The demarcation problem occurs up and down the conspiracy spectrum, and the conspiracists all feel the same way about it. There’s the sensible side, and there’s the silly side. This brings a significant problem in communication—nobody wants to be associated with the silly side. They often think that anyone who brings up the “silly” side is deliberately trying to discredit them. Ken Doc is a 9/11 Truther and resents any kind of association with Chemtrails. JFK theorists resent being compared to Truthers; Chemtrail believers resent being compared to Flat Earth believers.

One obscure branch of the 9/11 Truth community is the “no-planers,” a group who thinks that the all the television footage was faked, and that nothing hit the towers. This theory does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny, as there were tens of thousands of eyewitnesses in Manhattan and the surrounding area. But there’s still a lively discussion forum (the Clues Forum) where they swap ideas and bits of “evidence” they have gleaned from their research.

Being so extreme means they also embrace other high-order conspiracies, like Chemtrails and the Moon-landing hoax. But apparently the point where many of them draw the line is with the Flat Earth theory, which they consider to be “discrediting by association” (DBA) and a deliberate falsehood spread by NASA. This is explained by “simonshack” on the Clues Forum.

Here we’ve got a group of people who think that the entire space program is fake. They think we never went to the Moon, and the International Space Station footage is filmed in a studio somewhere. Yet they think that the Flat Earth theory goes too far, and so must have been invented to discredit them.

They even go a little beyond that. Notice how simonshack says, “regardless of whether you reckon we live on a globe.” He’s not throwing the baby out with the bathwater here—it’s not specifically the Flat Earth theory that he thinks is disinformation, it’s the crazy version of the Flat Earth theory that’s the NASA creation. He draws his line of demarcation to encompass sensible inquiry into the possibility that the Earth might not be a globe.

Your friend will have a line of demarcation. This is both something you need to be careful of, and something that you can use as an illustrative tool. Firstly, be very aware of this problem of “discrediting by association.” Be clear that you are not trying to lump them in with people on the other side of their line. Tell them (honestly) that it’s good that they haven’t been sucked deeper in. Don’t stray too far into comparisons with the other side of their line, as they might find things like “at least you’re not a Flat Earther!” to be poking fun at them. Instead focus on the aspects of their belief that are very close to the line. If they are a 9/11 Truther this might be the issue of what happened at the Pentagon. If they are a Chemtrail believer, it might be the question of if contrails can persist naturally.

Your awareness of where they draw the line can be used to defuse an argument from authority. Many people base their beliefs in large part on what they see as information from trusted sources. With 9/11 this is frequently people like Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. If you can show them that their trusted source believes in something that’s on the other side of their line, then it can be something that opens them up to the idea that perhaps the things that that source has been telling them might not be as reliable as they thought. My friend, Steve, explains how this happened for him.

The realization that their trusted source actually is on the other side of their line can happen just by finding out something about the source (for example, you might find that your favorite 9/11 conspiracy theory writer also thinks that the Sandy Hook children were not killed). It can also be something that you help happen by moving the line a little by debunking one of the claims that a source makes. For example, if your friend’s source says contrails can’t persist, and you show them conclusive proof that they can (by showing them decades of books on the topic), then you’ve moved the line, and raised doubts about the sources of their information.

It’s worth bring up a note of caution yet again here: be honest and open. If your friend is a conspiracy theorist, then they are going to be suspicious. One thing they are going to be suspicious of is you, and the tactics that you use. If they think you are trying to contrive an argument simply to make their source look bad, then this can have a significant backfire effect. They might accuse you of running a smear campaign, attacking the person instead of the evidence. Make sure that you are being honest from the outset, and that you only use verifiable facts.

Taxonomies of Conspiracies

Besides a simple measure of “extremeness,” there are other useful ways we can categorize conspiracy theories. In his book, A Culture of Conspiracy, Michael Barkun says they can be divided into three types: Event Conspiracies, Systemic Conspiracies, and Super Conspiracies. Event Conspiracies are those that focus around a single event, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Systemic Conspiracies are those that involve complex plots that continue over a long period of time, such as water fluoridation or Chemtrails. Super Conspiracies consist of multiple separate conspiracies spanning the entire spectrum of subjects, all linked together into one overarching master plan.4

Of these, the most common is the Event Conspiracy. Event Conspiracies now spring up immediately after almost any event that makes the evening news, even for seemingly mundane happenings. When the lights went out in the stadium at the 2013 Super Bowl, there were almost immediate suggestions that it was done deliberately, perhaps by some shadowy hacker group such as Anonymous, in order to give the trailing San Francisco 49ers a chance to regroup. This was probably reinforced in the minds of the suspicious when the 49ers managed to rally in the second half, almost defeating the Baltimore Ravens.

Much more disturbingly, Event Conspiracy theories sprang up immediately after the shootings of twenty children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and in other shootings and bombings. There’s a huge range of Event Conspiracy theories. We could group them into one of four sub types, in increasing order of improbability:

EXPLOITED EVENT—THE “GLAD IT HAPPENED” THEORY. Here the event is genuine, and the “conspirers” are as surprised as anyone that it happened—however they immediately begin to exploit that event, and spin, lie, and distort what actually happened to further their goals. Here 9/11 was supposedly re-framed in such a way that many people got the impression that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks, and this was used to provide justification for the Iraq War. The Sandy Hook shootings were supposedly misreported and exploited in order to promote gun control. These theories are often quite plausible.

