoš, 2022; Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009). In this article, I approach this practical question from a different angle by considering how political elites, in the United States and elsewhere, might respond to conspiracism discursively, that is, in ways that do not necessarily involve legal and institutional responses. My analysis assumes that a conspiracy theory is false when it is encountered by political elites or, more precisely, that it is normally considered false by elites when they first face it. Based on this assumption, I seek to identify the range of discursive strategies that could be employed to counter it, and to establish when and how they should be used. Of course, a conspiracy theory might ultimately (i.e. upon further investigation) turn out to be true, and this scenario demands a different set of responses to those that I focus on here. However, it is still the case that, when first encountered, conspiracy theories are (and should be) presumed to be false and therefore treated as such while further investigation is conducted to assess their veracity. The analysis in this article proceeds on this basis.

By ‘political elite’, I mean the group of elected politicians, particularly those from major political parties, whose communication generally sets the bounds of what is considered acceptable, fair and feasible (Zaller, 2006). Since this agenda-setting power can be used to support or undermine democratic values, it is useful to have some sense of what should qualify as appropriate discursive action for elites under various circumstances. In what follows, I identify three general discursive strategies – (1) ignore, (2) rebut and (3) embrace – which elites can use when they encounter a conspiracy theory. While these strategies might not exhaust all the possibilities, they do capture distinct orientations towards conspiracy theories and they can each be detected in practice. This discursive toolkit should not be regarded as a substitute for the new institutions and policies that have been proposed in recent research on conspiracism, such as laws banning conspiracists from public broadcasters (Cíbik and Hardoš, 2022) or the government-sponsored infiltration of conspiracist networks (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009). On the contrary, the best response to a conspiracy theory may involve a discursive strategy being used in combination with certain institutions and policies.

Strategy 1: Ignore the Conspiracy Theory

The first mode of response is the most obvious: a politician can simply ignore the conspiracy theory put forward by others. Accordingly, she might decide to not reply to a question that embeds (explicitly or implicitly) a conspiracist charge. Or when this is not possible – for instance, because the question has been posed during a live, interactive forum – she could reply with a form of words that ‘shuts down’ any debate about the charge, depriving it of even the faintest hint of plausibility. A good example of the latter approach was Senator John McCain’s response to a question asked by one of his supporters at a town hall meeting during the 2008 presidential election campaign, which alleged that McCain’s opponent, Senator Barack Obama, was untrustworthy because ‘he’s an Arab’ (Stewart, 2018). McCain seized the microphone from the speaker, preventing her from elaborating on her conspiracist narrative, and then closed the debate on that issue with a pointed (though not entirely self-explanatory) reply: ‘No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign’s all about’.

McCain’s response here evidences his belief that the questioner had breached the standards of fair or reasonable discussion, even for a forum like a town hall meeting that is meant to facilitate dialogue and participation. But, probing this exchange more deeply, what should be the test of whether a conspiracist charge is unworthy of debate? Matej Cíbik and Pavol Hardoš (2022) assess several criteria and, drawing on John Rawls’s (2005) work, ultimately propose that a conspiracy theory should be ‘contained’ only if it challenges political equality (i.e. the belief that all citizens are free and equal). Clearly, McCain’s questioner defies this principle by suggesting that there is an incompatibility between trustworthiness and having Arab origins. McCain (or any other democratic representative) therefore has no obligation to publicly engage with this charge. Indeed, doing so might help to sustain the conspiracy theory – in this case, anti-Arab prejudice – fuelling the fire when, ideally, it should be snuffed out.

Strategy 2: Rebut the Conspiracy Theory with Facts and Evidence

In April 2011, in response to the persistent birther conspiracy theory – and after the release of his short-form birth certificate (accompanied by officials’ affidavits confirming that they had seen his long-form certificate) proved ineffective in suppressing the conspiracy theory – President Obama released his long-form certificate, which confirmed that he had indeed been born in the United States. At that time, the rumour that this was not the case had been circulating for more than a decade (Serwer, 2020). Obama at first tried to ignore the conspiracy theory, following the logic set out above. But, demonstrating the limits of the ignore strategy, the rumours kept swirling, stoked by Donald Trump (among others) and amplified by social media and Fox News. Representative polls conducted 2 years into the Obama presidency suggested that between 20% and 25% of Americans doubted that their president was born in the country (CNN/ORC, 2010; Cohen, 2011). The number of ‘birthers’ halved following Obama’s rebuttal with documentary evidence, suggesting that while this action did not ‘kill’ the conspiracy theory, it had been significantly deflated. Even Donald Trump joined the ranks of the new converts. This episode therefore shows the value of engaging a conspiracy theory with facts and evidence.

