{"id":13877,"date":"2026-02-24T10:38:52","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T17:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/?p=13877"},"modified":"2026-02-24T16:23:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T23:23:32","slug":"on-the-misuse-of-conspiracy-and-conspiracy-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/on-the-misuse-of-conspiracy-and-conspiracy-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Misuse of ‘Conspiracy’ and ‘Conspiracy Theory’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hillary Clinton spoke of a “vast right wing conspiracy” directed against her husband. That was some years back. Maybe that’s where the linguistic mischief started. How can a conspiracy be vast and composed of half the population?<\/div>\n
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A CONSPIRACY is a clandestine agreement among a small group of people to achieve a nefarious end, typically by means of treason or treachery. The members of a conspiracy are called conspirators. They meet in secret and in small numbers. Hillary's abuse of English is plain: conservatives do not form a secret organization; they are not few in number; and their opposition to Bill Clinton and his policies was not nefarious, treasonous, or treacherous.<\/pre>\n
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A conspiracy THEORY alleges that a conspiracy is under way or has occurred to bring about some event. An example is the theory that 9\/11 was an 'inside job.' Some conspiracy theories are true, and some false; some are well-supported by evidence, others are not. None of the 9\/11 conspiracy theories are well- supported in my opinion. But that in not the present point. The present point is that it is a mistake to assume that every conspiracy theory is false or baseless.<\/pre>\n
It is also a mistake to refer to any theory or any bit of groundless speculation as a conspiracy theory. Not every theory is a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory alleges a conspiracy where ‘conspiracy’ is defined as above. Finally, it is a mistake to oppose theories to facts, as if no theory can be true.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hillary Clinton spoke of a “vast right wing conspiracy” directed against her husband. That was some years back. Maybe that’s where the linguistic mischief started. How can a conspiracy be vast and composed of half the population? A CONSPIRACY is a clandestine agreement among a small group of people to achieve a nefarious end, typically … Continue reading “On the Misuse of ‘Conspiracy’ and ‘Conspiracy Theory’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language-matters","category-political-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13877"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13882,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13877\/revisions\/13882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}