A Lot of People Are Saying

by Nancy L. Rosenblum

Three mental processes create the predisposition to see powerful hidden forces controlling events. First, we look for intentionality in events. People are averse to regarding anything of social and political importance as random, accidental, or unintended. It is an intolerably “absurdist image of the world to think that a series of coincidences changes the course of history.”9 In this respect, however convoluted its reasoning and evidence (or absence of evidence), conspiracism is simple, formulaic: the proposition that things are the deliberate work of powerful people is a constant. This is not to say that we correctly identify the agents responsible or their intention, only that we resist randomness and impersonal processes and unintended consequences. In his ruinous crusade to ferret out and expose Communist infiltrators, Senator Joseph McCarthy expressed the intentionality thesis to perfection: “How can we account for our present situation unless we believe that men high in this government are concerting to deliver us to disaster. This must be the product of a great conspiracy … a conspiracy of infamy.”10

  A second cognitive element is proportionality. When something of importance occurs, we look for a cause commensurate with the act.11 We’ve noted this before: it seems implausible that events of world-historical importance could result from the actions of a single person or a few anonymous people. The effect (the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11) and the cause (two dozen obscure individuals) seem out of proportion, so much so that one cannot seem to have resulted from the other. So, the conspiracist explanation goes, the US government must have been complicit in the collapse of the World Trade Center, just as the government must have been complicit in the killing of JFK—or, if not the US government, then the KGB, or the mob, or Fidel Castro in Cuba.

  Taken together, intentionality and proportionality are mental assumptions that make conspiracism “far more coherent than the real world, since it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities.”12 The result is coherence at the expense of truth.

  The third cognitive element behind conspiracism is confirmation bias. We look for facts that fit our preconceptions of how the world works. We assimilate new information that confirms what we already think and discard contradictory information. Confirmation bias propels us to harmonize what we hear and learn to what we know, or think we know. A standard illustration is the partisan differential in how people take in and interpret information. After Trump persistently trumpeted that “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” he had actually won the popular vote, “a plurality of Republicans sa[id] President Donald Trump received more of the popular vote.”13 In this respect, a standard proposition holds that conspiracism is “largely a function of political attachment.”14 Other studies show that conspiracism is embraced by partisans of the Left and Right depending on who is in and who is out of power.15 In one study, Democrats “who agreed on average with the conspiracy claims” proposed by researchers “increased from 27% before the election [of 2016] to 32% afterwards.”16 To take another example, Glenn Beck’s radio show, which peddled charges of left-wing conspiracy, was popular when Democrats controlled the government in 2008; the show was canceled as irrelevant when Republicans regained control in 2010.17

  Notice what follows from confirmation bias: insofar as conspiracism reflects one’s political loyalties, factual correction of unwarranted conspiracism is bound to be very difficult. At least on some accounts, the attempts to correct misinformation can backfire; they increase the extent to which people believe erroneous information.18 Even when corrections don’t literally backfire, the repetition of conspiracist charges in the course of refuting them may nonetheless embed them in receptive minds. It is challenging for the media’s reports and refutations to be effective. Thus, Trump’s insistence that former president Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower has life that cannot be extinguished by the Justice Department’s assertion that it was a total fabrication (the FBI and the Department of Justice’s National Security Division “have no records related to wiretaps as described by the March 4, 2017 tweets”).19

  The disposition to look for intentionality and proportionality in explaining important events, not to mention the tendency to confirm our own biases, helps explain why conspiracism permeates all parts of American society and cuts across gender, age, race, income, political affiliation, educational level, and occupational status. An experiment that exposed people to a range of conspiratorial rumors (not all of them about politics) found that “over 70% of respondents expressed support for at least one of the statements,” leading political scientist Adam Berinsky to conclude, “While some people hold mostly crazy beliefs, most people hold at least some crazy beliefs.”20 For instance, in August 2004, 49 percent of New York City residents believed that officials of the US government “knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act.”21 We can only imagine what the percentage would have been if President George W. Bush had insisted that elements within the government itself had planned the attacks. This is what is happening today: as a result of presidential conspiracism, about half of self-identified Republicans said they believe that American elections are “massively rigged.”22

  Our overview of general accounts of conspiracism—Hofstadter’s paranoid style, cognitive accounts, and accounts that center on partisanship—would lead one to expect symmetry between conspiracism from the left and from the right. The standard proposition has it that parties out of power will be more inclined to conspiracy theories than parties in power, so that as parties alternate in office, we should expect to see conspiracism on both sides of the spectrum.23 But with the new conspiracism, the symmetry we expect does not show up: the new conspiracism comes from the right, and it comes not only from those on the margins but also from those in power—from winners like Trump. There are other ways in which the new conspiracism diverges from the accounts we have just surveyed. Its bare assertions, innuendo, and bizarre fabulations introduce additional cognitive distortions. Accounts that normalize the general phenomenon of conspiracism obscure the novelty and the danger of the new conspiracism. Its danger brings us back to a distinctive element of the crippled epistemology that characterizes the new conspiracism: its tribalism.

