One of the key differences between conspiracy-theory bullshit and "talking about things the government actually did" is that conspiracy-theorist mindset treats political engagement as an ARG. The idea that an average American citizen can engage with intelligence kerfuffles and backroom financial dealing if they're sufficiently perceptive because the powers that be can't help but leave "hints" in odd places everyone can see.
To be sure, the United States government is evil, and it has done and is doing a lot of shady shit that could be called conspiratorial. But, for instance, when the CIA was running Operation Timber Sycamore, they very much did not call up Nikki Minaj and be like "Hey we need you to release a concept album about selling guns to ISIS"
Speaking of things the government has actually done, you'll notice that this stuff only really flourishes around things that are fabricated or unfalsifiable, like Qanon stuff, as opposed to anything that actually happened. Like nobody believes you'll learn the truth about the government murdering Gary Webb by decoding the super bowl halftime show.
There’s an Italian anarchist group who coined the term “conspiracy fantasy” for this, because a bunch of non-English languages translate “conspiracy theory” with a neutral connotation and they needed a way to say “conspiracy theory (derogatory)”.
They have some good discussion in the second half of the episode about how to differentiate between conspiracy theories and fantasies, and they say the same thing; actual conspiracies have a concrete and narrow goal, are focussed on a particular time and place, and get more likely to be discovered the more people are part of them.
Conspiracy fantasies, otoh, are exactly the above: ungrounded in a particular time or place (e.g. they allegedly reach back hundreds or thousands of years), constantly escalating and adding new supposed members despite the difficulty in keeping so many people quiet, and the goal becomes more and more broad.
One of my own conspiracy theories:
I have long suspected that the prevalence of conspiracy fantasy in the Untidy States has been encouraged by the intelligence community and other entrenched interests in order to discredit any legitimate investigation into actual conspiracies as "lunatic fringe nonsense."
That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Disinformation and psyops are some of the few things US intelligence is actually almost good at, for example [gestures vaguely at the last 100 years of Latin American history] or [gestures vaguely at the last 100 years of Middle Eastern history] or [gestures vaguely at the last 100 years of the American labor movement], and it’s extremely advantageous to have the public consciousness associate “critically examining the things the government does on account of the government being objectively evil” with weird Facebook dads posting whatever the fuck this is:
The other thing with conspiracy thought is that it gives the conspiracy theorist a feeling of agency over their life. They can insert themselves into the narrative in a way that gives them power, but also doesnt involve gay ass communist things like working together with other people. Conspiracy theory is fantasy, but it's specifically a power fantasy.
I wouldn't necessarily say that the government disseminates disinformation to create conspiracies, but they gladly allow conspiracy theorists to have platforms because it muddies the informational waters.
Does the government benefit from you believing UFO's are aliens? Yes. Are they going to spend money convincing you that UFOs are aliens? Probably not.
