Conspiracy theories, by which I mean beliefs that lack any solid evidentiary foundation but are believed by a surprisingly large number of people who sustain them by postulating elaborate explanations that involve powerful people and organizations colluding to hide what they believe is ‘the truth’, have been around for a long time. The internet has enabled much greater awareness of such beliefs, in addition to allowing them to flourish.
Naturally, this has provoked curiosity about the phenomenon, such as what makes a particular theory catch hold of the imagination of some people, what kinds of people are drawn to them, what kind of dangers they pose, and how they might best be combated.
Not all conspiracy theories are pernicious and need to be countered. Some are mostly harmless and can be ignored. The belief that the moon landing was faked, for example, does not do much harm. Neither does the belief that the Earth is flat. The belief that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job also seems largely innocuous. This is because the people who are thought to. be engaged in a conspiracy to hide the truth are not clearly identifiable or are so big (‘the government’ or ‘the deep state’) that particular individuals and communities are not placed at risk.
But other conspiracy theories, such as that Jews are behind the effort to displace the white Christian community in the US from its majority status, are dangerous because they put a target on an identifiable community. So does the idea that the Democratic party leadership contains a core of pedophiles. We saw an armed man enter a pizzeria where he believed these things were taking place with the idea of killing those responsible, but fortunately nobody was hurt that time. But Nancy Pelosi’s husband was brutally attacked by someone who believed many far-right conspiracy theories and who was looking for her. Other conspiracy theories, such as that vaccines are harmful but are being pushed by a government-pharmaceutical industry cabal, do not target an individual or group but do undermine public health efforts, causing widespread but diffuse damage.
It is tempting to view most of the people who believe in such theories as gullible passive consumers of theories. But in in this article, the authors argue that this is not the case.
Conspiracy theories are seemingly everywhere. To explain their prevalence, many commentators point to the gullibility of conspiracy theorists. According to this view, believers in conspiracy theories accept evidence without bothering to scrutinise its credibility, making them vulnerable to the misinformation that pervades online ecosystems. But while it’s tempting to take this view, we believe it relies on an unrealistic picture of misinformation and the people who consume it – which is likely undermining attempts to deal with the problem.
Far from passively accepting the truth of conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists enthusiastically participate in generating, discussing and dissecting them. They also appear genuine in their attempts to get to the bottom of things. They develop sophisticated arguments, go to considerable lengths to find the ‘right’ sources of information, and preach the importance of rigorous and independent research. Conspiracy theorists don’t fall for conspiracy theories. They discover them.
…This presents a paradox. Conspiracy theorists appear earnestly committed to finding the truth, yet they are drawn to theories that often involve false and implausible claims. We believe that the psychology of insight – especially the rewarding feelings associated with discovery and revelation – can resolve this paradox, helping to illuminate the surprising role that deep thinking plays in proliferating conspiracies.
…We propose that the hunger for insight and discovery is present in all humans and that engagement with conspiracy theories satisfies that hunger. This helps to explain the attractiveness of conspiracist communities, such as QAnon. These communities offer participation in a collective act of discovery, wherein users aid each other in discovering clues and decoding cryptic messages to generate their own insights. Contrary to the view that conspiracy theorists don’t think hard enough, many conspiracies are popular precisely because they require hard thinking.
I tend to agree that the idea that one has ‘discovered’ an idea largely because of one’s own efforts can be a powerful motivator to believing in it strongly, since one has already invested time and effort into it. It is possible that this can be extended to people who hold other counter-intuitive beliefs, such as the benefits of extreme diets.
I’m not so certain there is such a thing as a “harmless conspiracy theory”… I imagine people will point to the “birds aren’t real”, but after recent events, I can’t even laugh at that…
For one thing, it seems like people rarely believe in just one conspiracy theory, many of them are tied together, and when you get to the bottom of it, most of them are ultimately anti-semitic.
As to flat-earthers and moon landing denialists, it seems silly and pointless, but involves a vast government conspiracy to cover up the truth and delude the populace. Ultimately, this vast government coverup is often anti-semitic in nature.
