Direct statistics are usually footnoted; assumptions and assertions in analysis come from sources not numerically tagged in the sources section.
America is caught in the midst of a public health crisis—and you’ve likely never paid attention to it before, a health crisis that is headed towards the death of critical thought. Yes, 42.4% of American adults are obese, with that concerning number being the target of numerous health initiatives and of the parents raising the next generation of Americans for decades now. But there has been a public health crisis that has been completely neglected, even endorsed and promoted by those who call the shots to further an agenda that, if unaddressed, will break America. 41% if American adults believe that, regardless of any government, there is a single group of malevolent oligarchs that rule the world together. The numbers speak for themselves.
1 in 4 Americans believe that vaccines, modern-day medical miracles responsible for saving 6 lives every minute and 154 million lives over the past 50 years, cause autism.
1 in 3 Americans believe that global warming, the largest present-day threat to humanity’s existence, is a hoax.
1 in 4 Americans believe that mass shootings, which have taken the lives of thousands, are staged to promote stricter gun laws.
3 in 10 Americans believe that the voting machines that ensure election integrity are programmed, by design, to switch up election votes.
1 in 5 believe that the U.S. government staged 9/11, a national tragedy that claimed the lives of 3,000. The same proportion also believes that the COVID vaccine was designed to microchip the population.
1 in 6 believe that the moon landing in 1969 was a staged stunt that occurred in Arizona. [1]
Conspiracy theories are intrinsically dependent on irrational, illogical behaviors and cognitive reactions that formerly were of great use to humans living in prehistoric, tribalistic societies. Spread by social media algorithms and grifters, these emotionally-driven epistemic shortcuts present, arguably, the greatest threat to public health in our post-literate society.
Why reject rationality?
Conspiracies take advantage of our evolutionary need to construct an epistemic, holistic understanding of the world. Conspiratorial mindsets are a direct result of subconscious cognitive responses that have developed over the course of millennia, preceding the formation of modern civilization. Conspiracy theories are used to justify or make sense of one’s own inadequate or ill-informed understanding of the world, whilst also providing an extremely entertaining and sensationalist rationalization of quotidian or seemingly mundane events. The appeal of conspiracies comes from a tendency to apply societal tropes, oftentimes propagated in mainstream entertainment or literature. Tribalistic mentalities drive belief, explaining why minority groups are also more likely to believe in conspiracies regarding the in-group of society, making conspiracies appealing to fringe or marginalized out-groups of people who feel perceptually excluded from mainstream society. Feelings of distrust and disempowerment, regardless of whether or not a group is factually oppressed or not, increase the likelihood of belief in conspiracy.
The American criminal justice system is believed by 67% of blacks to be, by design and under the will of the more privileged whites, holding them back in society and disempowering them, to the benefit of the white majority. The belief that criminal justice in America is “designed” to systematically hold black and brown people back is, I would argue, little more than a half-truth—but it’s the start of a pipeline of conspiracy theories that are rationalized by a belief that societal systems are “by design” designed to hold individuals in a marginalized group down so that the establishment can benefit. There are major historical events, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where institutions committed what could be described as “gratuitous violence”, treating black people as ontologically dead. Abuses like these strongly reinforce beliefs in fringe, irrational conspiracy theories. 32% of black and Hispanic adults believe in “deep state” conspiracy theories, compared to 24% of white individuals. [4] Conspiratorial belief also accounts for fringe, alt-right conspiracies believed by those in the in-group—white, Christian males, as they believe in conspiracies to justify the decline of their previous societal privileges over those in the out-group.
Usually, conspiracy believers delude themselves into a “truth-seeking” mindset, even though their continued belief entrenches them in a pit of baseless, cult-like faith. The “I did my own research mindset” is nothing more than searching up data voids on Google, where all the relevant content is in favor of the newly coined conspiracy term. Grifters constantly coin new terms such as “white genocide”, making sure that their loyal and largely empty-headed fans can go on Google, search up the newly coined catchphrase, and find nothing more than corroborating content due to the absence of official, credible sources using that new catchphrase—a complete data void. Even the most ardent of conspiracy followers will frame themselves as “just a skeptic” to avoid confronting entirely faith-based beliefs; they claim to just be curious vigilantes demanding transparency or truth while refusing to apply their “skepticism” towards any entity that they endorse, such as the conspiracy theory itself.
