Language, we all know, matters in politics. And in a series of interviews over a number of years, Nigel Farage has been trying on a rhetorical outfit. He spoke about the Bilderberg group, discussed how “globalists” are seeking a “new world order”; how international banking systems are working to disband nation states; that the EU, effectively, is the product of a hidden plot.

The interviews were with the arch-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a man, let’s remember, who has claimed that the Pentagon has used a mysterious “gay bomb” to stop people having children, and that the US government inflicts weather weapons on the American public. And in screaming tirades, he has claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting – which left 26 people dead – was “completely fake”. He’s currently fighting a legal case over that last claim.

It is tempting to see this as a pivot towards the lunatic right, of a politician losing the plot or dropping their mask. But it is the opposite of this. Far from turning his back on mainstream respectability, Farage’s use of the language of conspiracy theories is – in his calculation – the best path to it. A seismic cultural shift is under way in who we trust and how politics works. It is sweeping conspiracy theorists into power – and, Farage might hope, also Nigel Farage.

Before Farage, Donald Trump was on Alex Jones’s show. Easily America’s leading conspiracy theorist, Trump questioned throughout Barack Obama’s entire presidency whether he was born in the United States. He has suggested that vaccines cause autism, and that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of JFK. Joining him are other world leaders. Viktor Orbán, the prime minister of Hungary, is a conspiracy theorist. So, on occasion, is the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte.

It is easy to see that conspiracy theories are a peculiarly modern problem of our “post-truth” age. After all, most people – 60% of us in the UK – believe at least one of them. They’ve been around, and popular, for a very long time. But something has been changing: more and more conspiracy theorists are winning power.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Arch-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a man who has claimed that the Pentagon has used a mysterious “gay bomb” to stop people having children.’ Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

The internet didn’t invent conspiracy theories or make them popular. But digital culture, activism and organisation has transformed conspiracy theorists from a marginalised, splintered collection of individuals into a buzzing, angry, interest group. Now, wherever you are, you can be surrounded by people who believe whatever it is that you do. Entire subcultures have been built around the idea of “red pilling” the benighted many – waking them up to the uncomfortable truths about society. Often, part of that process involves recognising the “powers that be” that actually run the world.

Conspiracy theory communities can become involved in elections around the world from their bedrooms, as the American alt-right did during the French presidential campaign. They corral supporters, donate money and craft ideas that, especially during elections, are exactly those that can cut through the digital noise. Revealing hidden conspiracies and vast cover-ups are clickable, shareable, interesting. The truth is in the detail, and is usually far more dry and boring.

Now, some conspiracies, I hasten to add, do exist. If you are one of the many people around the world who does believe a conspiracy theory, there is nothing this article can do to change your mind. But everyone should know how they’re being used and what conspiracy theories do. Far from challenging concentrations of power, they are being used to entrench them. Politically, conspiracy theories are useful for one reason above all others. They let politicians do what I’ll call establishment-laundering.

For a whole mashup of different reasons, many wholly understandable, politics has been swept by a deep, eroding wave of distrust and cynicism for “the establishment”. The political map has already been transformed, and continues to be so, as voters opt for people as far removed as they can find from the business-as-usual insiders. We live in a time of the none-of-the-above. Anti-politics has become the dominant mood and candidates everywhere are scrambling to position themselves as anything but establishment. Conspiracy theories are a very useful way of doing that. They can suddenly transform rich, powerful men into anti-establishment freedom fighters. You don’t need policies to get on the side of the dispossessed. You don’t need the background, perhaps, of someone under-represented in politics. You don’t need to actually be outside the establishment. You just need to be a conspiracy theorist. Farage’s use of conspiracy language suddenly casts an ex-commodities trader-turned-career politician as the little guy. QAnon is a grandiose conspiracy that pits Trump – literally the most powerful person on earth – as the underdog against the far more puissant “deep state”. Conspiracy theories let you claim, imply, or suggest that you’re fighting the establishment even when you are the establishment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of QAnon – ‘a grandiose conspiracy that pits Trump as the underdog against the “deep state”’ – at a Donald Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in August 2018. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Language matters, especially when it is heard by lots of people, and the language of conspiracy theory is a worrying one. Wherever they are held on the political spectrum, conspiracy theories are often, at their base, remarkably similar. You have a powerful but shady cabal. There’s a plot, happening in secret but always failing to prevent unmistakable clues making their way out. A series of very different events – false-flag terrorist attacks, electoral outcomes, policy decisions, school shootings – become linked. The only thing that really changes is who you think is behind it all.

Jewish groups have expressed concern about Farage’s language, while Muslim groups have warned about his appearances on a show that openly touts Islamophobia. Because far from being the powerful, the people pointed at as being behind conspiracies are often ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities.

Much like the world they’re trying to expose, conspiracy theories can be full of code words and cryptic clues. Bankers can simply mean bankers. It can also be intended to mean Jews. Dark allusions to “international financiers” plotting a new world order are a staple of antisemitic thought, going back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated plan for Jewish global domination. Plots to undermine western Judaeo-Christian culture (another of Farage’s tropes) have been the mirror image for Islamophobes.

Of course, adopting language friendly to your audience, tapping into existing grievances and anxieties and changing your offering to make it resonate are all absolutely standard tactics of political messaging. In the (derogatory) slang of the communications consultant, it’s dog-whistling: serving up a message to a general audience using language you know will resonate in a different way with others. So while some politicians utilising conspiracy theories claim to be fighting the new world order, here’s what I think: they’re just carrying on politics as usual.

• Carl Miller is author of The Death of the Gods, published by Penguin Random House