Wissen(schaft)sskepsis: Aufklärung im verschwörungsideologischen Souveränismus

Conspiracy theories have increasingly garnered public attention due to their alternative knowledge claims with which they oppose hegemonic political discourse. Scholarship often characterizes such theories as anti-scientific, science-skeptical, or generally denying science. However, the characteristics of conspiracy theory knowledge and their relationship to science still lack empirically saturated insights. Using the example of conspiracy ideological sovereignism in Germany—better known as Reichsbürgers—and basing this analysis on an ethnographic study, the article examines the mobilized knowledge of Reichsbürgers and researches its social meaning. The argument proposes that conspiracy ideological sovereignism, despite its production of heterodox knowledge, is not hostile to science as a whole. Rather, in its self-image and its appropriations of knowledge, it refers to the social system of (empirically verifiable) truths, namely science. This article acknowledges that even though Reichsbürgers adopt a reductionist understanding of enlightened science, these references serve as a basis for them to frame their own ideology (which includes the vision of an authoritarian regime) as irrevocable truth and thus distinct from mere belief.