Category Agency

A form of conspiracy theories where a category of people (for example “the Jews” or “the Muslims”) itself can have an agenda and take action in the same way as if it was a person or organization. Understanding history not as a matter of structures and discourses and organized groups such as nations, but instead viewing it as if categories were persons struggling against each other. (In Swedish: kategoriagens)

Interactions

This facet of categorism is an expression of: prejudice and bigotry. Mostly operating on the dogmatic level, spreading misconceptions about the structural level and systemic level.

It is likely to intersect with facets such as:

• Monolithization: For a category of people to actually do anything, the category sort of has to be one single monolithic block rather than a collection of individuals with their own goals, needs and desires.
• conspirationalism: Everyday acts done by individual members of the minority group are seen as signs of the category itself taking action, secretly furthering whatever hidden agenda it might have.

As well as with abstractions such as:

• Dichotomism: Everybody belongs to either one category or the other, period. How else can we have a rigid "us versus them" going on? Those who don't fit the dichotomy must be traitors! Infiltrators working for that other category of people.
• Zero-category: It is rather common that those who has this view on a minority does not have the corresponding view on the corresponding majority: While "the Jews" or "the Muslims" are considered to have category agency, "the Christians" or "the western people" does not: The the later may not be regarded as a category at all, but rather as normal people - who are individuals, unlike the actual individuals who are part of the minority.

Examples of applying this facet to a particular foci of categorism can include:

• antimuslimism: Conspiracy theories about "the Muslims" having certain plans, up to and including the paranoid delusion that all Muslims in the world are secret agents for a shadowy global "Caliphate".
• antisemitism: Conspiracy theories about "the Jews" having certain plans, up to and including the paranoid delusion that all Muslims in the world are secret agents for a shadowy global "Zionist Occupation Government".