ALLOWED EVENT—THE “LET IT HAPPEN” THEORY. Here the events are as they appeared to be. The 9/11 attacks were performed by terrorists hijacking planes. JFK was shot by Lee Harvey Oswald. But in this scenario, there is a set of secret conspirers (usually people in power, such as the executive branch of the government, or elements of government agencies) who are supposedly aware of the planned event ahead of time and could have stopped it by warning people. But they kept silent, and let the event happen because it benefits them in some way. Here George W. Bush supposedly allowed the attacks on 9/11 because they would provide justification for invading Iraq. Here the attacks on Pearl Harbor were supposedly known days in advance by the US and/or British government, but they let it happen to provide popular support for the US entering the Second World War.

DELIBERATE EVENT—THE “MADE IT HAPPEN” THEORY. Here the events are real, but they were performed or ordered by the people behind the conspiracy. In this scenario the World Trade Center was hit by remote control planes and the buildings brought down by controlled demolition. JFK was supposedly shot by a CIA sniper. The Sandy Hook children were supposedly shot by gunmen dressed as nuns who left Adam Lanza’s drugged and shot body at the school after they had slaughtered the innocents.

FAKED EVENT—THE “IT DIDN’T HAPPEN” THEORY. Here the entire event is a concoction of the government and the media. In this worldview, we are living in a constructed reality. This is not to say we are living in a computer simulation, but that nearly everything portrayed in the media has been faked. Supposedly nobody landed on the Moon, planes never struck the World Trade Center, children weren’t killed at Sandy Hook. These events were all somehow staged to provide justification for some action. The footage of 9/11 planes were computer animated, the videos are all faked, the people running in the street were all actors.

While you can usually describe any particular event conspiracy theory by labeling it as one of the above four types, it’s quite rare that it fits neatly within a single category. In particular the exploitation of an event is presumed to be happening regardless of if the event was allowed, deliberate, or (especially) faked. Some events are supposedly halfway between “Allowed” and “Deliberate,” perhaps Adam Lanza (the Sandy Hook shooter) was known to be a psychopath with access to guns, and was supposedly given drugs that made him violent, or perhaps he was brainwashed by voices beamed into his head at night. A kind of “helped it happen” theory.

It’s important when talking to your friend to be clear which particular type of conspiracy you are dealing with. Most people would agree that elements within the Bush administration exploited the events of 9/11. Fewer, but still a significant number, think that Bush had some kind of foreknowledge of some kind of attack, at least to the extent of not fully acting on warnings. Fewer still think that Bush knew specifically what the attacks would be. A very small percentage of people think that Bush and others in power deliberately engineered the attacks using the terrorists. A smaller percentage thinks that the attacks happened, but not with terrorists, but with remote control planes, and deliberate controlled demolition. A vanishingly small number of people think that the attacks did not happen at all and were entirely faked.

And yet the people who promote the more exotic conspiracy theories (like controlled demolition of the World Trade Center) will often use the number of people who suspect the more mundane (like Bush exploiting the events to invade Iraq) to bolster their case. They will take the fact that a large number of people are naturally suspicious of the actions of the government relating to 9/11 and try to hijack those numbers to suggest that their own bizarre theory of controlled demolition has broad popular support. But while many people would sign a petition that called for a new and open investigation of the events of 9/11, not all of those people, and probably not even a significant fraction, strongly believe that the buildings were deliberately destroyed by Bush administration operatives with explosives.

The 9/11 Truthers have their own internal taxonomies, generally referred to as IHOP. IHOP stands for It Happened On Purpose. The variations on this taxonomy relate to the degree of intentionality behind an event—a more nuanced version of the event conspiracy scale discussed previously. The acronyms LIHOP and MIHOP were originally invented to describe a division at the less extreme end of the 9/11 conspiracy theory spectrum. Did the Bush Administration let it happen on purpose (LIHOP), or did they actually proactively make it happen (MIHOP)?

Nicholas Levis, writing for the now defunct 9/11 Truther website Summer of Truth, devised a ten-point “HOP” scale.5 The first five graduations are degrees of let-it-happen, ranging from a kind of benign lack of preparedness to a “LIHOP PLUS” at level 5, where the Bush administration helped bin Laden, at least by moving problems out of the way. Levis himself subscribed to this LIHOP PLUS theory.

Levis’s MIHOP scale starts with what we generally think of as the most common 9/11 Truth theory—that it was all planned by the US Government, that the buildings were destroyed by remotely controlled pre-planted explosives, and the planes were possibly flown by remote control. The scale after that is not so much an increasing level of MIHOP-ness, but more a variety of different scenarios for who was responsible—the New World Order, rogue Neocons, or a rogue state such as Israel, China, or Russia.

The LIHOP crowd are not particularly active. Most 9/11 Truthers seem to fall within the MIHOP PLUS category. Within that they have various other divisions, like “planers/no planers” or “thermite/DEW/nukes” (for the various proposed method of destruction).

A key part of helping your friend is figuring out where they sit within these complex taxonomies, so you can effectively talk to them. What’s their favorite conspiracy? Where do they draw the line within that conspiracy? How do they feel about other conspiracies? What, to them, are reasonable theories, and what are unscientific nonsense and disinformation?

As well as understanding your friend, you want to make sure that they understand you. Partly that’s just about sharing what you know about the topic, and about the context surrounding the topic. But sometimes it’s also about demonstrating that you are genuine in your interest, that you are not a “useful idiot,” and that you are not a shill.