The truth in conspiracy theories
The truth behind the lies
Truth isn’t an idea you usually associate with conspiracy theories unless you are a conspiracy theorist. Society at large sees these theories and their violent call to action as a lack-of-truth and moral problem. As a consequence, the media, politicians, and mainstream intellectuals try to fight them with facts, reason, logical arguments, and moral condemnation, totally missing the point. Conspiracy theories actually reflect the truth, just not the kind you’re thinking of.
Naked ideology
Conspiracy theories are a mirror of the group that claims them as reality. As such, these are constructed with the same flawed mechanism people come up with the arguments that sustain their prejudices. Anyone that has been in a heated discussion knows that people normally pick positions first, and construct arguments later. In the same way we accommodate ideas, polish arguments and cherry-pick facts to fit our world-views, conspiracy theorists pick unrelated facts, or simply make them up, to create a narrative that fits their fundamental world views. In this sense, they are myth creators.
Paradoxically, the shadow on truth created by the absence of facts comes from the bright light that exposes the truth of naked ideology from which these theories arise. The dubious facts and arbitrary causal relations show crystal clear the fundamental fears and ideology that lies deep beneath the identity of a group. Through the distortion of facts, the narrative behind the theory becomes transparent.
Collective myth creation
Understanding conspiracy theories from a collective approach clashes with our individualistic stereotype of the conspiracy theorist and that of its followers. The first being a crazy over-the-top personality, probably with a podcast or youtube channel, that poisons people’s mind’s by inventing stories in a top-to-bottom fashion. The latter probably a lonely, underachieved male that blames his failures on the powers that be, foreign others, and who ends up involved in an act of sectarian violence or terrorism.
This understanding insulates these individuals from society in a very convenient way: It hides the widespread ideologies that feed these theories. Conspiracy theories aren’t the behavior of individuals, but a collective myth creation effort. These are current-event-based myths that sustain and update to our times debunked and outdated world views, in an attempt to keep them alive. So don’t get confused, even though only the most radicalized individuals of a group will claim and defend them publicly, conspiracy theories myths resonate in the minds of larger groups because they’re the naked display of the fundamental ideology that makes a social identity.
What to do about it?
Once I heard someone who said that when a system of beliefs starts dying is the moment when it becomes more fanatic. From this point of view, conspiracy theories combined with violent action are the last step ideologies take before being abandoned. Like a suffocating person shaking their limbs, this blind fanaticism is the last act of desperation of ideology before its death. In this last attempt of survival, the ideology comes out uncensored, unmasked, swinging with violence, trying to catch a breath to save itself.
From here, I think conspiracy theories and radical ideologies are not fought by insisting in facts, trying to prove them wrong, or morally condemning them. These tactics actually work in their favor, because it implies recognizing these positions as rational ones and the individuals that believe them as capable of moral action. On the contrary, you beat conspiracy theories by letting their outdated ideology and absurdity be seen in broad daylight and fighting their violence with determined but detached action. People are not stupid. In the long run, they will tell the difference between reality and nonsense.
A conspiracy theory is a symptom of a dying ideology. Just let it die.