  The Tribal Basis of Assent

  In classic conspiracism, belief has an evidentiary basis. Those who believe, for instance, that the government helped plan the 9/11 attacks cite observations and analyses to support their understanding. Evidentiary beliefs can be tested, in principle, at any rate—although, in practice, it can be difficult to test a theory that charges the government itself with wrongdoing when all the relevant information comes from the government. Yet the new conspiracism, as we have seen, proffers little evidence; there are few dots and patterns to latch onto. And the bar for assenting to conspiracist charges can be set very low: as we saw, to say that something is true enough, one can concede that it probably did not happen at all—but also that it might have happened. In the new conspiracism, this low bar is the standard: if something could have happened, even if there is no evidence for it at all, then it is true enough.24

  When it comes to the political effects of the new conspiracism, what matters is not the epistemic basis of people’s beliefs, but rather whether they assent to the conspiracist charge. As Christian theologians have argued, belief is an inward act of mind. Assent, by contrast, is something more public. We might assent to propositions even when we are not sure what we believe, even when our beliefs contradict what we assent to. While belief may have a high evidentiary bar, the basis for assent might be much lower—as it is for the new conspiracists.

  It might have been that Obama’s FBI tapped Trump’s phones, as Trump claimed. And if it might have been, that’s true enough—even without evidence to support the charge. For those who think it’s true enough, what matters is that the hostile intent and capacity to commit the subterfuge were there. The logic of “true enough” breathes life into the new conspiracism as it c
orrodes standards of verification and validation. Consider the response to questions about Trump’s tweet of a video that falsely purported to show a Muslim migrant committing an assault: the White House press secretary responded, “Whether it’s a real video, the threat is real.”25 Because the world is one in which the claim could have been true, it is true enough.

  From a philosophic standpoint, “true enough” is not a sufficiently demanding epistemic standard to ground justified beliefs; but the new conspiracists are not engaged in a rigorous effort to ground their beliefs in evidence. Which raises the question, Why assent to something in the absence of solid evidence? Understanding people’s motives is a very difficult matter—motives are mixed. But it seems clear that part of the point of assenting to conspiracist fabulations is to communicate belonging. As a political phenomenon, the new conspiracism directs us to focus on the “we” that stands behind assent to claims like the election is “rigged.”

  The new conspiracism feeds off and in turn fuels a tribal mode of politics. To deny Trump’s insistence that Obama wiretapped his offices is to disassociate from the company of those who attribute the worst to Obama and the Democrats. Assent to a conspiracy claim means the claim resonates with one’s sense of the political world. A tribal belief is akin to Boston Red Sox fans’ belief that the “Yankees suck.” Such an assertion is not an affirmation of a proposition that is meant to correspond to facts in the world. Even if the Yankees were the best team in the world, for Red Sox fans, the statement “Yankees suck” remains valid because it reflects fans’ identification with their team and each other. With respect to the Yankees, the question of justified belief does not arise for Red Sox fans, at least not in a philosophic or scientific way.26 It arises from a tribal context, where validation comes from repetition by those in the relevant community—in this case, Red Sox Nation.

  In the new conspiracism, narratives of secret, nefarious intent are emotionally compelling because of the way they fit with the affinities, connections, and hostilities that constitute elements of identity. As we observe it today, this fit is especially oriented to partisan identity.27 Many more Trump voters than Clinton voters reject the claim that Russia tampered with vote tallies to swing the election to Trump. But many more Clinton voters than Trump voters reject the charge that millions of illegal votes were cast in 2016.28 And even as late as 2017, more than half of Republicans purported to believe that Obama was born in Kenya (a belief that was very rare among Democrats).29

  The political pay-off of “true enough” is substantial. The low epistemic standard—if it might have happened, that’s true enough—allows conspiracists to assent to a distorted version of reality. Concretely, they assent to the proposition that Obama was born in Kenya because it might have been the case, however remote the likelihood. They then assert that he was born in Kenya. And conspiracists in power try to impose that compromised sense of reality on the rest of us. Assent to what seems “true enough” is what takes conspiracism out of the psychological domain and into politics. And it is what gives conspiracism the power to delegitimate.

  Repetition over Validation

  When it comes to true enough, what matters is not evidence but repetition. Participation in conspiracist social networks triggers assent. Echoing, repeating, sharing, liking, and forwarding a conspiracist claim is a show of affiliation with others who are angry and confident that things are not as they seem. Conspiracist narratives refresh these passions by reminding members of the group of what they feel with renewed energy. Several developments in communication help us fathom assent to these claims. Whereas many internet rumors “spike quickly and then fade out relatively quickly,” alternative narratives that converge with politics linger, and have “sustained participation by a set group” of users. Someone looking to “validate” a particular conspiracist claim by checking different sites for confirmation will see the claim mirrored across the ecological niche he or she inhabits. Empirical evidence of the conspiracist “echo chamber” is mounting. The confirming experience is this: “a lot of people are saying.”30

  Conspiracist claims conform to what Jerome Bruner calls “narrative necessity.”31 They are required by the flow and consistency of the larger story; they are “subsumed to what is claimed to be the larger truth.”32 The Pizzagate conspiracy that charges Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta, with running an international child sex-trafficking ring, for example, sustains the moral judgment of those who think the Clintons are so evil that nothing—not even sex trafficking in children—is beyond them. “Lock her up” and “Killary” signal a conviction that Hillary Clinton does unthinkably bad things and lies about them—the specifics are beside the point of the larger narrative.