Yet even after the release of his long birth certificate, there would remain, as Obama acknowledged at the time, ‘a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest’ (Obama, 2011). As this suggests, conspiracy theories can stubbornly persist even in the face of conflicting evidence. They are sticky for cognitive reasons, because the material countering a conspiracy theory may clash against the adherent’s ideology or interests, creating a dissonance that is most simply resolved by rejecting the new evidence (Edelson et al., 2017). Furthermore – and of particular relevance to the new conspiracism – letting go of conspiracist beliefs may also entail social costs if this will result in an individual’s exit from a social network, which may be the case when its identity is tied up with belief in a conspiracy theory.

Some of the practical measures that have recently been introduced to counter conspiracy theories can be seen in this light – that is, as efforts to amplify the capacity of political elites to rebut charges with facts and evidence. For example, the evidence provided by ‘fact-checkers’ can boost the credibility of challenges to a conspiracy theory. Unsurprisingly, the Trump era has stimulated innovations in this area (Graves and Mantzarlis, 2020). Even social media platforms, which, as Muirhead and Rosenblum (2019: 156) point out, had neglected their civic role in the regulation of conspiracism, have become more active and responsible in this area. For example, Donald Trump was excluded by Twitter for purveying the conspiracy theory of the stolen election of 2020, while Facebook have recently created an Oversight Board consisting of free speech experts who will adjudicate its exclusion decisions.

Strategy 3: Embrace the Conspiracy Theory

Instead of trying to suppress or rebut a conspiracy theory, a politician can embrace it. This move becomes necessary when a conspiracy theory has been shown, following a rigorous investigation, to be true. A well-known example is the Watergate scandal that led Richard Nixon to resign the presidency in August 1974. This affair had the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory (e.g. paranoid scheming by powerful individuals), until the truth was sniffed out by journalists from the Washington Post. In this scenario, a politician who had been dismissive of this conspiracy theory should revise that opinion in light of the new evidence that was uncovered. The revelation of a conspiracy fact may also have other important implications depending on what has been shown to be true. In the case of Watergate, for example, the ramifications included the introduction of new laws to strengthen political transparency and accountability.

However, an embrace of sorts may also be a useful strategy in the context of a false conspiracy theory. This kind of embrace can take various forms. For example, earlier I cited McCain’s suppression of a conspiracy theory – that Obama was untrustworthy because ‘he’s an Arab’ – by seizing the microphone from the conspiracist and denouncing their account. McCain’s response would have been even better, democratically speaking, if this shutdown had been followed by an embrace taking the form of a defence of Arabs as citizens. In this case, the embrace would have been the validation of the principle of political equality. Another kind of embrace might be an effort to trigger empathy for a group of fellow citizens. This seems to have been the intention behind Obama’s attempt during his 2008 presidential campaign to diagnose the frustration of America’s White working class. Given the decline of the country’s manufacturing base, he argued, it was ‘not surprising’ that these citizens ‘cling to guns or religion or antipathy to [including conspiracy theories about] people who aren’t like them . . .’ (Spross, 2016). That this statement was roundly criticized as elitist and patronizing, including by Obama’s rival in the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton, suggests the tightrope that must be walked to show empathy without conveying some kind of insult.

Nonetheless, such examples of embrace discourse suggest that even false conspiracy theories can sometimes encourage productive reflection by politicians and the wider society. The embrace should never concede that the conspiracy theory is anything less than a flawed argument. Yet, without giving ground on this central point, a politician can seek to understand the conspiracy theory in a broader perspective, going beyond narrow concerns about its status as an argument to see whether it points to issues of governance that are deserving of attention, and which may be drivers of support for the conspiracy theory. As Michael Butter (2014) argues, even as they distort, conspiracy theories may tell us something real, often about the health and risk to certain democratic norms or the pain felt by a conspiracy theory’s believers. Following this approach, the response to a conspiracy theory is an opportunity to use discourse in a way that strengthens democratic values and governance.