From a logical perspective.
Conspiracy believers routinely assert conjunction or disjunction fallacies; the former is where A and B are judged as more likely than A, while the latter is where A or B is judged to be less likely than just A, statements that are logically fallacious as they can be disproven with basic understandings of Bayesian probability. Believers in one type of conspiracy are also more likely to believe in completely contradictory conspiracies—if someone believes that vaccines are designed to cause autism and conduct population control, they’re more likely to believe that vaccines actually do nothing and are simply created by Big Pharma for profits. Those statements about vaccines completely contradict each other, but believers of one are more likely to become believers of another; again supporting the idea that conspiracies are emotionally-driven rationalizations designed to make sense of one’s lack of proper knowledge. Most of these beliefs simply share an aspect of placing blame on Big Pharma or some evil, dogmatic science organization, leading believers in one to casually switch to the other while coping about the same root cause; politicization of science in the U.S. over the past few years can be attributed to numerous health-based conspiracy theories, many of which being completely baseless, flowing into mainstream “alt-science” narratives.
Conspiracy theorists and believers suffer from a large number of built-in cognitive biases—confirmation bias, proportionality bias, and intentionality bias. They faithfully reject real evidence while simultaneously assimilating any neutral or supporting evidence into their narrative. For this reason, many inconsistent narratives or adaptations originating from a single conspiracy theory, such as the New World Order conspiracy, emerge; believers utilize fallacious, ad-hoc reasoning to dodge debunkings of their original narratives, or simply use circular reasoning to categorize anything disproving their conspiracy as part of the conspiracy itself. Individuals who believe in conspiracies also reject less sensationalized, smaller, or more nuanced explanations for even basic events as a result of proportionality bias, and reject the notion that events confirming their narrative could also have been caused unintentionally or by pure chance.
Belief in conspiracy is usually an absence of an understanding of logic—higher critical thinking skills directly correlate with less belief in conspiracies, while even rudimentary abilities to think logically and critically can disseminate conspiracies. Belief in conspiracy theories is also broadly correlated with lower emotional intelligence. Lower emotional intelligence leads to poor emotional management, reliance on emotional gratification, reduced analytical thinking, and maladaptive coping, all of which make the individual more susceptible to believing in conspiracy theories over truth. The rise of conspiracy-mongering and “alternative truth” beliefs can partly be attributed to social media networks, which should bear much of the blame for creating algorithms that prioritize engagement, oftentimes through outrage, destroying the emotional intellect of users while also amplifying polarizing, vitriolic content. It’s no coincidence that the two main killers of critical thought are direct proponents of each other.
In a nutshell, conspiracies serve as a method of positively reinforcing a believer’s approval and sense of belonging in their own in-group while also vilifying and/or shifting blame on a certain out-group, triggered by tribalistic, sensationalist cracks in their own capacity to explain things. Belief can signify a higher expression of arrogance and narcissism, painting one’s in-group as a sort of “valiant resistance” to the group of oppressors involved in the conspiracy.
A conspiracy of theorists?
Conspiracies are appealing. They capitalize on human nature; they shift into positions that can’t even be disproved. There are numerous grifters who milk belief in conspiracies to pay the bills. Figures like Alex Jones spread every possible alt-right conspiracy imaginable, eventually testifying that he did, in fact, believe the Sandy Hook Shooting was real, all while profiting off of spreading the conspiracy that the shooting was “a giant hoax” involving “crisis actors”. Alex Jones spread 9/11 denial conspiracies, conspiracies about several mass shootings/bombings, “frogs turning gay because of water” theories, COVID-19 hoax and anti-vax theories, conspiracies about weather weapons, pizzagate, the New World Order, 2020 election fraud, along with numerous other baseless accusations. At its peak, Infowars was generating $800,000 every single day. Infowars directly sold fraudulent “survival kits” and dietary supplements that were completely bogus, profiting hundreds of millions from sales of their products and merchandise. How were they able to get hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people to buy untested, pseudo-scientific garbage?