Lochaber@1: Yeah, I’ve become worried about even the silly theories too.
Some years ago I discovered Eric Dubai’s flat earth webshite and was quite amused. Until I found his articles about the role of the Jews in the conspiracy and how Hitler was actually a hero…
yeah, they work hard and seek knowledge and all that, but it is still deeply foolish shit. these people are not thinking clearly even if they’re thinking a lot, which is best demonstrated by the group most likely to produce domestic terrorism in the US -- sovereign citizens. i feel like efforts to understand these people sometimes go too far in trying to get at a reason. the reason is unreason.
--
One of the conspiracy theories that is definitely harmful are the Covid-19 virus antivaxxers.
That theory killed ca. 400,000 US residents.
This data only goes through May, 2022. You could add another 80,000 easily.
The Covid-19 virus vaccines themselves saved the lives of ca. 3 million US residents, probably one of them being…myself, a Boomer with multiple risk factors.
In the middle of the pandemic, I asked the local Covid-19 virus ICU workers how many of their patients were vaccinated. They looked blank and said they couldn’t remember a single patient on a vent who was vaccinated.
While many CTs may be harmless, the others seem designed to cause harm, and harm to vulnerable groups. They think they have identified the “bad guys,” but it seems that they themselves are the bad guys, doing harm while claiming to be combating harm. It’s rather sick -- they get to attack others while seeing themselves as the heroes.
I think any conspiracy theory that challenges scientific concensus is dangerous, because as others have said people rarely go with one conspiracy. When you pair that with the nature of far too many website algorithms tendency to show ‘more of the same’ you end up with someone who started off doubting the moon landing, or believing the earth is flat, or that 9/11 was an inside job, believing that the various Covid vaccinations would enable the Government to track them (or one of the many variants) which as again already mentioned has real life consequences.
God Awful Movies has some entertaining takedowns of conspiracy theories. Here is one about Flat Earth ‘documentaries’, with British guest skeptic Mike Marshall. Recommend
“GAM190 Flat Earth Clues (1-7)”
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=CzbdXielt_Y
.
BTW anti-semitism is alarmingly common among groups centered around conspiracy theories. David Icke has notoriously stated that not all space reptilians are malign, ‘only the Jewish ones’!
Not the only time she’s been targeted, either. The J6 coup attempt had a hard core of pro paramilitary types in several small teams with assigned targets, including Pelosi and Pence, and as a smokescreen and to keep the cops busy they were accompanied by that huge chaotic rabble we all saw on TV that consisted of an assortment of qanon lunatics and other wingnuts, all of them animated by a conspiracy theory that Biden somehow stole the 2020 election, which itself was steeped in white nationalist and antiSemitic tropes. “Useful idiots” running interference, unknowingly, on behalf of the paramilitary goon squads.
I’ve also often wondered if the 9/11 “truther” conspiracies are meant to distract from, and discredit, a true one. It’s laughable that commando teams wired the towers with explosives or that the hijackers were American or etc.; but it’s not so implausible that bin Laden, a former(?) CIA asset, might actually still have been acting in that capacity, on behalf of PNAC, or at least that there was intentional ignoring of warnings (as seems to have also been the case in Israel on October 7 when Hamas attacked). The one thing the conspiracy theorists bring up about that day that has never been properly given a conventional explanation is the stand-down order … I’m not saying there was a conspiracy on 9/11 (other than on al Qaeda’s part, obviously) but I’m not entirely convinced that there wasn’t … though, again, not any of the usual outlandish ones could be true.
Even those sometimes end up zeroing in on some specific people. During the peak of the covid crisis the antivax conspiracies led to significant harassment and targeting of Anthony Fauci, up to and including accusing him of being a stooge of the Chinese government. The closely-adjacent lab leak conspiracy theory led to significant anti-Asian bigotry, as well.
I see very few of these conspiracy theories that don’t, in the end, cause splash damage to some group or individual who somehow gets singled out.
As to the underlying psychology, I think two aspects drive a lot of it.