Choosing the Right Discursive Strategy

Having fleshed out the three discursive strategies, a question that naturally arises is when (i.e. under what circumstances) each should be used. The answer, as I explain below, largely depends on the institutional context in which a conspiracy theory circulates and certain features of its content. Attention to these factors also helps us to refine our understanding of how a strategy should be used when it is the most appropriate response.

Institutional Context

A country’s institutional environment – including its laws, political culture and technology – shapes the utility of the different discursive strategies. Consider, for example, the regulation of free speech. In the United States, free speech is constitutionally protected via the First Amendment and this value holds a sacrosanct status in the country’s political culture. In Australia, Britain and Germany (and most other democracies), by contrast, free speech is also valued but its protection is treated in less absolute terms and therefore curbs on speech are generally regarded as acceptable if, and to the extent that, they are needed to secure other important values (e.g. prevention of racial or religious hatred) (Barendt, 1994).

This institutional difference has implications for the viability of the ignore strategy in particular. Efforts to use it will be more viable and productive in contexts where free speech can be regulated because the state may take the lead in suppressing a conspiracy theory via hate speech laws if, for instance, it incites racial hatred. As it will be much costlier for the advocates of that conspiracy theory to promote it in this context, we should expect that the ignore response will be more effective here than it would be in another (otherwise similar) country in which free speech regulation is viewed more suspiciously. This observation suggests, more generally, that ignore complements measures to curb the expression opportunities that are available to conspiracists (e.g. Cíbik and Hardoš, 2022; Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009).

However, the ignore strategy has been made less potent by three modern institutional developments. First, since this strategy assumes that citizens follow their representatives by disregarding the issues which elites decide to ignore (Zaller, 2006), it will be rendered less effective if citizens become disillusioned with their representatives, as has happened in many democracies. Second, in a highly polarized environment, like that of the present-day United States, a representative’s efforts to ignore a conspiracy theory might be nullified by other representatives who seek to exploit it to harm their opponents. Third, the possibility of suppressing a conspiracy theory has been undermined by the rise of the Internet and social media, which has made it easier to circulate a conspiracy theory to a large, ripe audience and to circumvent the traditional news outlets that are more committed to truth in their reporting.

Conspiratorial Content

We can glean from the literature on conspiracism three aspects of content that have implications for the choice of discursive strategy: first, whether a conspiracy theory impugns or belittles a group (or individual) based on ascriptive characteristics such as ethnicity, religion, gender or sexuality (Cíbik and Hardoš, 2022); second, whether it operates as a partisan signal ‘to sensitize minds, close ranks, and encourage collective action’ (Smallpage et al., 2017: 1); and third, whether a conspiracy theory lacks theoretical or empirical substance, which is the main difference between the ‘new’ (i.e. substance-free) and ‘old’ (substantive) conspiracisms (Muirhead and Rosenblum, 2019). It should be noted that in Muirhead and Rosenblum’s account, the new conspiracism is inherently partisan, so substance-free conspiracy theories should be considered a special kind of partisan conspiracy theory. Since ascriptive conspiracy theories can also be partisan, it is therefore possible for a conspiracy theory to carry all three content properties identified above. The Obama birther conspiracy theory, discussed earlier, provides an example of this because it had a racial element, it acted as a powerful partisan signal, and it lacked any grounding in substance – as Muirhead and Rosenblum (2019: 26) put it, this conspiracy theory ‘offends common sense’. But even though the three aspects of content may overlap in practice, it is useful to analyse them separately to clarify the implications of each dimension for discursive strategy.

Ascriptive Content

A conspiracy theory with ascriptive content poses grave risks in a society that aspires to be tolerant of social diversity because of its frontal challenge to the principle of political quality. For this reason, as I noted earlier, there is a compelling case to give no attention (or as little as possible) to such conspiracy theories because their form makes them unworthy of engagement in democratic debate. Ignore – or similarly, an effort to shut down the conspiracy theory – is therefore the ideal response in this scenario. Particularly when a shutdown is attempted, the response should also attempt to incorporate an embrace (i.e. defence) of the principle of political equality, as I argued earlier when suggesting what would have been the ideal elite response in the exchange between John McCain and the conspiracist who made false allegations about Barack Obama’s ethnic background.

