Conspiracy in the Heartland
I didn’t know what, exactly, to expect in the center of Oregon. This would be the first stop on a seven-month reporting trip around the entire country, to the center of every state. I knew Prineville, the town closest to the geographic center of the state, was a largely conservative place, but not much else. Most of the people I met there were kind and interesting, generous with their time.
And then there was Don. Don happened to be sitting by me at a diner in Prineville, and happened to bring up the globalist conspiracy headed by the Rothschild family. Another stranger sitting by us, a young man from south of Portland, happened to share the exact same belief: that the Rothschild family aims to destroy 90 percent of the human race.
Coming across two real, live conspiracy theorists at random was a bit strange, but not necessarily indicative of some kind of larger pattern. As I progressed through my travels, though, conspiratorial-minded people kept popping up.
I met more than a dozen serious conspiracy theorists throughout the country, out of more than 400 people that I talked to. That may not seem like a significant percentage, but to come face to face with a dozen people who genuinely believe a single Jewish family is actively attempting to exterminate 90 percent of the human race is a shocking thing.
I spent a lot of time puzzling out why I stumbled across so many conspiracy theorists, and why they had turned to these frameworks in the first place.
The sources of these conspiracy theories are far more readily discoverable today, of course. Stumble upon one YouTube video in which a fedora-wearing man bemoans (falsified or misleading) statistics about high crime rates among immigrants, and behavior-based algorithms will lead you down the path of ever more outlandish videos, filled with increasing amounts of misinformation and, generally, bile.
But even normal people — those not prone to disbelieving the evidence of their own eyes — can fall victim to the “Just asking questions” mindset when presented with a theory that involves people of stature they dislike. I spoke with a North Carolina Trump voter who had never heard of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which held that Hillary Clinton and her campaign staff were running a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington, D.C.-area pizza parlor, but when told about it, he said that it sounded plausible, at least.
Some of the blame for our credulousness lies at the feet of the men and women who profit from the fear of entire generations of (mostly white) Americans: Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, even, yes, Mark Zuckerberg and the entire upper echelons of Google and YouTube. The more frightened people are, the angrier they get, and anger is great for #engagement.
But we cannot let ourselves off the hook, as human beings, as citizens. Why has this fearmongering proved so effective? Why are we so inclined to trust information that upholds our deepest beliefs? Why are we more susceptible to conspiracies?
What I discovered through long conversations with the dozen or so conspiracy theorists I encountered was that all of them were victims of the crumbling of the myth of American meritocracy, and all of them had found this conspiratorial path in the aftermath of personal turmoil.
First, the American meritocracy: If you have talent and drive, in this country, you can succeed — that is what generations of Americans have been taught. But what happens when large numbers of Americans find that they cannot achieve true success? That no matter how much they struggle, they will never be able to make ends permanently meet?
Three options exist for the American who has been told by their meritocratic culture that they have failed: 1) Conclude that you are without sufficient merit. 2) Conclude that the system is rigged against you, personally. 3) Cast about for someone else you can deem as having less merit than you.
The first option can lead to severe depression or anxiety, and subsequently to self-medication by sometimes physically harmful substances — drugs, alcohol. The second, I saw, produced fear, along with anger. The third I found associated with a righteous fury primarily directed at people of a different color skin, or a different national background.
And what is most dangerous about the crumbling of the myth of the American meritocracy is that these options are not mutually exclusive, and, in my observation, carry a comorbid attachment, as logically incongruous as that may seem.
Combine these intensely negative emotions, and the shockingly large number of adherents to various conspiracy theories becomes a little more comprehensible.
If we can accept that American life in the 21st century does not revolve so much around class as mass — the desire to belong to a large group of similarly minded people, regardless of wealth —Hannah Arendt provides an appealing framework in The Origins of Totalitarianism: In disintegrating societies with these values, you also tend to find that individuals
do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience; they do not trust their eyes and ears but only their imaginations, which may be caught by anything that is at once universal and consistent in itself. What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part.
And then there’s the personal: With every person I spoke with who adhered to at least one conspiracy theory, I found that they had come to these beliefs in a time of great personal uncertainty — after the loss of a job, or a divorce, or another large life change. Family deaths figured prominently. They are looking for a new frame with which to explain the world, and, more often than not, they have the time to wander into progressively darker corners of the internet.
I saw three primary psychological benefits for conspiracy theory adherents. The first is that they were able to ascribe meaning to events that, officially, have no satisfying meaning. You see this most often with conspiracy theories that crop up around a specific event: 9/11, the Vegas shooting, Sandy Hook, and, now, the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida. These theories explain the inexplicable at a time in which the believers may not be able to explain what is happening in their own lives, offering them some measure of control.
The second benefit is that of relinquished responsibility. This applies to the more general conspiracy theories, the ones that enumerate conspiracies on a national or global scale — i.e. “The Rothschilds want to exterminate 90 percent of the human race,” “The Freemasons have tricked everyone into thinking the world is round.” A person no longer has to concern themselves with fighting against perceived social injustice if they come to believe that it is impossible to do so. These external forces are simply too powerful; one organization or family controls every aspect of our lives, or our system of government is irredeemably corrupt, and so there is simply no use in trying to dismantle these systems of power.
The third benefit is that of self-esteem. The believer gets to see themselves as smarter and better than non-believers. He sees behind the veil, and therefore is superior in at least one way to everyone who does not.
These modes of thought are easier than coming to accept your shortfalls as a human being, and those of other fellow human beings. Personal growth is difficult, and requires self-reflection and quite a bit of mental work. Thinking about ways you may be hurting other people, or hampering your own success, and how you fit into society, can be kind of a drag, and it’s certainly not very pleasant. Blaming the Jews, or the Freemasons, or the United States government, or women as a whole, requires no effort at all.
It’s not as though these people — largely men, in my experience — have no support system. However, these support systems appear to be either inadequate or comprised of like-minded adherents, a natural consequence of the degradation of physical communities.
The mass movements of the early 20th century, the ones that led to the rise of fascist and totalitarian regimes, only came to an end after a horrific global conflict. It may be that a cataclysm alone will see the end of the mass movements of the 21st century.
But after the waters recede — if they do recede — we, too, may be able to shake ourselves from our isolation-fueled madness. We can tell our children to look after each other, that we must all see each other as human first, and maybe, maybe, for a generation or two, or even three, the lesson will stick. We may be able to build a national sense of empathy, and decide that each of us is beholden to the other, human to human, heart to heart.
Let’s get to work.
