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The article aims to propose a definition of political conspiracy that clarifies the conceptualoutlines that differentiate conspiracy theories in a broad sense from those that have political forms andfunctions in a narrow sense. Outlining the general theoretical principles of conspiracy theories, understood also as a form of magic significance, attention is focused on the correlations highlighted in the literature between populisms, understood as a thin ideology, and conspiracy theories, especially from the standpoint of demonizing elites. Having established the limits and scope of such convergences, the theory of great replacement or ethnic substitution, in its dual conspiracy and non-conspiracy versions, is discussed, reconstructing its origin and hybridization to some models of traditional conspiracism. Through the analysis of this theory, adopted by movements and leaders of traditional and populist parties, a model is outlined whereby political conspiracy, rather than being primarily configured as a social embodiment and cultural attitude of a 'paranoid style' and a certain forma mentis is presented as a political tool useful in helping to generate, exploit as well as sometimes self-produce fears and anxieties, demonizing and persecuting styles of thought and, more generally, as a narrative form that exhibits high degrees of conceptual indeterminacyparticularly incisive on the level of political rhetoric. Finally, the author clarifies the difference betweenconspiracy theories aimed at the resignification of unforeseen and schocky events, and political conspiracism aimed at addressing habitual and long-standing historical and social processes and dynamics.
