We have to distinguish between conspiracies and conspiracism. So conspiracyism is where you essentially

collapse social analysis into networks of conspiracy. And to that extent, it remains trapped in an

individualist heuristic. So bad things happen because of bad people doing bad things.

Frederick Jameson once gave us a way

to think about conspiracism as an attempt to think the totality, the social totality, outside of

the depoliticizing censorship of liberal politics. So there is a subversive potential there,

but then I'm also reminded of what Adorno said about occult

thinking, where he perhaps ungenerously characterized as the metaphysic of dunces, which is

where you have, you know, this striving toward reality on the part of the reality famished.

You know, DIY investigations amid a generalized crisis of knowledge on the part of those

who've been

denied the tools to effectively interpret and act on reality.

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