olitical memory is replete with instances of how conspiracy thinking grows in the space between real events and imagined threats. The Mehran Bank scandal, once brushed aside as rumour, was later found in court to have been an instance of covert funding of (the 1990) elections. The long‑suppressed Hamood-ur Rahman Commission eventually revealed various failures behind the fall of Dhaka. By contrast, claims that polio vaccines were designed to harm Muslim children have collapsed under scientific scrutiny. Even thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari, who cautions that crises such as the Covid‑19 pandemic can accelerate acceptance of intrusive biometric surveillance, illustrate how fear can shape public imagination. Conspiracy theories draw their power from a mix of lived overarching power control, structural secrecy, collective helplessness and the human need to regain an understanding of what might happen again.

Conspiracy theories do not grow in the mind as isolated ideas. They grow in an emotional climate of powerlessness. They rise from the same psychological soil that produces fear, uncertainty, humiliation and the longing for control. When people feel that the world has become too complex, too fast, too unpredictable, they search for a story that can explain their anxiety. A conspiracy theory offers exactly that. It gives a sense of order in a world that feels disorderly.

The human mind is not designed to live with prolonged uncertainty. When uncertainty becomes chronic, the psyche begins to create patterns even where none exist. This is not a flaw. It is a survival mechanism. Our ancestors survived by detecting patterns in the environment. This ancient vigilance still lives in us. When modern life overwhelms us with a flood of information, which is full of contradictions, the mind tries to simplify the world by creating a single coherent narrative. A conspiracy theory becomes that narrative.

A deeper truth is that conspiracy theories flourish where trust collapses. When people lose trust in governments, media, legacy institutions or experts, they begin to rely on alternative sources of meaning. The conspiracy theory becomes a parallel institution. In societies where people feel betrayed by power, conspiracy theories become a language through which they express their disappointment and suspicion. They become a form of protest against the official version of reality and a way of saying that the truth has been taken away from them.

There is also a powerful emotional reward in believing that one possesses secret knowledge. It creates a sense of superiority in a world where many feel invisible. This psychological elevation is intoxicating. It transforms ordinary individuals into guardians of hidden truth. It gives them a mission and an identity.

To understand conspiracy theories more clearly, it helps to distinguish them from propaganda and rumours. Conspiracy theories are bottom‑up attempts to understand the reality. They emerge when people feel powerless, mistrustful or excluded from decision making. They are attempts to restore meaning when the world feels unstable. Propaganda, by contrast, is top‑down. It is produced by institutions, governments or political actors who intentionally shape narratives to influence public perception. It is strategic, curated and designed to engineer consent.

There is also a powerful emotional reward in believing that one possesses secret knowledge. It creates a sense of superiority in a world where many feel invisible.

The academic definition of conspiracy theory helps clarify this further. Social psychologists Karen Douglas, Robbie Sutton and Aleksandra Cichocka describe conspiracy theories as explanations for significant events that involve secret plots by powerful and malevolent groups. Their work shows that conspiracy theories attribute major events to hidden, intentional actions rather than chance or incompetence. They assume the involvement of powerful actors with malicious motives. They emphasise that conspiracy theories are not merely incorrect beliefs but meaning‑making frameworks that arise when people feel uncertainty, mistrust or lack of control.

This definition becomes even more revealing when viewed through the psychology of colonialism. The standard definition describes conspiracy theories as explanations that attribute major events to secret, intentional and malevolent actions by powerful groups. When placed in a colonial context, this definition becomes more than a description of cognitive bias. It becomes a window into a historical experience in which secrecy, manipulation and hidden power were not imagined but lived realities. Colonised societies did not invent the idea of hidden power. They experienced it. The colonial state operated through surveillance, covert alliances, artificial divisions and decisions made in power corridors. The entire machinery of empire was built on secrecy and hidden coercive measures. In this sense, the colonial subject’s suspicion was not pathological. It was adaptive.

This is why the work of Douglas, Sutton and Cichocka must be read alongside thinkers like Fanon, Nandy and Said, and scholars like Cohan and Stoler. Douglas and Sutton show that conspiracy theories grow where people feel powerless and mistrustful of institutions. Fanon and Nandy remind us that colonialism deliberately produced these emotional conditions. The colonised lived under a system where visible authority masked deeper, hidden structures of domination. Real powers making the decisions were invisible and real motives were deadly. Knowledge of one’s own land, resources and political future was withheld. The archive was closed, the bureaucracy was opaque and the military unaccountable. Bernard Cohn described the colonised world as uncertain. Ann Stoler showed that it was structurally secretive. In such uncertain secrecy, the mind naturally joins dots with patterns and hidden intentions. The power detection became, in a colonial setting, a response to a world where power truly was hidden and patterns were imposed from above.

Even the idea that conspiracy theories blame powerful and malevolent groups takes on a different meaning in a colonial frame. The colonised did not need to imagine such groups; they were already present in the administration, intelligence networks, trading companies, religious organisations and military alliances that operated with motives rarely made transparent. The hands behind the global formation and perpetual operations of terrorist organisations are still in dark despite the loss of millions of lives. Attempts to identify them was important for survival.

This does not make all post-colonial conspiracy theories accurate, but this attempt is understandable through the history of living under a system where secrecy was routine.

Conspiracy theories are not simply false stories. They remind us that the human mind does not seek truth alone but also meaning and predictability. It seeks safety. It seeks belonging. When these needs are unmet, the mind creates its own reality. That reality, even when false, can feel emotionally truer than the world outside. RD Laing called it a strategy to live in an unliveable world. When power centres do conspire, why be surprised that people form and believe in conspiracy theories?

The writer is a principal clinical psychologist in the Republic of Ireland. He can be reached at [email protected].