The public discourse is hamstrung by the conspiracy theory. It’s uncertain if it infects a large swath of the population, but because of the uniqueness of the American project, it doesn’t require the majority to throw a wrench into the wheels of progress.
The current conspiracy theory is rooted in the Big Lie, fostered by the belief of a stolen 2020 election orchestrated by the Democratic Party illuminati. It is unclear who actually heads this secret society, but it is widely believed that either Hillary Clinton or Hunter Biden, depending on the day, is its titular head. It has fostered a plethora of illegal activities from drug dealing to child pornography. Most recently it was noted for “stealing” the 2020 election in part by using rigged election machines by a company linked to former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
The notion of the conspiracy theory is nothing new; the first probably sprouted shortly after early modern humans walked the Earth. Every baby boomer has lived with myriad conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
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But with the onslaught of social media platforms, along with distrust of our institutions, elected leadership and the media, at a time when we are privy to a preponderance of information at our disposal in seconds, conspiracy theories have never enjoyed such fertile ground to cultivate with negative results. Moreover, conspiracy theories appear to be a bipartisan phenomenon.
“A significant number of Americans appear susceptible to believing unproven claims,” offers Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life. He adds, “What’s more, politically motivated conspiracy theories find a receptive audience among both Democrats and Republicans.”
In an October 2020 survey conducted jointly by the Center for American Progress and the American Enterprise Institute, a majority of Democrats believed Russian President Vladimir Putin had compromising information on former President Donald Trump. Conversely, an equal number of Republicans held that there was a coordinated effort by “unelected” government officials that systematically derailed the former president’s agenda.
In our current public discourse, it is much easier to be unduly influenced by something that has no basis in fact, especially if it corresponds with how we feel or neatly explains the unexplained.
As Helen Lee Bouygues, a contributor to Forbes magazine, offered in a 2021 article, “Many researchers have suggested, one big driver of conspiracy theories is the security that comes from simple explanations for negative events.”
Conspiracy theorists offer, at least temporarily, soothing relief from the uncertainties of absurdity. When one considers the cavalcade of conspiracy theories of the decades surrounding the assassination of Kennedy, it is supported by the difficulty in believing Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.
Historian William Manchester, writing in The New York Times, outlined the fundamental problem in accepting Oswald as the gunman: “Those who desperately want to believe that President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy have my sympathy. I share their yearning. To employ what may seem an odd metaphor, there is an esthetic principle here. If you put six million dead Jews on one side of a scale and on the other side put the Nazi regime — the greatest gang of criminals ever to seize control of a modern state — you have a rough balance: greatest crime, greatest criminals.”
Manchester adds: “But if you put the murdered president of the United States on one side of a scale and that wretched waif Oswald on the other side, it doesn’t balance. You want to add something weightier to Oswald. It would invest the president’s death with meaning, endowing him with martyrdom. He would have died for something. A conspiracy would, of course, do the job nicely.”
The “great replacement theory,” a white nationalist concoction that holds that “elites” are conspiring to replace the white population with minorities, fuels, in part, the pushback and erroneous concerns of critical race theory.
But conspiracy theories actually make things worse. They are often presented as legitimate possibilities without the burden of facts on their side. Conspiracy theories have become increasingly pernicious in a culture that devalues critical thinking.
The problem is much larger than a few crackpots legitimizing their theories in the public discourse. Conspiracy theories build a wall on a foundation designed to keep facts at bay. Seldom are these unproven suppositions brought to fruition.
Conspiracy theories make sense until one realizes that within the complexities of the human condition, sometimes “Because” is the answer to “Why?”
The Rev. Byron Williams (byron@publicmorality.org), a writer and the host of “The Public Morality” on WSNC 90.5, lives in Winston-Salem.
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