Partisan Content

A conspiracy theory that is strongly associated with a political party conveys signals that are detected both by the partisan ingroup, whom the conspiracy bolsters, and by the partisan outgroup, whom the conspiracy maligns (Smallpage et al., 2017). The appropriate response to such content depends on a politician’s partisan affiliation. On one hand, the co-partisan elites, who are affiliated with the conspiracy theory’s supporters, can draw on their credibility among their party’s supporters to effectively debunk politically motivated falsehoods. For this reason, a rebuttal with facts and evidence is the ideal response (and better than ignore) for co-partisan elites who are confronted with a partisan conspiracy theory. This conjecture is supported by experimental evidence from Adam Berinsky’s (2017) study of beliefs in a conspiracy theory about the ‘Obamacare’ healthcare proposal, which was passed by Congress in 2010. These experiments show the potent effect on Republican participants of a quote by a co-partisan elite, Senator John Isakson, debunking the conspiracy theory. This finding leads Berinsky (2017: 259) to conclude that ‘partisanship can be harnessed as a force for truth’.

On the other hand, for the elites who are targeted by a conspiracy theory, their options to tackle it are limited by the high likelihood that the narrative’s adherents will dismiss their rebuttal efforts. Although, in a variation of the basic rebuttal strategy, it may be a productive for these politicians to seek to amplify the voices of their elite opponents who disavow the conspiracy theory by drawing attention to, and echoing, their rebuttals. For the outgroup politicians, this response may be more effective than presenting their own rebuttals to the conspiracy theory’s supporters. Furthermore, through this response, the outgroup politicians will throw the spotlight onto anti-conspiracy elites in the ingroup, creating new opportunities for them to disavow the conspiracy theory. Of course, this virtuous circle depends on there being elites who are prepared to speak out against a conspiracy theory that is endorsed by their party’s supporters. Berinsky (2017: 259) suggests that such individuals can always be found – ‘there are always partisans – like Senator Isakson on health care – who are interested in disseminating the truth’. But to expand and sustain this group of truthful partisans, the elites who benefit from the rebuttal should reciprocate whenever a conspiracy theory emerges from their side of politics.

Substance-Free Conspiracy Theories

Some partisan conspiracy theories are also substance-free, and this property makes them even more awkward to deal with. Ignoring these conspiracy theories would be ideal but they are highly contagious in the contemporary institutional environment, especially via social media, because they are propelled by ‘curiosity, titillation and entertainment’ (Muirhead and Rosenblum, 2019: 38). Furthermore, since the belief in these new-form conspiracy theories is not grounded in logic and evidence, there is little chance that their adherents will be convinced to change their mind by a persuasive rebuttal. That said, a rebuttal may not be completely useless in this scenario, because it may influence some people, especially the newcomers to the conspiracy theory who do not yet know that it is substance-free. A rebuttal, in this context, should be curt (to minimize any inadvertent proliferation), it should point to the conspiracy theory’s lack of substance, and it should identify the evidence – such as the long-form birth certificate that Obama released to tackle the birther conspiracy theory – that supports a non-conspiratorial account.

The embrace strategy can also be a valuable response to a substance-free conspiracy theory. To be precise, its use should target two psychological dispositions that predict support for such narratives, namely, (1) low trust in elites and governing institutions and (2) feelings of alienation and anxiety (Miller et al., 2015). Muirhead and Rosenblum’s ‘enacting democracy’ proposal, which involves well-intentioned partisan elites and administrative officials publicly articulating and explaining the tasks involved in their work, aims to boost trust in governing processes and it can thereby help to cultivate a more hostile environment for substance-free conspiracy theories. Likewise, arguments that seek to reduce alienation and anxiety, and better still, arguments which make the case for new policies and institutions that would advance this goal, should also be regarded as potential mechanisms to counter substance-free conspiracy theories.

Conclusion

This article has examined what political elites can and should do when they confront a conspiracy theory. Seeking to go beyond the literature’s focus on new institutions and regulations, I identified three general discursive strategies – ignore, rebut and embrace – that capture distinct orientations to conspiracy theories. Building on this elaboration, I then considered the problem of how to select the most appropriate strategy, explaining that this choice depends on institutional factors and the content of a conspiracy theory. This analysis suggests that while there are serious constraints in any effort to use discourse to curb conspiracy theories, when the ignore, rebut and embrace strategies are used in the right circumstances by well-intentioned politicians, they together represent a potentially powerful anti-conspiracism toolkit.