My familiarity with the paranormal, UFOs, and X-Files kinds of stuff has exposed me to quite a few conspiracy theories, but I'm no conspiracy expert. In the last 30 years, academia has launched a great deal of formal investigation into conspiracies, their provenance, and their sociology.
People seem baffled by the how and why of large percentages of Americans adopting what seem to be completely irrational beliefs. Q-Anon claims that a cabal of left-wing wealth and politics is behind massive pedophilia rings, despite the minimal evidentiary strands that could point in that direction. Some 70% of Republicans claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, even though U.S. voting results are the very opposite of a black box. Voting results and demographics are incredibly X-ray-able going down to county and precinct levels. Voting in the U.S. takes place in both a historical and live action glass house. Any aberrations or secrets would stand out with red alert clarity.
I tried to catch up a bit on conspiracies the last few months. I've scanned The Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer, and my book recommendations include Jesse Walker's The United States of Paranoia and psychologist Rob Brotherton's Suspicious Minds. After surveying what experts have been saying, I put some of it together. The first thing I have to say is an observation. The second is an explanation. The third is a recommendation.
Conspiracies as American Religion
The definitions of "conspiracy" and "religion" overlap mightily. One could easily swap these words for each other in most common usage, and not much about the sentences would change.
Both conspiracies and religions feature strong belief systems. The belief systems are not primarily based on evidence examination and evidence analysis. In fact, the canon of each is designed to retreat from disconfirming evidence. Disconfirming evidence is generally attributed to those who are part of the conspiracies or, in the case of American evangelicals, Satan or the tests of a profane world. In Walker's The United States of Paranoia, he talks about categories of conspiracy theories. The first two categories feature enemies within and enemies outside, and the language is identical to "the evil" or "the other" of American religions. At the least, the United States' religiosity provides a fertile ground for non-evidence based beliefs, commitments, and calls to action.
In addition, conspiracy theories and American religions share an explanatory style. Political scientist Michael Barkun describes the seductive explanatory model employed by most conspiracy theories. He lists the following as conspiracy attributes:
1) Conspiracies explain things when normal historical and political analyses fail.
2) Conspiracy theories divide the world into a Manichaean good and evil, with conspirators labeled as evil. This perspective simplifies an often unfathomable reality and usually suggests clear courses of action.
3) Conspiracies usually feature a type of gnosis. This secret knowledge is either not perceived by the masses or, if perceived, goes unrecognized as hugely significant.
As I mentioned earlier, all of these conspiracy characteristics have heavy overlap with characteristics of American religions. Most people are too delicate to state it, but one commitment to non-evidence based beliefs paves the way for another.
Why Believe?
I think that the most important aspect of American conspiracies is that they are not primarily about evaluating evidence and coming to a conclusion about who is doing what to whom. If you try to dissect a Q-Anon or "Trump Won" conspiracy, it's absolutely crucial to understand that these are not mainly about people surveying their world and using faulty logic or flawed info-gathering. American conspiracies in 2021 did not originate because people were trying to figure out a reality apart from themselves and ways to affect that reality.
These 2021 American conspiracies are something entirely different. They are the result of vast numbers of Americans feeling a certain way, of having deep-seated emotional and psychological reactions to the reality they observe and the massively changing American demography. The believers are surveying their internal states and feelings, and then inventing a storyline that explains these feelings and reactions. Current American conspiracies are an explanation for stress levels, for what is felt, for insecurities recognized but not understood.
Conspiracies are inventions that serve as explanations for emotions, thoughts and behaviors. They help explain both the actions of the outside world towards the believer, and the emotional state of the believer. And in 2021, specific instigating influence communication (think Fox News) has helped believers frame everything they see and feel. In a sense, conspiracies serve as agents of reification.
These conspiracies are not the result of an analysis of fact and a search for objective truth. They are means of explaining the agitation and insecurity of self to self via labeling the world in simple, understandable, dualistic ways. They are means to justify, with minimal weighing of actual evidence and minimal self criticism, one's thoughts and feelings. No evidence is disconfirming to devoted Q-Anon or "Trump Won" believers. Evidence is irrelevant, and any such evidence can be labeled as more work of the conspirators, who have replaced the devil (or partnered with him) as the manipulators of a profane world.
Media Responsibilities
Conservative American media that fuels the conspiracy theories is not asking the right questions. But neither are the progressive American outlets.
Instead of trying to treat conspiracy believers as people with bad data or bad logic or flawed critical thinking, journalists should identify the believers as irrational activists triggered by their own life situations and emotional states. The problem in a hyper-religious United States (and bear in mind that evangelicalism correlates highly with 2021 conspiracy beliefs) is that allowing, even promoting, people to believe whatever they like regardless of evidence is an American way of life. It's called freedom of faith. Well, now that faith has symbiotically latched onto conspiracy narratives, no amount of arguing or debate is going to budge the 70% of Republicans who declare that Trump won the 2020 election. American conspiracies work backwards. Discovered evidence doesn't affect feelings. Rather, primal feelings dictate declarations and behaviors.
Wrap-Up
We have reached the point in the United States where sanity and insanity are statistical. Whether declarations and consequent actions are rational or irrational is no longer dependent on the nature of the declarations or the actions. It's dependent on which section of the political Venn diagram in which one happens to be located. Insanity has become more relative in the U.S. than ever before. Your sanity status, once based on what you said or did, is now determined by where you said or did it and who was in the crowd.
Until the progressive media takes on the problematic religious parallels of current conspiracies, they will be missing key questions. And unless the idea of sanity being increasingly relative is introduced, we will continue to be shocked, shocked I tell you, when the DOJ and other legal institutions are hijacked in the service of unsubstantiated beliefs.
Bob Dietz
June 13, 2021
