The Origins and Dangers of the Culture of American Conspiracies
What makes this country prone to conspiracy theories is important to understand
On October 28, 2022, a man later identified as David DePape broke the glass and entered the home of current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul in San Francisco in the middle of the night. As he barged in, he was wielding hammers and carrying zip ties, yelling “Where is Nancy,” a phrase last heard when pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol building on January 6. Speaker Pelosi wasn’t in her residence, and DePape woke her husband up, beating the 82-year-old man with a hammer repeatedly. After Paul called 911, the police arrived and took DePape into custody. Paul Pelosi was later hospitalized for skull fractures and injuries to the arm.
The San Francisco police stated that the attack was politically motivated, while the federal complaint against DePape claimed that he planned to take Speaker Pelosi hostage, so he could “break her kneecaps,” after which she would have to be wheeled to Congress, and that could “teach others a lesson.” A search of DePape’s online presence revealed that he was indulgent in a series of far-right conspiracy theories, including about the 2020 election, QAnon, COVID vaccines, Jews, and aliens.
This attack drew swift condemnations from across the political spectrum, from Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer to Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy. However, there are some comments on this issue from the right that were not only apathetic, but also conspiratorial as a baseless and bizarre accusation soon surfaced, and was promoted by new Twitter owner Elon Musk and Louisiana Republican Rep. Clay Higgins.
Musk shared a link on Twitter from a fringe, far-right website disguised as an online newspaper that claimed DePape was Paul Pelosi’s secret gay lover. Both the SFPD and the federal affidavit charging DePape stated clearly that the two men have never met before, and Musk later deleted his post. Clay Higgins also deleted his Twitter post that shared a meme showing a picture of a vexed Speaker Pelosi with the words “That moment you realize the nudist hippie male prostitute LSD guy is the reason your husband didn’t make it to your fundraiser,” seemingly agreeing with the conspiracy theory that the two knew each other.
The reasons behind conspiratorial inclination
There is a trend among groups of people, especially for those on the right, to constantly share bogus stories that they believe can best “explain” certain events. Researchers have studied the root causes that urge people to turn into conspiracy theorists.
To understand why people would believe conspiracy theories, we should know the exact definitions of “conspiracy,” “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy ideology” first.
A comprehensive literature review in 2019 by seven researchers defined “conspiracy” as a “secret plot by two or more powerful actors” attempting to “usurp political or economic power, violate rights, infringe upon established agreements, withhold vital secrets, or alter bedrock institutions.” The researchers believe that the existence of conspiracies led to “conspiracy theories,” which attempt to explain the ultimatums of significant social and political events, where they attribute the cause to a “conspiracy.”
Meanwhile, people who tend to trust conspiracy theories as the best explanation have a conspiracy mindset that makes them prone to such baseless and hypothetical conclusions. Once there are enough people believing in it and such a belief can lead to a certain social or political trend, then the mindset becomes an ideology and a part of the general culture.
The 2019 literature review, titled “Understanding Conspiracy Theories,” made a clear distinction between those who believe in conspiracy theories and those who communicate them. These people are not necessarily the same, and the motives behind communicating could be different. For those who communicate conspiracy theories, the ideas themselves are being used as a coping mechanism to make sense of the social circumstances and to specify the concrete “threats” against them, whatever they may be.
Researchers have understood the causes of conspiracy ideologies from a variety of perspectives. Sociologist Ted Goertzel proposed the belief of a “monological belief system” in 1994 that these beliefs comprise a mutually supportive network that correlates with each other to prove the point, culminating each theory into some larger plot. Studies building on this theory show that such a belief system was used to explain events during the height of the COVID pandemic and lockdowns worldwide, as well as theoretical support for QAnon. Studies have also shown that for large-scale events, people with a need for cognitive closure who could not summarize or understand what they already know, or do not believe the official narrative due to a lack of trust in institutions, will tend to trust dramatic conspiracy theories. Political scientists have called this tendency a process of “biased assimilation,” or accepting information that confirms their views only.
Data analysis on people who tend to believe in conspiracy theories has shown that most of them are men, have lower levels of education and income, are unmarried, have a lack of job security, and have weaker social networks. Researchers believe that more education could provide the level of cognitive and affective attributes that would make them less likely to believe in conspiracy theories. These people are more in need of a positive sense of self about their groups and attribution for their lack of success, therefore they want to believe their current circumstances are the result of other people secretly conspiring against them.
However, the history of capitalism has demonstrated that there have been instances of such incidents truly happening, which would certainly be used as proof that conspiracies are the best explanation for everything. For example, one of the most steadfast motivations behind people believing in the September 11 attack being an “inside job” was the scandal that Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer, oil magnate Halliburton, gained a “sweetheart deal” with the U.S. military not long after the Iraq invasion.
The new, sad reality we live in
What’s troubling about the nonsensical, quickly debunked claim about Paul Pelosi isn’t that it’s a malicious attempt to further exploit the tragedy of a family by spreading a lie, but the reality that this kind of easily disproven rumor emerges every single time a major social or political event happens in America.
Major conspiracy theorists utilized internet forums, talk radio, and social media to establish a steadfast and growing online presence during the period, including heavy-hitters like Alex Jones and David Icke. They have faced some kind of accountability for their sickening smears against victims of tragedies, but that it’s simply too little, too late. A cultural indulgence of conspiracy theories where a solid percentage of people will create and believe unfounded, easily debunked allegations against anything they don’t think is true, will continue to exist and prevail no matter what happens to Alex Jones or David Icke. This ideology has influences worldwide, and in America, its political power is especially insurmountable due to long-existing distrust of the political establishment, and major players in the Republican Party thriving on conspiracy theories to feed their voters with rage.
