Confession: I'm a Conspiracist
(and you are too)
I have a confession to make. When I first heard about the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the first thought that popped in my brain was, "was this faked?"
I'm embarrassed to admit this, given there was then and is today absolutely no evidence to support that assertion. Plus, I've spent much time in our webinars and this newsletter warning against conspiratorial thinking. The lone gunman was a deeply disturbed individual, barely an adult, who may have also had plans to shoot President Joe Biden and other public figures.
A Democrat protestor outside the RNC convention this week had a similar reaction as me. After listening to her express the fake assassination conspiracy theory, CNN's Donie O'Sullivan remarked, "you sound like them," pointing to the plethora of misinformation promulgated by Trump-supporting Republicans.
"I hate that's what I'm doing. I hate that that's where I've gone, and I wonder why I've gone there," the protester responded. "And what really frightens me and scares me and makes me angry is, suddenly now I'm in on a conspiracy theory. I like to be someone who follows the facts ... I don't want to go down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories."
The press has labeled the growing number of recent conspiracies among Democrats "BlueAnon," in reference to the QAnon conspiratorial movement. (Though, to be fair, QAnon has always been more politically diverse than many realize. A 2022 study by PRRI found 10% of Democrats, 16% of independents, and 26% of Republicans to be QAnon believers)
The Washington Post reported Sunday,
In BlueAnon world, shadowy forces, including the mainstream media, are working to destroy President Biden’s candidacy and usher Trump back into power on Nov. 5. Karl Folk, a researcher studying authoritarianism and radicalization at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, said this “more conspiratorial mind-set has become more pronounced in liberal circles over the last eight months.”
...
Social media users with a history of supporting Biden falsely claimed that the president had been secretly drugged before the debate. (Biden has blamed his poor performance on jet lag and a bad cold.) They floated the conspiracy theory that actor George Clooney, an ardent Biden supporter, penned a subsequent New York Times op-ed calling on the president to drop out of the race as part of an elaborate revenge plot inspired by Biden’s support for Israel in the Gaza war. (The Clooney Foundation for Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) And they claimed without evidence that ABC News doctored Biden’s audio to make him sound infirm during an interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired in prime time on July 5 — an interview the White House had hoped would restore faith in Biden’s vigor. (ABC News declined to comment.)
We're all susceptible to conspiratorial thinking. This is what researchers who study conspiratorial belief have long been telling us. In Suspicious Minds: Why We Believe Conspiracy Theories, Rob Brotherton writes, "Whether conspiracy theories reflect what's really going on in the world or not, they tell us a lot about our secret selves. Conspiracy theories resonate with some of our brain's built-in biases and shortcuts, and tap into some or our deepest desires, fears, and assumptions about the world and the people in it. We have innately suspicious minds. We are all natural-born conspiracy theorists."
Conspiracy theories will pop into our brains because we have human brains, and that's simply how they work. There is no getting around that. The important thing is what you do next, which should be to follow the evidence and reject the non-factual information.
Most conspiracies will be dead ends, but then occasionally you'll find a conspiracy that turns out to be true. Drug companies really did create the opioid epidemic for profit, the Nixon White House really did engage in a cover-up of the Watergate break-in, and our government really did intentionally give the Tuskegee airmen syphilis. But we know these things are true because they were discovered through fact-finding.
Be aware of your biases and predilection for conspiracies, and this will help you seek and know the truth.
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What Else We’re Reading
WaPo: “Liars and trolls overwhelm social media after Trump rally shooting”
In the aftermath of a shocking episode like Saturday’s shooting, people don’t just want to understand what happened, but for that information “to align with our political aims, if possible,” said Kate Starbird, a University of Washington professor who studies information flows. “We are all currently participating in a massive ‘collective sensemaking’ process, attempting to gather and interpret evidence to give meaning to this terrible event,” she wrote on Bluesky. Online audiences enter the fray to “signal their political identity … and help their political team.”
The welter of false theories isn’t set to die down as facts emerge over Saturday’s shooting, given that many Americans see threats to the country’s democracy, said Brian Fishman, who led Meta’s effort to stem terrorism and hate on its platforms before co-founding Cinder, a company that promotes internet trust and safety.
“Misinformation is more resonant when social divisions and political divisions are starker and that always happens during a political campaign,” he said. “People have lost confidence in those sort of foundational facts and truths, and that’s a really dangerous place to be.”
Mehdi Hasan: “Blue Maga: we need to talk about the cult-like turn of the Democratic party”
Consider this paragraph from the New York Times on Friday, referring to a Biden campaign event in Detroit which had the “flavor of a Trump rally at times”:
“When Mr Biden referred to his political opponent, there were chants of ‘Lock him up’ – which the president did not discourage. When he criticized news media coverage, big cheers followed, with his supporters turning to boo and point fingers at reporters.”
How does this not sound like “Blue Maga”?
Now, there are both good reasons and bad to explain the cultish abyss into which the party seems to be descending. There is a genuine and understandable fear of a second Trump presidency and a legitimate frustration with “both sides” media coverage. However, there is also an undeniable tendency toward groupthink and hyper-partisanship, exacerbated by social media echo chambers and online grifters. Misinformation is rife across the political spectrum; conspiracism and paranoia is being normalized on the liberal left, not just the Maga right.
Politico: “An Expert on Political Violence Sees a Way Out of America’s Crisis”
How do you cool the temperature of a nation at this moment and try to reduce the political violence in America?
The most important thing is for political figures to speak out, and we need them to speak out on all sides of the political spectrum. We’ve seen a great number of Democratic political leaders — Obama, Clinton, Biden and so on — speak out to condemn this action. We’ve seen some Republican leaders speaking out in ways that also are pointing fingers, and that’s just not helpful.
What we need is accountability, not just for this political actor, but for anyone using political violence, such as the January 6 insurrectionists. You stop political violence through accountability, widespread condemnation from your own side and public revulsion.
It’s all of us regular people saying we don’t want this in our society, and we’re going to change how we speak about the other side to make it less common. It’s the “Have you no shame?” moment, as in the McCarthy trials.
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