Enough with the conspiracy theories!
By: Teresa Albano
Tags: Culture, Equality, Elections, Government, Politics

Enough with the conspiracy theories!

Conspiratorial thinking is dangerous to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Where to begin with the conspiracy theories? They are all around us. There is a conspiracy of conspiracy theorists trying to drive the ideal of America off the cliff, smashing it into a million pieces and install Donald Trump as dictator for life.

OK. No.

But there seems to have been a dangerous proliferation of conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump, along with being the Divider-in-Chief, is the Conspiracy-Theorist-in-Chief. He started his political career with the biggest conspiracy theory of the last decade: Birtherism. Better known as the anti-Black racist attack on President Barack Obama. And he is going into this election fueling a wild conspiracy theory peddled by the internet conspiracy fringe group, QAnon, a group that poses a potential domestic terrorist threat, according to the FBI.

QAnon supports Trump’s reelection, and with absolutely no evidence and only convoluted arguments, the followers believe that there is a satanic-cabal of pedophiles running the world, which includes all leading Democrats, Pope Francis, billionaire George Soros, the Dalai Lama, and various Hollywood stars. The cabal also operates a global child sex-trafficking ring.

(To call them “theories” actually does a disservice to the meaning of theory and makes it seem that these falsehoods are just as rational as the “theory of relativity” or the “theory of evolution.” Although “theory” is often used to mean “hypothesis,” an untested idea or opinion, theory is defined as “more or less verified or established explanation accounting for known facts or phenomena,” according to Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language. To me, this language abuse is one more example of the war on facts, science and rationality.)

For 70 to 75 percent of us, it would seem laughable that anyone could take this seriously. But people have and do take it seriously. During the 2016 election, one believer brought an assault weapon and shot up a pizzeria, convinced that Democrats were running a child-sex ring in the restaruant’s basement. Luckily no one was hurt. No matter how outrageous, a significant portion of the population and a growing number of Trump supporters, buy into these conspiracy stories, hook, line and sinker.

(By the way, conspiracy believers are not limited to the far-right, Republican, Trumpists side of the political spectrum. The left has its own conspiracy tales. It’s just that the rightwing’s microphone for spreading these lores is much louder right now with Trump in office, and their media machinery pumping this stuff up and out 24/7.)

The question is why do people believe, and what can be done about it?

There has been some research on why people believe these conspiracy tales. According to a 2019 Scientific American article by Melinda Wenner Moyer, the research shows that anxiety about the state of the world, about personal “health, safety, finances, politics and relationships” is growing and for good reason. There were many crises going on even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit and the Great Awakening to institutionalized racism and inequality. These crises make us feel powerless and anxious. The more powerless one feels, the more primed they are to buy into conspiratorial thinking.

Wenner Moyer wrote:

In May 2018 the American Psychiatric Association released the results of a national survey suggesting that 39 percent of Americans feel more anxious than they did a year ago, primarily about health, safety, finances, politics and relationships. Another 2017 report found that 63 percent of Americans are extremely worried about the future of the nation and that 59 percent consider this the lowest point in U.S. history that they can remember. These feelings span the political spectrum. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey found that the majority of both Democrats and Republicans feel that “their side” in politics has been losing in recent years on issues they find important. Such existential crises can promote conspiratorial thinking.

Based on a series of studies, researchers found that those who are primed to feel powerless or stressed or anxious are more conspiracy minded. Feelings of alienation and collective social setbacks also play a role. “When feelings of personal alienation or anxiety are combined with a sense that society is in jeopardy, people experience a kind of conspiratorial double whammy,” Wenner Moyer wrote.

There are also ways to combat buying into conspiratorial thinking and to challenge others in theirs. One way is through using facts and logic. Most so-called theories have no internal logic to them. Priming people to think more logically and analytically, research shows, can help dispel the conspiratorial myths, Wenner Moyer said. There seems to be less push back than recently thought. In other words, challenging conspiratorial thinking doesn’t necessarily lead to people becoming more entrenched in it.

Practice and where I get stumped

I’ve been trying to hone my skills on best ways to challenge conspiracies. Years ago, a friend of mine bought into the anti-vaccination nonsense. I tried to ignore it for a long time. Finally, I started challenging her. But she would send me videos of people identified as doctors spouting nonsense and using examples of historical REAL life conspiracies to support their contention that vaccines are poison.

There’s no arguing with history. Government deception and attrocities happened, like the Tuskegee Experiment, a medical study to cure syphilis conducted on Black men who were lied to by the Public Health Service and told they were being treated for the disease but were not. And for me, the actual crimes that the government, corporate America or other powerful groups conspired to perpetrate, whether Tuskegee, forced sterilizations, Cointelpro, or the Trump denial and cover up of Russian interference in the 2016 election, are impossible to refute.

It’s also easy to see why people are suspicious of “the government” because the state can do some effed up things. The government can also do some awesome things, like provide health care, create jobs, build housing. One of the most brilliant Saturday Night Live skits I have ever seen was “Black Jeopardy.” Tom Hanks plays Doug, a MAGA-cap wearing poor white guy who joins Contestants Keeley (Sasheer Zamata), Shanice (Leslie Jones) host Darnell Hayes (Kenan Thompson), so he can “win me some money.”

The first question Doug answers is under the category “They Out Here Saying” with the answer: “They out here saying the new iPhone wants your thumb print for “your protection.” Doug answers, “What is ‘I don’t think so. That’s how they get you.’” Surprised, Hayes says, “Yes! That’s it.” It was an hilarious example of where Black and white people can find common agreement in the conspiracy thinking about the government. It was also a sobering example of how widespread conspiratorial thinking is, and for some good reason, based on history and institutionalized racism.

Show me the evidence

Yes, conspiracies happen. But they also leave a trail of evidence from which you can discern the politicized conspiracy spin from the abuses of power and crimes.

There is no evidence of a “Deep State” out to get Trump or other political adversaries. You can refute the current dangerous lies and conspiracies by pointing to evidence, facts and logic in plain sight.

There is evidence that when the U.S. government intelligence agencies or officials have taken extra-legal or undercover actions — such as Tuskegee, Cointelpro, Watergate scandal, overthrowing foreign governments, Iran-Contra Affair, Iraq War disaster, NSA spying, or withholding military aid to Ukraine for political purposes and putting children in cages — were at the behest of the duly elected president, not acting on their own like the exciting television series Scandal.

There is evidence of child sex-trafficking rings among the rich and powerful. You don’t have to join QAnon or subscribe to their convoluted and dangerous worldview to see that. Just watch the Netflix documentary, Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, and you can see how the ultra-wealthy and powerful, including Trump who was friends with Epstein and said his friend liked women “young,” make their own rules, exploited minors be damned.

In a world where one has to navigate a lot of information and figure out reliable sources, where one has to think analytically and critically, conspiracy theories offer easy answers to complex, and even horrifying, problems. Try as I might, I can even get caught up in them. But I stop myself and ask, what evidence do I have to support this? Is it just a suspicion? Can I find research to support it?

I started this article with a suspicion about conspiracy theories, joking that there was a conspiracy to use them to install Trump as dictator for life. I haven’t found evidence to support that, of course. It was my way of being cheeky. I have found evidence that widespread belief in conspiracy theories endangers democracy and people’s lives with these baseless assertions and calculated political attacks against any and all opposition. There are a myriad of conspiracy tales out there at the service of sowing chaos, division and lives with the goal to re-elect Trump in November. As voters, as citizens, as human beings, it’s our job to challenge them any chance we get.