The interpretations, however, were inaccurate, frequently hysterical, and created havoc. The exposer of conspiracies necessarily adopts a victimized, self-righteous tone which masks his own meaner interests as well as his share of responsibility for a given conflict. Accusations of conspiracy conceal or justify one's own provocative acts and thus contribute to individual or national self-deception. Still worse, they lead to overreactions, particularly to degrees of suppressive violence which normally would not be tolerated. Conspiracism blames individualized and subjective forces for economic and social problems rather than analyzing conflict in terms of systems and structures of power.
History is moved by the broad forces and large structures of human collectivities.
Power structure research has been used by several generations of progressive authors including C. Wright Mills, G. William Domhoff, and Holly Sklar. Power structure research is not inherently conspiracist, but conspiracist pseudo-radical parodies of power structure research abound. The subjectivist view of these critics of the status quo is a parody of serious research. To claim, for instance, that the Rockefellers control the world, takes multiple interconnections and complex influences and reduces them to mechanical wire pulling. Separating real conspiracies from the exaggerated, non-rational, fictional, lunatic, or deliberately fabricated variety is a problem faced by serious researchers, and journalists.