Congratulations, You're Finally a Conspiracy Theorist

We never thought it would happen to us.

In the before times, we made fun of anti-vaxxers and climate deniers for doing their own research. They often deserved it.

The idea of doing your own research to challenge the orthodox view of scientists smacked of arrogance. It generated countless memes.

You were supposed to stay in your lane and leave everything to the experts. Well, we’ve seen how that turns out.

Reality isn’t that simple.

It never was.

Look back through history, and you can find plenty of experts gift-wrapped in credentials downplaying risks and making horrible recommendations to the public about their health and safety. Now in the mid-2020s, experts have spread just as much disinformation as the conspiracy theorists. We elected an administration to stand up for science. One of the first things they did was appoint a hedge fund guy to lead the pandemic response team, “a man who seized on medical providers as a way to capitalize on the suffering of sick Americans.” Then they appointed one of his buddies to lead the CDC, an organization that has dropped the ball routinely on virtually every aspect of public health.

Billionaires own dozens of major newspapers.

It doesn’t help that celebrities continue to enjoy total immunity from the lies they’ve spread and the lives they’ve ruined. If you’re rich and famous, you can go on talk shows and say whatever you want about vaccines and autism. You can talk about schools letting girls use a litter box because they identify as a cat. You’ll still get featured in magazines. You’ll still get a Netflix special.

Now we’re the ones doing our own research, begging doctors to take our symptoms seriously or working overtime to get air purifiers into schools. The idea of doing your own research has taken on a different meaning. Of course, we’re not really doing the research. We’re just reading about it.

That’s the difference.

Many of us didn’t want to believe our own governments would lie to us about one risk after another or sit back and watch toxic spills poison entire cities, or act like they’re not tacitly condoning or even funding mass murder.

But they did.

They are.

It’s really not so far-fetched to suggest that groups of rich, powerful people are working together against our interests. We see it all the time. Journalists have documented over and over how dark money groups and lobbyists craft legislation for politicians and surround them in echo chambers. There’s no need for secret societies. They do it out in the open.

Who needs the Illuminati when you’ve got the Koch Network?

There’s actually nothing wrong with a conspiracy theory itself. An article in Psychology Bulletin tackles conspiracy theories. It explains a lot. The authors constructed a framework based on 170 studies.

Here's how they define it:

Broadly, conspiracy theories refer to causal explanations of events that ascribe blame to a group of powerful individuals (the conspirators) who operate in secret to form hidden plans that benefit themselves and harm the common good. Thus, the definitional recipe of conspiracy theories involves three primary ingrediants: conspirators, hidden plans, [and] malintent against others or society.

According to this study, conspiracy theorists aren't necessarily naive or paranoid. They're not uneducated, either. They're desperate to feel safe and secure in an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world.

They're looking for answers.

Aren't we all?

Based on this psychological definition of a conspiracy theory, we're all conspiracy theorists now. We all see powerful individuals forming plans to benefit themselves at our expense. They’re not exactly a secret.

As Timothy Melley writes in Theory/Conspiracy, it’s getting hard to tell the difference between the outlandish conspiracy theories of yore and critical theory that seeks to uncover actual corruption and injustice.

After all, our government has lied:

Skepticism is… heightened when state secrets ooze into the public sphere: Eisenhower’s public lie about U-2 flights over the USSR, Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs fiasco, fabricated revolutions in Iran and Guatemala, the release of the Pentagon Papers, falsified intelligence about Iraq, the Snowden files… They draw our attention to the content of secrets, but their form matters more—and that form is public secrecy, the widespread awareness that the state is doing things we think we know but cannot know in detail… After all, the starting assumption of conspiracy theory—there’s something they’re not telling us—seems an accurate description of the US national security arrangement since the Cold War.

That same logic extends to public health.

When the baseline becomes that our governments are lying to us and hiding information in order to protect something allegedly more important than their own citizens, like intelligence or corporate profits, then conspiracy theory becomes the starting point for everything.

Everyone claims the truth belongs to them. It’s theirs guard, and everyone who disagrees with them is the “real” conspiracy theorist.

For example:

The Pentagon really did run secret anti-vax campaigns in The Philippines to combat “what it perceived as China’s growing influence.” That sounds like something a conspiracy theorist would make up.

And yet, it actually happened.

Another example:

Everyone seems to know what Jeffrey Epstein was doing on his private island. We only disagree about which politicians and celebrities were involved. It’s a conspiracy if someone we like gets implicated. If someone we don’t like gets tied to Epstein, then it’s suddenly a plausible series of events. Meanwhile, none of them are ever held accountable for the crimes they committed.

That’s life now.

Imagine knowing that corporations, lobbying groups, and PACs are allowed to donate hundreds of millions to election campaigns, that the world’s richest men own a majority of our news outlets and social media apps, that our governments have a history of colluding with corporations to deceive the public, that politicians have a history of corruption and abuse of power, and still thinking that there’s no conspiracy to trade our health for profits.

Boris Johnson once wrote an entire column outlining a strategy called deadcatting, when you distract the public from substantive issues with scandals or outrageous statements. And we think conspiracy theories aren’t real?

I mean…?

Conspiracy theorists used to be a fringe group who reveled in stringing together random facts and finding clues hidden in memes like some Dan Brown character, mostly as an overzealous hobby that turned them into fanatics. But many of us who fall into that label now never wanted to spend our free time digging through databases and sifting through scientific studies. We would’ve preferred to trust our doctors and public health officials.

Yes, it’s empowering.

It’s also exhausting.

We realize we’re not fully equipped to tackle our current crises on our own, and we don’t reject experts. We’ve had to develop much more scientific literacy to clap back at liars and grifters who’ve gaslit us over matters of life and death, and we can only speculate about their motives. Sometimes they do it for money. Sometimes they do it for attention. Sometimes, it’s both. It’s not that we don’t trust experts. We’re just much more cautious about which ones we do.

So when someone calls you a conspiracy theorist, it doesn’t mean much anymore. Conspiracies are happening. It’s just a matter of which ones make sense, which ones have actual evidence, and which don’t.

The rich don’t have to sit around in an underground bunker cackling at us as they plot the end of retirement and social security. They meet out in the open at football games, soccer matches, concerts, and fundraising events. When they get together, they don’t talk about how to take over the world. They just talk about how to make more money. Who it hurts is an afterthought.

If someone doesn’t want something to be true, they call it a conspiracy theory. It’s an easy way to dismiss ideas that make them uncomfortable.

So, you’re a conspiracy theorist now.

Congratulations.