Published: Good Men Project (March 5, 2015)
Matthew Rozsa holds conspiracy theorists to the same standard of skepticism that they claim to use.
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Maybe it was my mistake. After all, what kind of person expects to hear intelligent political analysis from two drunks in an alley?
Granted, it was the alley adjacent to my house, and while I was nowhere near as inebriated as my two new acquaintances, I was buzzing from a couple of beers myself. Even so, I was taken aback as I heard one of my companions declare, “You know what the problem is? The world is run by the media, the Jews, the banks, college elitists … All of ’em!”
While most of their theories involve abstract entities with whom they’ll have no interaction, the mere fact that the conspiracy theorist has (in his or her own mind) struck upon a truth that lies beyond mainstream acceptance immediately puts them in a class above the mass of humanity.
While it was enormously satisfying to point out that I fell into 75% of the groups he had just denounced and savor the awkwardness that ensued, I couldn’t help but wonder how pervasive such conspiratorial mindsets really are. In the couple of years that have passed since that memory, I discovered that they are quite common indeed—in fact, many of my closest friends and loved ones have, when pressed, admitted to believing some manner of conspiracy theory: Some argue that Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassination, or the September 11th attacks were orchestrated through secret and sinister means; others believe that the Illuminati, the Masons, or the Bilderberg Group are pulling the proverbial strings; still others have insisted that President Obama wasn’t born in this country or that the Newtown shootings and Boston Marathon bombing were faked by the state so it could confiscate Americans’ guns.
The list of crazy ideas that I have encountered since I undertook my personal social experiment is too various to be comprehensively encompassed in a single 1000 word op-ed. But the two main reasons why so many people are attracted to them are, in my opinion, relatively straightforward.
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“The answer is that people who suspect conspiracies aren’t really skeptics,” writes William Saletan of Slate. “Like the rest of us, they’re selective doubters. They favor a worldview, which they uncritically defend. But their worldview isn’t about God, values, freedom, or equality. It’s about the omnipotence of elites.”
Saletan isn’t the first pundit to make these observations, but he is one of the most succinct. While conspiracy theorists will differ wildly as to which group of elites they believe to be running the show, the one thread that binds all of them together is their unwavering conviction that “the truth” can best be discovered by exposing a cabal of shady bad guys to the world. It is a mindset that—for all the intellectual self-glorification indulged by its practitioners—is very simplistic. Instead of accepting that the triumphs and tragedies of modern life are labyrinthine in complexity, they instead cut through the Gordian knot of facts with that single blunt assumption about reality. The groups that they cast in the role of villain(s) vary depending on their biases, but the logical structure they follow is always the same: They start with the predisposition to believe in a conspiracy and work backwards from there.
In addition to this, there is something empowering about belief in a conspiracy theory. This observation has struck me every time I have spoken with a conspiracy theorist, since all of them— again, regardless of the exact content of their views—presented their ideas with an undeniable air of smugness. Self-righteousness certainly played a role, of course, but there was also something deeper at play. Because our individual lives are so dramatically impacted by a confluence of external forces—national and international, political and economic, social and cultural—over which we not only have no control but also even lack a direct relationship, it is very frustrating to contemplate that our fates may be entirely out of our hands. Several centuries ago, when the vast majority of humanity was confined to small villages that rarely receive contact with or information from the outside world, our abilities to draw a one-to-one connection between our lives and the external forces that influenced them was much greater. In this era that is post-industrial, globalized, and digitized, we can no longer easily do this.
The conspiracy theorist, however, has found a way of beating that dilemma. While most of their theories involve abstract entities with whom they’ll have no interaction, the mere fact that the conspiracy theorist has (in his or her own mind) struck upon a truth that lies beyond mainstream acceptance immediately puts them in a class above the mass of humanity. They may not have the power to change their own lives, true, but they are blessed with the illusion of power in at least being able to comprehend something that others around them do not. Even when they strive to convert others to their point-of-view, the end game is less that of spreading truth than of increasing their own power by accumulating acolytes. What they present to the world as an objective mindset is in reality a selective, self-serving skepticism. Returning to Saletan:
Susceptibility to conspiracy theories isn’t a matter of objectively evaluating evidence. It’s more about alienation. People who fall for such theories don’t trust the government or the media. They aim their scrutiny at the official narrative, not at the alternative explanations.
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The mistake made by conspiracy theorists isn’t that they assume sinister plots exist which need to be exposed, but rather that they don’t apply the same level of cynicism and scrutiny to themselves that they insist be used to counter official explanations.
The worst part of this is that conspiracy theorists aren’t always wrong. There are real conspiracies out there, dangerous ones, from the setting of the Reichstag fire to the NSA’s spying. The mistake made by conspiracy theorists isn’t that they assume sinister plots exist which need to be exposed, but rather that they don’t apply the same level of cynicism and scrutiny to themselves that they insist be used to counter official explanations. In choosing to feel empowered at the expense of conventional narratives, they are no less sheepish than those who accept conventional narratives over alternative points-of-view.