There are actual conspiracies involving small groups of people cooperating for a relatively small personal or organizational benefit in the grand scheme of thin

There are actual conspiracies involving small groups of people cooperating for a relatively small personal or organizational benefit in the grand scheme of things - for example see /r/actualconspiracies. Then there are vast, globe-spanning conspiracies that involve all of the worst machinations of humanity mashed together and applied to an Other. That is the type of conspiracy theory that is governing the decision making process of a non-trivial amount of the American(and increasingly European) voting public, and that is what the problem being described in the article is.