Conspiracy theory

This is Wikipedia’s excellent and quite scholarly article on conspiracy theories as a social, political, and psychological phenomenon.

In the United States of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, conspiracy theories have become commonplace in mass media. This has contributed to conspiracism emerging as a cultural phenomenon and the possible replacement of democracy by conspiracy as the dominant paradigm of political action in the public mind.[2] According to anthropologists Todd Sanders and Harry G. West, “evidence suggests that a broad cross section of Americans today…gives credence to at least some conspiracy theories.”[5] Belief in conspiracy theories has therefore become a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists and experts in folklore.(emphasis added)

Conspiracism is defined as “A world view that centrally places conspiracy theories in the unfolding of history”