I'd rather see the term defanged by our owning of it. A conspiracy theorist is not unlike what a Politburo Watcher was during the cold war era: someone who seriously studies the plans and hidden power structure of a mortal adversary. Except that everyone acknowledges that the Politburo was the Soviet's center of central planning. So there was not the gaslighting that one is subjected to in attempting to study the Cabal.