Skeptics and folklorists know that conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen. For every high-profile one you can think of—from Roswell alien bodies to moon-landing hoaxes—there are hundreds of lesser-known ones. And more are cranked out all the time. Conspiracy theories rise and fall in popularity, but—like unsinkable rubber ducks—they never really go away. Because they are rarely if ever disproven, there’s an ever-growing number of them. And though they’ve circulated for thousands of years, they’ve exploded in number, variety, and virulence in the age of social media.
Conspiracy theories persist partly because they benefit those who tell them in some way. And because they often demonize others, they are baked into religious, cultural, and political agendas. They can be dangerous—even deadly—but those who share them typically are not harmed by them (except perhaps indirectly), and they cost relatively little in social capital. Many conspiracy theories have no inherent named implementor, no specific single person blamed for some action. Instead, it’s a shadowy, inchoate cabal of nameless conspirators, such as the Illuminati or Satanists. Other times conspiracy theories are ascribed to specific people—typically rich and powerful men, such as Bill Gates and George Soros.
While most conspiracy claims are shielded by the First Amendment as protected free speech (a defense often proffered by Alex Jones and his ilk), some are potentially libelous—and that’s where legal consequences come into the picture. If you say something that you know is false or made with willful disregard for its truth and it harms the reputation of a person or entity, you can be held legally liable for damages.
A January 14, 2021, article in Fortune by Ryan Young argued for conspiracy theories to be viewed through an economic prism:
If you think of irrationality as a consumer good, much like a car or a television, you can better understand why people sometimes say and do crazy things. Think of it like this: People buy more cars and televisions when they are cheap, and fewer when they are expensive. This logic applies to conspiracy theories. Here, price is not necessarily measured in money. The “price” of armchair theorizing is low, usually. It costs almost nothing to post crazy things online, aside from mild social stigma. But this cost is more than offset by other benefits for many. For a lot of fringe figures like anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, and QAnon conspiracy theorists, espousing an extreme belief is not necessarily about the truth.
However, in recent years—and more so in recent months—it has become clear that conspiracy theories can be expensive. Here are a few examples.
• Smartmatic, an election technology company, filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against both Fox News as a corporation and several of its news hosts for repeatedly and without basis falsely accusing it of rigging the election for Joe Biden over former president Donald Trump. The false conspiracies, the company claimed, cost the company millions of dollars. Smartmatic issued a statement saying, in part, “Fox is responsible for this disinformation campaign, which has damaged democracy worldwide and irreparably harmed Smartmatic and other stakeholders who contribute to modern elections.”
According to a February 4, 2021, article in the Washington Post:
The company said it has identified “100 false statements and implications” about Smartmatic and its services made on Fox’s programs. The lawsuit singles out Fox News and Fox Business Network hosts Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro, as well as two guests who repeatedly appeared on their shows in the weeks around the election: Trump-affiliated lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani. Smartmatic said in the lawsuit that the company performed work in only one county during November’s election, helping officials in Los Angeles implement a pandemic-safe voting system. The alleged smear campaign nevertheless succeeded in making Smartmatic “known by voters in the United States and abroad as a criminal that stole the 2020 U.S. election,” leading to the loss of business partners, strained client relationships and an estimated loss of more than $500 million in future profits, according to the complaint.
Fox canceled Lou Dobbs Tonight the day after the lawsuit naming the host was filed. The Washington Post reported that the suit “cited several examples of Dobbs promoting baseless claims of voter fraud, including a November 12 episode in which former president Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani claimed that Smartmatic was founded by Venezuelans close to former dictator Hugo Chávez ‘in order to fix elections.’ Dobbs thanked Giuliani for being ‘on the case,’ which the host said ‘has the feeling of a coverup in certain places.’” (Right-wing network Newsmax, which was threatened with lawsuits over false statements of election fraud, backed off its claims and even cut off Trump-supporting MyPillow founder Mike Lindell during an interview rant, causing one of the hosts to walk off the set when Lindell wouldn’t stop spewing conspiracies that could get the network sued.)
• On February 3, the House of Representatives removed conspiracy monger and QAnon proponent (and newly elected Georgia Representative) Marjorie Taylor Greene from two congressional committees, Education and Budget. Greene repeatedly—and unapologetically—endorsed debunked misinformation and conspiracy theories, as well as racist views and even a threat to others in government.
• No modern politician has so successfully and routinely employed conspiracy theories as Trump, who even appeared on the Alex Jones show. Jones, of course, repeatedly claimed that the Obama administration faked domestic shootings (including the Sandy Hook school massacre—over which Jones eventually lost a $100,000 defamation lawsuit in 2019) as a pretext for confiscating American’s guns.
Though Trump often benefited from trading in conspiracies, they also ended up costing him a legal team. Five members of Trump’s original team slated to defend him resigned just days before his second impeachment trial. Why? Because Trump’s insistence that they endorse disproven claims of election fraud put the lawyers’ own legal careers in jeopardy. Lawyers are required to represent their clients to the best of their ability, but they can be disbarred if they present information to a court they believe, or have good reason to believe, is false. Trump’s election-theft conspiracies wilted at the courtroom doors for months, and his lawyers were well aware of that. His legal team was prepared to mount a defense on other grounds, but not the one Trump wanted. So they quit en masse and were replaced a few days later with a new team—one that was universally criticized for being disorganized and of dubious competence.
Holding people responsible for false claims is of course a chief occupation of skeptics, investigators, journalists, and others. The legal system is being more widely recognized as a useful tool for helping refute some of the most blatant and egregious of them. When the cost of conspiracy mongering rises and results in real consequences, those who share them may think twice.