  Those who invoke “fake news” may not believe that every news story has in fact been fabricated in the way that Stephen Glass fabricated stories for the New Republic from scratch. It means that the “mainstream” press at outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN are hostile to Trump’s presidency and perhaps also to conservatives and Republicans and to ordinary citizens who support the president.33 Reporters could be in league to damage the administration, say, or in their support for globalism. The charge of “fake news” is true enough. Nearly half of Americans now say that the media fabricate stories about the president; the incessant charge “fake news” has taken hold.34

  True enough conspiracist claims are not innocuous. Assent denigrates the conclusions of official investigations and the reliable media. When Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, the president denied the confirmed fact of the matter: “Some people say [Flynn] lied and some people say he didn’t lie. I mean, really, it turned out maybe he didn’t lie.”35 The practical import of Trump’s statement is to render the proposition that Flynn didn’t lie true enough.

  A steady dose of conspiracism encourages the disposition to see the worst intentions at work all the time, regardless of evidence. This has been called cynicism.36 Still, it is not paralyzing cynicism. Assent to conspiracist claims represents a desire to join in a kind of political activity, albeit in a debased and sterile form.

  Conspiracy Entrepreneurs

  Those who buy into conspiracist accusations have their reasons for believing what they do. They are for the most part consumers of conspiratorial accusations, not inventors. They might repeat an accusation—or retweet it. But they are not the origins of the charge. Much of the new conspiracism originates with conspiracist entrepreneurs, ambitious people who peddle conspiracy in return for money, celebrity, and influence. Take Alex Jones, the Texas talk show host who was once among the most prominent producers of conspiracist narratives. (And a declared favorite of Trump.)37 Conspiracism is a lucrative business, and Jones manufactures charges that he expects will be popular. His business is entertainment: he works to make his narratives titillating and persuasive. But he also wants political influence. He wants his audience to find his claims true enough—worth amplifying and repeating online in what has become a distinct form of political participation. Under pressure, Jones may concede that some of his claims, taken individually, are fabulations. He has been sued multiple times, including by families of the victims of the horrific 2012 school massacre at Sandy Hook for spreading the claim that the shooting was a false-flag attack and that the grieving parents were “crisis actors” hired to pretend to sorrow and loss.38 Jones settled several civil cases brought against him, offering tepid apologies and retractions for “what [he] now understand[s] to be wrong.”39 But even the retraction of an individual item does not slow the production of new ones.

  Or consider Stefanie MacWilliams, one of the propagators of the Pizzagate story: “I really have no regrets and it’s honestly really grown our audience,” she said. MacWilliams is confident that the truth will win out—the beauty of the internet is that people can crowdsource the truth—so she admits that she does not try to be “100 per cent accurate.” Whether the Pizzagate conspira
cy is true is an open question in her mind; the investigation by conspiracists is ongoing. “It’s like a real-life Kennedy assassination where all the stuff is at your fingertips, and it’s happening today,” she says.40

  Entrepreneurs are not restricted to people involved in conspiracy commerce. Take the example of the claim that the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who survived the mass shooting of seventeen of their classmates, and who spoke out in favor of gun control, were not real students. They were, according to the new conspiracism, FBI plants defending the bureau for its failure to catch the shooter. Or maybe something else: they were “crisis actors” who traveled to the sites of shootings to instigate fury against guns. The point of the new conspiracism is to create the possibility that they were not who they claimed to be—students who survived a mass killing.

  These accusations reach a huge audience. They appear not only on sites like Jones’s or in corners of the web but also in mainstream, right-wing media. They are reported by popular radio announcer Rush Limbaugh and by a guest on CNN, Jack Kingston, a former congressman from Georgia who, in the new conspiracist style of “just asking questions,” said, “Do we really think—and I say this sincerely—do we really think 17-year-olds on their own are going to plan a nationwide rally?”41

  The delegitimation of democratic institutions is possible because large numbers of people, most notably elected officials, adapt to a political world in which conspiracism is an element of identity and affiliation, and satisfy themselves if conspiracist charges seem true enough to repeat them, broadcast them, and invoke them when it comes to political decisions. In chapter 3 we look at the power of presidential conspiracism, and in chapter 4 we look at the problem of partisan reticence: congressional Republicans and other officials who acquiesce in conspiracist claims. Some officials are dedicated receivers and transmitters of conspiracist accusations, but many more are adapting to the malignant environment and to presidential conspiracism in particular. Partisan reticence inhibits speaking truth to conspiracism and stands as the most important enabling element behind a maelstrom of vicious charges and the delegitimation of democracy.