"I'm Not a Conspiracy Theorist, I'm a Conspiracy Analyst": The Aporias of Conspiracist Ideologies in Southeast Europe
Talk by Bojan Baća (University of Montenegro) in the SNAKLAB series, organized by the seeFField project in cooperation with IOS Regensburg.
Often positioned as a mere object of international relations rather than its subject, the post-Yugoslav region has a long-standing tradition of conspiracism as an ideological lens for interpreting (geo)political reality. During the COVID-19 pandemic – and facilitated by the platformization and gamification of conspiracy theorizing – this tradition evolved from conspiracist estrangement to conspiracist engagement. Many have now fully embraced the once-derogatory label of “conspiracy theorists”, even identifying themselves as “conspiracy analysts”. Their aim is not only to make sense of the inner workings of social reality by developing elaborate conspiracy theories, but also to propose alternative political frameworks and advocate for change – often based on rudimentary “conspiracy analyses” – without sense of shame in doing so.
This seminar examines the similarities and differences among prominent conspiracist communities on Telegram in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, covering the period from 23 February 2022 (the day before the Russian invasion of Ukraine) to 21 January 2025 (the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration). Focusing on how tensions, contradictions, and impasses that destabilize conspiracy theories are resolved through ideological interventions, this seminar explores how these same mechanisms articulate legitimate grievances and forms of social critique, generating common threads that contribute to a shared conspiracist ideology in Southeast Europe.
Bojan Baća is a political and cultural sociologist from Montenegro. He holds a PhD in Sociology from York University and is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Montenegro. Previously, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, and a Re:constitution Fellow at the Max Weber Institute of Sociology, Heidelberg University. In recognition of his contributions to the study of civil society, social movements, and contentious politics in postsocialist Central and Eastern Europe, he received the 2022 Routledge Area Studies Interdisciplinarity Award.
His research has appeared in leading scholarly journals, including Sociology, Antipode, International Political Sociology, Theory, Culture & Society, Political Geography, Acta Sociologica, and Europe-Asia Studies, among others. As a SeeFField Visiting Fellow, Bojan will examine the (re)production of conspiracist ideology within online communities in the countries of the former Yugoslavia.