A study in 2014 by two political scientists at the University of Chicago asserted that a large percentage of the American population subscribes to some form of conspiracy theory. The study pulls the data from the 2011 Cooperative Congressional Election Study conducted online by Harvard University and finds that 50 percent of surveyed believe at least one form of conspiracy theory, the most popular one being the allegation that a small cabal of Wall Street bankers intentionally caused the market to crash in 2008 and the notion that the U.S. government was behind the attacks on 9/11.
Around 10% of the people believe in or agree with seemingly non-partisan conspiracies that are also unfounded, such as the idea that the U.S. government is recommending the replacement to compact florescent lightbulbs (CFLBs) as a campaign to control the minds of people who have it in their homes, or that vapor trails that were released by planes carried government-issued chemical agents for clandestine mind control purposes. The study also finds that more conservatives will believe in ideological conspiracy theories than liberals, and they are more prone to general conspiracies as well.
A 2020 report by researchers working collaboratively at the conservative American Enterprise Institute and the liberal Center for American Progress reaffirmed the notion that people on the right are more prone to conspiracy theories. In this survey, 48% of Republicans and 25% of Democrats say COVID is not more dangerous than the common flu and 42% of Republicans believe the scientifically disproven method of hydroxychloroquine is useful against COVID. It also found that while more Democrats had heard of the deranged, pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory that a group of pedophilic, child-eating, Satanic cabal full of Democrats, Hollywood stars, and tech entrepreneurs were trying to overthrow Donald Trump’s presidency, a larger number (about 1 in 3) of Republicans who heard of it believed it to be accurate.
Conspiracies like QAnon were later warmly embraced by President Trump when he discovered their usefulness, and he used it as a basis to create a Big Lie that the election in 2020, which he lost, was stolen by Democrats. A larger number of Republicans believing in conspiracy theories about the COVID pandemic might be the leading cause for more Republicans dying from the virus than Democrats, as evidence shown by several studies.
The dangers of a conspiracy-prone society
Perhaps the greatest danger of conspiracy theories in the United States is not in the consequences that those who believe in them will bring about with their actions, but in the fact that political and partisan propaganda about fake news has diluted the public’s understanding of conspiracy perceptions, robbing the term of its actual meaning and making them ignore the ongoing, actual conspiracies in American society. Realist approaches toward the understanding influence of conspiracy ideologies against America would be pessimistic, yet it might be the sole effective means to sort this mess out without running into dead ends.
Many people have felt the sense of everything crashing down during the early stages of the pandemic, witnessing the devastation and desperation happening across the country on the screens as they were forced to stay at home, likely losing all regular methods of communicating with the outside while lacking knowledge of what will happen next. There seemed to be no trustworthy voices. Early messages during the pandemic were full of medical experts and public health officials telling people not to buy masks, and then-President Trump didn’t declare a national emergency until thousands have already been infected. The “revolving door” effect that links the most powerful firms in the country and the offices in Washington was in full bloom during that time, leading to members of the Trump administration making decisions not out of public interest but for their gains, which is deadly during a national health crisis. A strong belief in privatization and against collective good from the Republican politicians caused a chaotic disorder among people scrambling to save themselves, with governors rejecting the voices of public health experts to restrict movement and enforce personal protections such as masking.
The sense of loneliness, combined with a lack of trust in authorities would undeniably be reaffirmed in this scenario. The number of hospitalized people and deaths is incessantly rising, and people are in a need of a sense of comfort and closure to understand how all this happened. Many indulged in conspiracies about the pandemic being a secret bioweapon released by global elites or an enemy state to intentionally kill as many civilians as possible; and that hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin or even bleach could cure coronavirus. Others tried to cope with the trauma by hiding their heads in the sand, trying to dismiss the existence of the virus itself, or beginning to think of a potential magical elixir that could cure the disease as soon as possible, which their mindset would lead them to believe is for public interest and against what “the elites” want. Sarah Kendzior, a realist theorist and anthropologist who wrote about her experiences during the pandemic in the book They Knew in 2022, summarized it this way: “A rise in conspiracy theories is inevitable when collective trauma is combined with a lack of transparency and a history of state abuse.”
The status of the pandemic has evolved with the advent of vaccines, improved immunity, and the emergence of relatively weak variants, but that doesn’t mean the conspiracy theory mentality that has worsened in the meantime won’t continue to influence people. Trump, perhaps the world’s most powerful purveyor of conspiracy theories, has used lies as a propaganda tool to incite fear-based anger against conservative supporters for his benefit. He is extremely skilled at using conspiracy ideology to shape fear and change public opinion, so much so that he almost succeeded in toppling the U.S. presidency. Even so, the protection of vested interests in the American system has allowed him to face few real consequences for his actions to this day. His existence represents the perception of a large percentage of Americans; as long as any theory is in their interest, they will go ahead and believe it, whether it is based on facts or not.
However, for the sake of a true social reckoning of him and his ideology, we cannot simply assume that his years in power were just a “rough patch” period in American history.
It has always been there.
The dominant structure of this country has been used to maintain a nation built on a fantastic imagination that does not exist. The country’s political system and laws have long served only the interests of wealthy white males, prompting them to remove dissent at all costs, and continued to do so until the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Even then, this oppression did not completely disappear.
The more unequal the distribution of wealth, power, rights, and knowledge, the more likely people are to rely on conspiracy theories as a tool for self-help. When Americans use the term “common sense,” they should always remember that the system was never equal, fair, or democratic to begin with, and right-wing politicians who try to use conspiracy ideology to present social change that challenges oppression as an attack on their identity are proving it in their actions.
People must understand the origins and influences of conspiracy theories in American society to fight against them. Those who try their best to tell the truth, will never eliminate its existence, but at least it would likely diminish its current threat against democracy and political stability.
