Conspiracy and Ressentiment

Most of the time, the conspiratorial mindset is motivated not by the will to objectively judge the life world but rather by other elements, one of which is resentment. Many unwarranted conspiracy theories spring from feelings of “sublimated revenge”: some injustice has occurred, sometimes a long time ago, and cannot be amended because the opponent is too powerful. Scapegoating (blame-shifting) and conspiracism are closely linked. However, the injustice and the enemy who caused the misfortune are rarely clearly identified, and the source of the evil remains diffuse. Max Scheler, following Nietzsche, calls this diffuse feeling of vengeance “ressentiment,” and ressen-timent is also a core reason for the existence of the conspiratorial mindset. Ressentiment—derived from the French word for resentment—is deeper seated and more durable than mere resentment and can be defined as an individual’s frustration over his or her own powerlessness. Both resentment and ressentiment differ from anger because they include bitterness. Apart from being more intense, ressentiment is typically directed against sources that are more abstract than those that spark a simple resentment. In his 1915 study of resentment and the role it plays in moral behavior, Scheler gives the following definition:

Ressentiment is charged with a diffuse kind of anger combined with fear that does not really know toward what it should direct itself. Most of the time, res-sentiment is caused by hierarchies that arouse feelings of envy, humiliation, and helplessness. The ressentiment person feels dispossessed because they believe they are threatened and dominated by an ungraspable alien power. Again, this evil power is not simply frightening, but also uncanny because it is not clearly identifiable.

Ressentiment distorts our perception of reality, which also concerns our perception of irregularities and contingencies. Often the source of the evil cannot be identified beyond vague affirmations that “this is not a coincidence.”