ABSTRACT
Despite their popularity and normalization, the public image of conspiracy theorists remains morally tainted. Academics contribute to this stereotype by conceiving of them as a coherent collective of similar people: internal variety is sacrificed for a clear external demarcation. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands, and following a relational approach to identity formations, I explore variation in the conspiracy milieu by studying how these people identify with and distinguish themselves from others, and secondly, how they deal with the pejorative image of the conspiracy theorist ascribed to them. The analysis shows first that people in the Dutch conspiracy milieu actively resist their stigmatization as conspiracy theorists by distinguishing themselves from the mainstream as critical freethinkers. The trope “I am not a conspiracy theorist” is used to reclaim rationality by labeling others within the conspiracy milieu the real conspiracy theorists. Second, their ideas of self and other, including their ideas about what conspiracy theories mean and what to do with them in one’s daily life, enact three distinguishable subcultures of the conspiracy milieu (activists, retreaters and mediators), which I discuss in full empirical detail. Conspiracy milieus, it turns out, are no monolithic wholes, but rather dynamic networks of different kinds of people, identifying with different worldviews, beliefs, and practices.