First of all, there’s the feeling of superiority one may get from being “in the know” or in possession of a secret of some kind. If you can convince yourself you’re one of a small group who know some important bit about how the world really works, that can feel empowering. But of course if it’s not really true then this is like a drug high, ultimately empty and meaningless and often harmful in the end. This one is likely the main motivator for things like moon landing and flat earth conspiracy beliefs.
Second, in some cases a conspiracy theory can give someone a target for their anger at something bad that happened, where conventional explanations leave no-one to blame. A death, a plane crash, being passed over for a job or a promotion. Anti-vax gets a fair boost from parents whose kids turn out autistic, then seek for someone to blame for this (especially those who think of their kids as “their things” and aren’t all that willing to accept them no matter how they turn out, even if in ways that were unexpected, instead of believing they a) can and b) should mold them into some kind of extensions of their will or expressions of their status or something).
Much more dangerous still, white grievance at lost privilege and misplaced blame for the worsening economic lot of the white lower classes fuels conspiracy beliefs like the “great replacement” and many of the other beliefs that feed heavily into MAGA fascism. Most of these are explicitly antiSemitic as well as racist and white supremacist and they fuel violence at the southern border and against nonwhite communities (from Charlottesville 2017, where a woman died, to the recent spate of bomb threats in Springfield), as well as a siege mentality that sees electing Trump as so necessary as to warrant treating the election as a no-holds-barred war, justifying cheating and belief that the other side could only have won in 2020 by cheating … which latter, as noted, fed into J6 and greatly aided in the coup plot on that day.
Does the latest “assassination attempt” on Trump seem awfully like a setup to anyone else? After letting someone wing him just a month or two back (anyone remember that?) suddenly the Secret Service have a point man who spots a sniper’s nest, engages and causes the “assassin” to flee. A convenient member of the public snaps his plates and immediately gets this info to police, who find the guy in minutes and bring him in alive, unarmed and calm, and the witness is immediately there to confirm it’s him. Yay, the Secret Service look competent again. Kinda. And Trump looks like the hero “they” are trying (but failing) to stop, again.
I’m not saying it is a conspiracy, but i can certainly see why people might be immediately suspicious.
(aside: despite what has been said, 300-500m absolutely is a long way for a “AK-47 style” rifle, even with a scope, for anyone but a very good shooter. Bear in mind july’s failed attempt was from just 135m)
^ No.
lochaber@1,
I don’t think “Birds Aren’t Real” counts as a (real!) conspiracy theory*, any more than Pastafarianism does as a real religion. It was started with satirical intent, although its originator, Peter McIndoe, stayed “in character” for some time.
*BTW, I prefer “conspiracy narrative”, because these things are not theories.
If you leave out the bit where they let a gunman with a scoped rifle get within 500 yards and line-of-sight of a protectee.
Again.
As a number of folks have noted, when you get right down to it, the core of any conspiracy theory is denial. The official story is a cover-up. What actually happened is less important that all the ways in which everybody else is wrong. This is how you get many of the same people who are saying that Princess Diana was assassinated by the Royal family also saying that Princess Diana staged the accident so she could run off and live in privacy with her boyfriend. Many people believe in mutually contradictory sets of conspiracy theories, and that really only makes sense once you realize that the core of the conspiracy theory is denial of the official story. The fact that half the evidence they use to deny the official story conflicts with the other half doesn’t even register.
Once someone has gone all in on the conspiracy theory, believing that any evidence against the theory is actually evidence of the cover-up of the theory, it becomes very difficult to get them out again without a rather personal shock to jolt them from that line of thinking. Some folks manage to overcome the sunk cost fallacy when faced with sufficient personal cost to continuing on their current line, but it usually has to be really personal.
And part of the problem is that, as you allude above, it isn’t really a matter of intelligence. In fact, smart people can often dig themselves even deeper into conspiracy theories because they’re better at rationalizing away problems and coming up with alternative explanations.
One of the Civil Engineering profs at my University was a Young Earth Creationist.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/conspiracy_theories.png