Conspiracy and Vulnerability: #Occupy, Zeitgeist, and the Legitimation of Rebellious Knowledge
Conspiracy and Vulnerability: #Occupy, Zeitgeist, and the Legitimation of Rebellious Knowledge

Summary/Abstract: In the autumn of 2011, one of the working groups of #Occupy Wall Street discussed the idea of endorsing the concepts of the Zeitgeist films as an official ideology of the movement. The idea was ultimately dismissed, but since the Zeitgeist films were heavily influenced by Alex Jones, in order to do so the working group needed to develop a dividing line between conspiracy theories and the rebellious knowledge about the injustice of the 1%, which had inspired #Occupy. As the dividing line was to be drawn in discussion, which foreclosed any argument founded on authority, in fact any argument that implied asymmetrical distribution of knowledge, the theories of conspiracy theories turned out to be useless. Therefore the working group developed a concept of conspiracy theory suitable for its practical purposes, and shaped by what the participants perceived as strategic vulnerabilities. Their concept claimed that a conspiracy theory was any theory that can be accused of being one, and as this concept could be extended to any theory of injustice, the working group ultimately decided to recommend that #Occupy should not have any ideology. Later, the lack of ideology was widely criticized as a crucial vulnerability of the movement. Of course, this paper would not attribute this vulnerability to the rejection of the Zeitgeist films. Yet I will claim that the discussion of the films exemplifies a risk brought about by the concept of conspiracy theory, the risk of making any dissent vulnerable to accusations of irrationality.

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