Through belief in conspiracy. Through deluding and taking advantage of vulnerable followers, ultimately leading them on a trail ending in buying Infowars products. All other health products were deemed as “Big Pharma nonsense”, and a bogus survival kit was deemed as necessary for the “civil war” caused by the Satanic left trying to destroy America.
During COVID-19, figures like Pierre Kory, Paul Marik, and Steve Kirsch hopped on the conspiracy bandwagon, using groups like the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance to spread medical misinformation. Kory called ivermectin a “miracle drug” against COVID, claiming that anyone taking his recommended dose would not even catch the highly transmissible disease. He created a fleshed-out narrative that portrayed his revoked medical certifications as a conspiratorial plot by scientific dogma aimed at suppressing truth-seekers so “Big Pharma” could stay in business. Kory heroized himself with his conspiracy theory, painting his own grift as a valiant effort to resist censorship from a dogmatic cult of science, effectively equivocating himself as a martyr who nobelly sacrificed his career as a physician in the name of free speech and truth-seeking.
Figures like Pierre Kory directly cite the fact that they “sacrificed” their old jobs, and therefore a huge monetary incentive, to scam people by grifting on the internet. Conveniently, this gives alt-health misinformation moguls the ability to not only paint themselves as heroes, but also the ability to paint other health professionals as shills who all support the same narrative of despotic, corporate-influenced science, when quite the opposite is true. Kory and Marik both get paid about $400,000 a year by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, which they helped create. When they radicalize believers to the point where they believe that hospitals are “killing fields”, they will desperately search for a way out—one that is handed to them on a silver platter by Pierre Kory, who offers a telehealth consultation package for the small price of $1,600. The end goal? To monetize. To promote $500 supplement cocktails, and to make millions off of a baseless rejection of science. The harm that one man can cause when he chooses to weaponize and monetize desperation is immeasurable. Lives are lost because people reject proper treatment. Politicians with grifting agendas join the bandwagon. Livelihoods are lost as people lose loved ones and pay thousands to get useless “alternative healthcare”.
A public health crisis.
Politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene have made careers off of conspiratorial falsehoods; off of psychological subversion. Commentators like Nick Fuentes serve as a pipeline for these conspiracy theories. Remember the statistics I cited at the beginning of the article? 75% of Americans believe in a major conspiracy of some sort. That means 75% of influencers, commentators, public figures, and content creators—people just as susceptible as me and you, except with a massive platform, are direct contributors to this public health crisis. Just like how evolutionary cravings for glucose and fats created an obesity epidemic, evolutionary cravings for understanding and validation have created a conspiracy epidemic. Anyone who promotes half-truths that lead to conspiracy-mongering is part of it. The ecosystem of conspiracists is riddled with frauds similar to Alex Jones or Pierre Kory, expanding to anyone who serves as a cog in the well-oiled red pill delusion machine. This is perhaps the largest public health crisis to go unaddressed in American history, and this time, you really should be asking: “Who benefits?”—because they’ve got blood on their hands.
Sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5724570/
https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/06/why-people-believe-conspiracy-theories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X22000719
https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity25/presentation/imperati
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Other papers mentioned:
https://kar.kent.ac.uk/28566/1/Wood%20et%20al%202012%20SPPS.pdf
https://kar.kent.ac.uk/48402/1/Douglas%20et%20al%20-%20CTs%20and%20HAD.pdf
https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstreams/fec6bcca-c744-4cd4-a2f8-ef1d203d80ad/download
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3792165.pdf
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43783763.pdf
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/acp.2995
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01461672992511003’
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/3791630.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103116304711
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1002/per.1930
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0089177
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797612457686
"1 in 4 Americans believe that mass shootings, which have taken the lives of thousands, are staged to promote stricter gun laws." Is crazy to me, even as a pro-gun redneck who usually votes dem.
something i think abt a lot man is that conspiracists tend to have one thing in common, targeting a population or people, person, or group as a root reason, and this js shows why. love it