What the Difference Between Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories Tells Us About American History—and About Now

On March 24, the Paris-based offices of Swiss bank Edmond de Rothschild were raided by French police. Officials were searching for evidence of wrongdoing for an investigation into possible corruption by a former UN diplomat turned employee who is mentioned dozens of times in the Jeffrey Epstein emails. Current head of the bank Arianne de Rothschild, who is also in the Epstein emails exchanging messages with Epstein himself, was present for the raid, which was part of a long-running investigation.

Yes, she is one of those Rothschilds: the 200-year old European banking dynasty claimed by conspiracy theorists to run all of the central banks in the world, hold $500 trillion in assets, and fund both sides of every war. Those Rothschilds are linked on multiple levels to Jeffrey Epstein, and in an email to fellow billionaire Peter Thiel, Epstein claimed to “represent the Rothschilds.”

Unsurprisingly, the conspiracy theory community was excited about the raid, seeing it as validation of their long-held views of the Rothschilds as part of a power elite that was no longer untouchable. A guest on Alex Jones’ show the day after the raid extolled it as “a small victory” in the fight against globalism. It would appear, then, that the idea of the Rothschilds being involved in the dark deeds of the global oligarchy is not a conspiracy theory, but just a conspiracy. It’s a vast and evil plot, carried out in secret, and only exposed by the diligence of truth-crusaders on the internet.

Or is it? What if Epstein’s link to the Rothschilds was neither a conspiracy, nor a conspiracy theory. What if it was just one of the countless connections many wealthy people have to each other, with their deeds difficult for outsiders to understand and mostly carried out through the banality of electronic communication?

The Edmond de Rothschild investigation isn’t actually about the bank, but someone who worked at the bank. And Ariane de Rothschild might be linked to Epstein, but she’s not currently under investigation for any crimes. So if there is a conspiracy, what exactly is it?

This is when the difference between “conspiracy” and “conspiracy theory” becomes crucial to understand.

As a journalist and author, I’ve spent the last decade exploring the connection between conspiracy theory beliefs and current events, including writing two books, testifying to Congress, and giving hundreds of interviews. The world seems more chaotic and complicated by the day, and we are all searching for patterns and easy answers to help us make it make sense. Conspiracy theories excel at filling this void, giving us signal in noise, and scapegoats for what seem like random events. 

Conspiracism and paranoia have become principle drivers of American politics, commerce, culture, and medicine. What was once relegated to the fringes of late-night radio and street corner pamphlets about fluoride is now so mainstream that the president regularly shares memes about QAnon, quantum healing medbeds, and George Soros and the aforementioned Rothschilds (no, I am not related to the legendary banking family) funding the Democratic Party. In TPM’s Rough Edges, I’ll be working to untangle the truth from the theories, debunk the lies, and bring context and history to what seems like a problem new to the social media era. In fact, conspiracism is as old as human development, and serves a useful purpose. We once survived by seeing danger in the unknown, and early societies united around folklore and mythology developed to explain what we couldn’t understand. 

But many of us have lost our perspective in a torrent of breaking news, institutional mistrust, and gurus telling us what we want to hear. In writing this column, I will be doing my part to steer us back toward truth and sanity, while in my own way, explaining what doesn’t make sense about conspiracy theories.

There might be no more misunderstood and misused term in the language of conspiracism than “conspiracy theory” itself. Skeptics and debunkers tend to over-apply it to many other social trends or phenomena, such as myths, moral panics, and old-fashioned urban legends. Bigfoot is not a conspiracy theory, nor is the idea that flashing your lights at a car whose headlights are off will lead to your murder in a gang initiation. And skeptics will claim that no popularly held-conspiracy theory has ever “turned out to be true,” which seems like it’s probably also not true, given the sheer number of conspiracies that exist throughout history.

On the other hand, believers claim the term “conspiracy theory” itself is a plot, one invented by the CIA to question the sanity of people who were asking questions about the official story behind the Kennedy assassination. To them, countless conspiracy theories have been proven true — thanks to the efforts of citizen researchers who don’t believe the “official story” about things. And when called out on their lies and manipulation, the deep state will fall back on terms like “conspiracy theory” to shut down investigation.

Somewhere between blind acceptance and unhinged paranoia is the truth about what this term means and where it came from. 

To begin, it definitely did not originate with the CIA. The term “conspiracy theory” began to appear in American newspapers around the early 1870s. It picked up steam after the assassination of President James Garfield by deranged office-seeker Charles Guiteau in July 1881. In just one example, the Oskaloosa Herald of July 7, 1881, declared in a section dubbed “The Question of a Conspiracy” that “Chief [James J.] Brooks, of the Secret Service, says he has followed up every clue and every theory of conspiracy and has proven satisfactorily that there was none. He has reported to Secretary [of the Treasury William] Windom that Guiteau had no confederates — not even a confidant. That he was alone in the assassination. The conspiracy theory has been abandoned by everybody.”

Even the CIA’s vaunted memo discussing the popularity of alternative theories about JFK’s assassination, called “Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report,” only uses the term once. In referring to theorized links between the intelligence agency and JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, the document allows that “conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organisation, for example, by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us.” Which is, of course, true.

