Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation - Asymmetrical Warfare in the 21st Century

Politics and religion
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For the better part of the last year I’ve pondered the meaning of the rise of this conspiracy-fueled right wing movement in our country. It isn’t new, of course; indeed it’s been ever-present for decades, but along the fringes of society, at a scale in size and fervor more quaint than dangerous.

Over the last several years that has changed dramatically. Let us discuss why.

I’ll preface this by saying that I am neither a sociologist nor a psychologist. These are just the mildly inebriated thoughts of an intellectually curious citizen. I live in one of the most Conservative counties in Michigan, so needless to say I’m surrounded every day by Trump supporters. They range from teenager to retiree, lower to upper class, high school drop-out to PhD, squeaky clean to frequent arrestee, and everywhere in-between.

With such a wide range of people, you’d think finding commonality would be all but impossible, but in my personal experience I believe the two biggest factors at play here are gullibility and an unyielding desire to be part of a community; a fear of being outcast. These are two traits that I believe are at the heart of this issue.

I am not someone prone to conspiracy theory in the least, but for the sake of understanding I have allowed myself to gaze briefly into that abyss; to genuinely attempt to feel why so many are so attracted to its pull. What I found was that believing in conspiracy theories above all makes you feel like you’re in control. No longer are you a nameless cog in the wheel of society, impotent and blind to the machinations of those in power. No longer are you ignorant of the intricacies of science and mathematics. Now you have the answers, and the world is no longer frightening and unpredictable. Now you never have to listen to somebody tell you that they know more than you do, because you know that they’re just a liar with an agenda. You know the truth. And nobody can take that away from you.

And now you’re part of a community. And that community is safe because it’s full of people that think like you, and won’t question you. And now you know who the real enemy is. They’re the cause of all the problems, and they’re why life outside the community is uncomfortable, with all the questions and lies and refusal to believe the obvious truth. And even if you didn’t want to believe these things, your family and friends do, and you can’t imagine disagreeing with them and being outcast or considered a traitor.

It’s an extremely attractive idea, to the right kind of mind. The intellectually lazy, emotionally fragile, egocentric, and narcisistic mind. The kind of mind that struggles with critical thinking.

And like the great Mark Twain said: It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.

Once you convince someone of something, they’ll seek to protect the validity of the claim in order to protect their own ego.

But I don’t want you for a second to believe that these are inherently bad people. Some of the people I know personally who are convinced of these things are genuinely kind-hearted and well-meaning.

These are not evil minds. These are minds besieged. It’s human psychology, weaponized. A blitzkrieg of misinformation designed to brainwash, or at the very least make it so that people simply don’t know what to believe anymore.

Heinous people like Alex Jones are culpable of course, but I doubt they are the key perpetrators in what we’ve seen over the last few years. The Mueller Report showed us that Russian Intelligence was working within these means five years ago, and I think that’s the far more likely scenario. And it’s something I’ve expected for quite a while.

This is the warfare of the future, and it’s only the beginning. We haven’t even begun to delve into the world of deepfakes yet. It’s a kind of warfare free societies like ours are susceptible to in particular, versus somewhere like China where the Government could squelch any and all dissonance and better control information.

The question is, how can it be combatted in the age of social media? How can you pull someone back from the brink once they’ve not only been convinced of a falsehood, but also simultaneously convinced that anyone arguing against the falsehood is a liar with an agenda?

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Great essay, thanks!

Re: pulling people back from the brink, I just heard an expert (Dannagal Young of the University of Delaware) on an NPR segment about the damage Qanon is wreaking in families say that you have to do it one person at a time, with a lot of patience, love, and empathy. She said it will be hard, but it will work, if you stick with it.

She recommended activating other identities than the “besieged truth-teller” that you rightly point to as core to the conspiracy minded. If it’s your brother, she said, try to talk with him about the time you fell in the lake together as kids. Focus on things that bring out other aspects of who they are. Also:

Do not mock. Do not use snark. All of the, you know, Twitter posts where people make fun of the crazy QAnon supporters, all that does is further reinforce their sense that they are disrespected and maligned. No. 2 - using scientific evidence, argumentation, etc., that comes through the very institutions that they have been told not to trust, that is going to backfire because now they think that you are the dupe because you trust these institutions, etc.

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I’ve mentioned this subreddit before, but they have a thread on that NPR podcast;

That subreddit is heartbreaking although there is the occasional posts of successfully pulling loved ones out of it.

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The struggle that I have is that I think — to a certain extent — people believe the things they want to believe, the things that appeal to their sense of what is right and wrong in the world. So when I see the things my father believes, part of me recoils from the idea that this is his idea of right and wrong, his view of how the world is and how it ought to be. My reaction is to just not discuss any of it with him unless I’m forced to.

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Ah, yes, the human mind.

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Thanks for the thoughtful post. This quoted part reminds me of other people trying to explain the phenomena.

I’ll add these two things that I think fit into this thread:

Frontline’s United States of Conspiracy is a great 1 hour show on how Alex Jones helped propel Trump into the presidency:

Wired had this great article showing how Qanon is like a game - and drawing parallels between game design that draws people into the game’s world and how Qanon works to make people believe what they “discover” is true.

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This would be me, I think. Even reading that short paragraph DoomMunky quoted just triggers all kinds of NOPE, no way, why should I have to do all this difficult, careful, compassionate work??

In the abstract, I can understand why empathy and patience and understanding are necessary, much like if a loved one had become addicted to opioids or something. But in reality, I’d probably just say fuck that relationship.

Deplatforming this insane shit is how we fix the problem. Electing it to the House of Representatives is decidedly not. This week without Trump tweets has been an oasis of calm that just proves how simple the fix could be. Cut off the supply and the addict’s mental health can and I think will slowly return. It’s a lot easier than asking or expecting tens of thousands of Americans to suddenly become expert psycho-therapists with the patience of a saint.

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Agreed with all of this. Would the world be a better place if every Black person had the patience, time, and capability to deprogram their local KKK members? Sure! Is it a reasonable solution to the problem of white supremacy? It is not! Is it in any way a reasonable ask of any Black person to not just turn the other cheek, but to take it upon themselves to reform racists? Fucking no, what is wrong with you?!

This is the same argument, just substitute “reality-based person” and “right-wing lunatic” for “Black person” and “KKK member.”

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Yes, good analogy. The underlying hatred of me/what-I-believe is the primary obstacle I would not be willing to set aside to do the compassionate work.

I think we’ve seen clearly how the qualities of the leader trickle down to the citizenry so I’m hopeful that Joe can role-model some long-overdue goddamn decency and empathy for one another.

TWO DAYS LEFT! Wow.

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Hold not ye breath, lest ye turn blue. :)

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Well, Chinese government might use deepfakes at some point too if they want to.

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Sometimes work is hard. But asking everyone to do this is not realistic.

Good analogy.

This would go a long way. Relatively easy thing to mandate legislatively. Assuming SCOTUS will cooperate.

SCOTUS and probably the Constitution itself are working against us.

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AWS just has to quickly develop some deeply held religious views that mean they don’t have to serve customers that offend those views, right?

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Are you suggesting that there’s a constitutional rationale for not allowing this?
Or that there could be a law made which would force companies to not deplatform people, and that law would be constitutional?

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It’s just a ‘hunch’ but, yes. Or, maybe according to SCOTUS. Same thing.

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