ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of academic responses to conspiracy theory between the 1930s and 1970s which can be divided into three phases. During the first phase, between the 1930s and 1950s, two branches of scholarship emerged as scholars like Harold Lasswell and Theodor Adorno turned to conspiracy theories as they searched for psychological explanations for the rise of totalitarianism, while others, most prominently Karl Popper, began to challenge the epistemological foundations of conspiracy theorizing. A new generation of scholars expanded on these early ideas during the Red Scare of 1950s when they saw liberals and academics threatened by anti-communist conspiracy theories which they labeled as “pseudoscience,” “pseudoconservatism,” and “populism.” Such ideas were popularized as scholars targeted non-academic audiences and journalists also began to discuss the dangers of conspiracy theorizing. Finally, during the 1960s, consensus historians and the pluralist school of political science, embodied by scholars such as Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, effectively linked conspiracy theories to extremism. More importantly, Richard Hofstadter synthesized previous branches of scholarship by using the umbrella term “paranoid style” to disqualify conspiracy theories and further popularized it in the now seminal article of the same title published in Harper’s Magazine in 1964.