Clearly, the CIA did not invent the term, nor did it infuse it with its current popular meaning. But the Kennedy assassination might be the most useful example of what a conspiracy theory literally is: a theorized conspiracy.

Just as nobody could uncover convincing links between Garfield’s assassination and a grand plot, nobody could uncover the same regarding Kennedy’s. But while Guiteau is widely accepted to have acted alone, Oswald still is not. Recent polling shows that well over half of all Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy involving Oswald and others, though who “actually” fired the fatal shots is still entirely a matter of debate among conspiracy believers.

This vagueness backed up by certainty is a hallmark of conspiracy theories, and one of the major points of divergence between them and real conspiracies. Actual plots involving powerful people doing terrible things usually leave massive paper trails, tranches of evidence, and exculpatory accounts from people who were caught playing some kind of role in the plot and want to stay out of prison. 

People do indeed take notes on a criminal conspiracy. Epstein’s many misdeeds are well-known precisely because of all the text messages, photographs, and emails he and his associates left behind as evidence

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, involve none of this. Oswald may have had connections to people in U.S. intelligence, but those trails have not led to any actual proof of his involvement in a plot to kill the president. Such a conspiracy would involve a vast number of accomplices. They, in turn, almost certainly would have left large quantities of evidence behind in the form of letters, memos, phone call transcripts, and other documents. Instead, there are none — or at least nothing that definitively proves there was such a plot.

And if, somehow, all these pieces of evidence were missed and suddenly found, what would they point to? Who was working with Oswald? The theories for who “really” killed JFK are all over the map, from the CIA to the Soviet Union to Cuba to organized crime in various countries. Even a second investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations report of 1979, concluded that there were two gunmen, but couldn’t identify who the second one was. Theoretically, it could be anyone. Hence, the conspiracy theory lives on.

Conspiracy theories are purposefully vague. They rely on nebulous motives, shadowy and unidentified co-conspirators, papered-over inconsistencies, and leaps in logic that require people to act completely out of character or do things that are not possible. They are full to the brim with details, but these are usually either vague or contradictory. 

One popular example is the “chemtrails” conspiracy theory, which claims that planes are being used to spray toxic chemicals in the sky, visible in the white trails they leave behind. But while believers are certain this spraying is happening and has a nefarious purpose, nobody seems to know anything beyond that. What exactly are we being sprayed with? Who is doing it? Why are they doing it? 

Is it mind control? Weather modification? Slow poisoning of the population? It is impossible to prove the theory, because the theory is too vague to be proven. If spraying is everywhere, why is there no consensus on these basic facts? Because the facts don’t matter, only the theories behind them matter.

Real conspiracies can supply these details, because they are necessary for legal prosecution and ethical journalism. Going back to Epstein, we know the names of his accusers. We know much of what he did and who he did it to. There are still questions that remain, and Epstein himself is not around to answer them because he took his own life. Or, according to the very popular conspiracy theory, he was murdered.

Here again, we find the hallmarks of “conspiracy” vs. “conspiracy theory.” Believers that “Epstein didn’t kill himself” correctly point out numerous discrepancies in the security records at his prison in New York. Broken cameras, bizarre Google searches by guards, falsified records, questions about whether it would have been physically possible for Epstein to hang himself, and Epstein’s “upbeat” demeanor before his death have all been cited as evidence that he was murdered to silence his testimony before he went to trial.

Much of this speculation has merit, and even journalists who have spent years covering Epstein believe he might not have taken his own life. But again, the conspiracy is vague and relies on gaps in logic filled in by personal biases. It starts with a conclusion and works backwards.

If Epstein was indeed murdered, then who did it? Who ordered them to? Why was it done? Theory believers can’t agree on any of these crucial questions. The theory of murder might have convincing aspects, but lacks fundamental evidence pointing to an actual conclusion. It turns out that real things can add up to a false conclusion when applied the wrong way.

Many durable conspiracy theories have elements of reality to them. To go back to the Rothschilds, European Jews have long been thought of as wealthier and “better” with money than their non-Jewish counterparts. This is because Jews often lent money to Christian rulers and royalty at interest during the middle ages. The Rothschilds themselves were one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in Europe.

But they aren’t anymore, and they certainly don’t live up to the ludicrous standards of conspiracy theories about them. This is where the blurring of the line between reality and fantasy becomes so important to notice. And it’s also why conspiracy theories are so compelling to so many people. They explain things that defy explanation, make order out of chaos, and bring sense to what seems to make no sense. And they offer someone in control, someone with a plan, even if it’s an evil plan.

It’s more satisfying and feels better to believe that JFK was killed by a plot, or that Jeffrey Epstein was working with the trillionaire puppet-masters the Rothschilds on their world domination schemes.

But neither are true. Instead, we have to make due with a chaotic and senseless world, where presidents can be assassinated on a whim, and billionaire sex offenders can exchange email chit-chat with scions of wealth and power. 

And unlike in conspiracy theories where citizen journalists reveal the truth only to be called crazy by the establishment, the conspirators in real plots usually get away with it.