None of the analysis provided thus far confronts the original claim, which says: "The CIA invented the term "Conspiracy Theory" in 1967 with memo 1035-960". The confused discussion which has so far transpired did so because of the incoherent manner in which the discussion was initially framed.



Discussion began with the OP, which initially framed itself as a "History of the Term "Conspiracy Theory"" but then immediately provided a definition of the term which has no attribution or context, historical or otherwise. The next sentence in the post is highly ambiguous and difficult to parse, but it seems to be an immediate contradiction of the prior statement. It seems to be saying that the term 'conspiracy theory' didn't necessarily imply that the theory was implausible, depending on where and when it was used.



After moving past these contradictory and incoherent statements, the post begins to analyse historical documents, which is welcome considering it intially framed itself as a history. However, I found this analysis to be flawed and misleading.



According to the examples in the OP, usage of the phrase "conspiracy theory" before the 20th century seems to mean merely "a theory which explains something in terms of a conspiracy". Given that the authors of these examples see fit to analyze and criticize the "conspiracy theories" to which they refer, its clear that the term 'conspiracy theory' is not sufficient to illustrate that the theory is implausible in their mind.



Mick West comes to a different conclusion regarding the 1899 example, an article about conspiracies regarding the Second Boer War. He states: "Here it's seeming to move towards its current use with an implied "far-fetched" prepended."



There is no such implied "far-fetched" connotation as far as I can tell. To see why this is true, read the article. The first thing you will see is the article's title: "Conspiracies -- True and False". This seems to imply that a [theory of] conspiracy can be either true or false, just like any other proposition -- nothing about that implies "far-fetched".



Analyzing the article's content, we see the author is drawing a distinction between two conspiracy theories, one which the author claims is inconsistent with what was currently understood about the situation, the other which he claims is consistent with available knowledge, but was misunderstood by its critics. If there were an implied "far-fetchedness" associated with the term "conspiracy" or "conspiracy theory" for this author, why would they use such terms to describe a theory which they are arguing is true? No explanation is provided by Mick which describes how he came to think that the terms imply an inherent "far-fetchedness". Can you elaborate? Its surprising to me that we arrived at such different interpretations.



The examples provided which date to the decade or so before the release of the memo seem to ascribe varied meanings to the terms "conspiracy" and "conspiracy theory", one even using the word 'conspiracy' and then asking 'if this is the correct term'. Several of the examples are taken from a body of academic literature which is studying the ideology of the american extreme right, a highly specialized context with no clear relation to the context we are interested in. Another example given is Popper's "The Open Society and Its Enemies", the context of that text regards methodological considerations in the social sciences. The context of this piece is also highly specialized and doesn't reveal much about the meaning of the term 'conspiracy theory' in popular understanding or in the context of political conspiracies like the JFK assassination.



However, even if the analysis of these texts had been done correctly, it wouldn't matter, because demonstrating that the phrase "conspiracy theory" was in use (and arguably was used pejoratively) before 1967 does not demonstrate that the modern term "conspiracy theory" could not have been invented by the CIA in 1967, because it does not demonstrate that the meaning of the modern term and the meaning of the previously existing term are identical.



Terms are words or groups of words which have a specific meaning that depends on context. The two words "conspiracy theory" are nothing more than a symbol. On the other hand, the TERM "conspiracy theory" also includes the meaning which the symbol points toward.



In other words, if a new meaning (distinct from the other prevailing meanings) of the term did take root in the popular understanding as a result of the 1967 memo, and that meaning was identical to contemporary understanding of the term, then it could be said that the CIA invented the term "conspiracy theory" as we understand it today.



Thus far Mick West seems to be arguing against the idea that the symbols which read as, "conspiracy theory" had never been written before the CIA memo. That is not the statement the OP claimed to debunk.