Conspiracy and Conditions: Is fluoride dangerous?
The Internet is awash with theories about drinking water and big, shadowy powers tampering with it. In an age where people trust the government less and less, social media is a breeding ground for fear-based ideas.
And when incorrect, fear-based ideas mix with genuine truth, our information supply gets muddy. There are shocking revelations all the time, and also disinformation.
If you’re prone to anxiety, the world can seem like an ugly place.
One of the most sturdy conspiracy theories is about fluoride. This one can quickly get under your skin if you have a psychological condition. Fluoride keeps us docile, conspiracy sites say, it keeps your soul trapped in your spine, it blinds you to alien life [1].
Is fluoride talk making you paranoid?
Well, if it is you’ll say no. And if it’s not you’ll say no. It’s not easy to truly know the answer. So let’s look at the facts.
Origins: Brain rot and browncoats
This idea came from the second Red Scare of the ’40s in the U.S. While foreign agents hid in suburbia, and schoolchildren watched videos about how to ‘duck and cover’ from the heat of a nuclear explosion, the Truman government started putting trace amounts of fluoride in tap water. This would prove to strengthen teeth and bring down people’s dental costs.
This had a few critics, who argued that it was:
- Socialised medicine, like the new mass vaccinations
- Socialism, just like the new welfare system
- A Communist plot to make kids stupid and weak
- A more useful death machine to Soviets than an atom bomb
People who opposed fluoride started separating themselves from the conspiracy theorists, who they said hurt their cause. People gradually forgot the theory, and enjoyed their strong teeth.
Then in 1987 an Australian engineer named Ian E. Stephens released The Dickinson Statement, which said quaffing massive amounts of fluoride would necrotise the brain and make people easy to control. Every socialist argument was forgotten. Permanently, the public lumped people against fluoride with government conspiracy theories.
Like many conspiracy theorists, Stephens pointed to German and Russian POWs, saying they were fed sodium fluorite to make them dumb. Holocaust historians deny this [2].
Fear-based marketing
These days, believers have made the The Dickinson Statement more specific: They say fluoride calcifies the third eye, a theoretical psychic energy centre in the head. The third eye is meant to give its user clear view of the spirit world and their own creative mind.
I always say the coolest mythology in human history is now. This particular belief came from the Hindu Vedas, and people from India are divided over whether they’re okay with the way hippie communities use it. Some report validation, others worry they’re being misrepresented.
On one hand, the West has gotten some brilliant theological texts on the third eye from thinkers like Eckhart Tolle and Swami Vivekananda. On the other hand, the theory of the third eye has been used by various cult leaders to hurt their followers, such as Charles Manson (who tattooed a swastika over his).
Psychologically, we know this: The third eye is a powerful myth that encourages people to do extraordinary things. I would definitely use it in a fear-based pitch if I were a conspiracy profiteer, selling something to people who believe their tap water is no good.
The strongest emotion
When we’re prone to anxiety, our fear is always ready to shoot out and change our whole worldview. Then it can make us act out of character, instinctual, doing anything to survive. It could be locking the door five times. It could be buying a water filtration system.
If online marketers can get us fearing our own home, they can make sales off us.
One of the best examples is happening right now:
Before being kicked off social media for summoning his followers to harass people, Alex Jones was deep in the water filtration business. He has a whole range of products that he touches up constantly. I can’t link to any of them because the websites aren’t secure.
Meanwhile, The Dickinson Statement was the Fifty Shades of fluoride fear. It kicked off a whole genre of books (moderate to expensive in price) about fluoride conspiracies. Online, alternative therapists like Dr Mercola team up with organisations like the Fluoride Action Network to make bank using a ‘call to action’, a technique where a company asks us to spend money on them at the end of an article.
The conspiracy theory buyer’s market is in the hundreds of millions. With few people creating products, it’s a golden era for conspiracy marketers.
In marketing theory, this follows two ideas:
- Fear is the strongest emotion, equal first with love.
- If people don’t have a need for what you’re selling, create a need.
Fear is the best propaganda tool, even more powerful than love [3]. People want to obey an urge they love. People need to obey an urge they fear.
That’s one of the best ways to spot whether someone is genuinely helping us or if they’re a fear profiteer, cashing in on us when we’re vulnerable. Fear-based marketers need to create an enemy. It might be the government, a billionaire, or for example (I’m ashamed to say) a lot of us in the media have recently profited by making unpopular people look like irredeemable monsters.
Most fear profiteers don’t even need you to buy. If you’re on a social media group, it has your data. That data is a goldmine for salespeople — it tells them exactly where their audience is and what they click. If you’re being given fear for free, you are the product.
The solution is usually to relax, do things that make us feel good so we can see the world with clear eyes. Dopamine is a good counter to adrenaline. In lay terms, when we have a little joy and fun in us, it’s a lot easier to see the world for what it really is.
Fear may make a better king, but love makes a better thinker. At the very least, there are people trying to pull our strings, but they are marketers and those strings are fears.
Footnotes:
[1] Alien lizards, fluoride mind control and voter fraud
[3] Niccolo Machiavelli — “It is better to be loved than feared”
