Why and How to Debunk Political Conspiracism?

Among the strategies for countering conspiracy theories, one of the most significant and discussed is debunking. The paper aims to clarify why it is necessary, and what its advantages and disadvantages are. In the first part of the paper, the political and impolitic forms of conspiracy theories are differentiated. The former, in fact, concern not only reactions to sudden and shocking events (Barkun 2013; Butter 2020), but also the politicization of long-standing habitual phenomena, such as migration flows, the subject, for example, of the conspiracy theory of the great replacement. This kind of political conspiracy can provide powerful rhetorical and ideological tools to radical and populist formations (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017; Pirro and Taggart 2022), and thus show itself to be very dangerous to the rule of law, the democratic public sphere, and the nondiscrimination of minorities (Bergmann 2018; Muirhead and Rosenblum 2019;). Hence the need to debunk the theories at stake. The second part shows that debunking, while necessary, can be ineffective and even lead to a hardening of the positions of conspiracy theorists; however, it is also true that usually the position of conspiracy theorists is impermeable to any kind of objection: it undermines the preconditions for the development of a fruitful dialogue, particularly within the framework of the digital realm (Sunstein and Vermeule 2009; Cassam 2019; Taguieff 2021). It follows that, at the source of these limitations and difficulties, debunking fulfills positive functions first and foremost in relation to those who have not yet gone down the rabbit hole and to all those who do not yet have a clear idea of the theories involved. It thus also fulfills a positive function in terms of 'prebunking' (Jolley and Douglas 2017; Douglas et al. 2019).