On August 29, 2020, about 18,000 people gathered in Berlin, Germany, either denying the existence of COVID-19 or contesting decisions taken to contain it. Among the gatherers were conspiracy theorists of all sorts, chemtrail believers, followers of QAnon, anti-vaccination advocates, homeopaths, people like Robert Kennedy Jr., and right-wing extremists who, waving Third Reich flags, attempted to storm the Reichstag, the seat of the German parliament.
A week later, on September 5, it was Rome’s turn. Fifteen hundred people found themselves in Piazza Bocca della Verità denying the existence of COVID-19, flaunting the absence of masks, and shouting against the “health dictatorship” that had been imposed by the government. Again, anti-vaccination advocates, 5G alarmists, and representatives of Forza Nuova (an extreme right-wing group that organized the event) spoke from the stage, declaring Trump and Putin friends of humanity while railing against the usual targets of the conspiracy theorists: the New World Order, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros, and others.
And then there was January 6, 2021, when the United States Capitol was assaulted by a similar mix of conspiracy theorists, QAnon believers, and right-wing militias.
Certainly, these gatherings included confused or frightened people who felt dissatisfied with their lives and the current situation. But, in the case of those most convinced, what leads them to deny the truth? And is it correct to call these people deniers?
“The characteristic of a lie is that of presenting itself as truth … When a fictional tale is well thought out, it does not contain within itself the means to be demolished as such,” wrote the French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet (2005). He was referring to revisionism on the Holocaust, but his discourse is in fact valid for any form of denial.
Those who deny the moon landing, evolution, global warming, the Holocaust, COVID-19, or President Biden’s victory sometimes live in a closed world. It’s a place where conclusions are reached before having all the facts and people delude themselves at different levels, believing they are independent thinkers or champions of truth. They never realize that they have embraced a faith that can only exist if it doesn’t address fact and truth.
It is clear that we are faced with people who have decided to consider facts and scientific evidence as optional—people for whom what they believe is more important than what the facts show. But it would be a mistake to think that they are just paranoid or crazy.
The difference between those who believe in conspiracy theories and those who do not should not be interpreted in terms of an opposition between sick and healthy people. It is not the paranoid on one side and the rational human beings on the other but rather a competition between different versions and sources aimed at understanding social reality.
Of course not every interpretation of an event has the same validity. Different versions can be rationally analyzed and compared to understand which explanations are justified and which are not.
For this to happen, motivations, interests, cognitive skills, and a desire for in-depth study are necessary; these are all resources that we usefully employ every day in addressing the most important problems of our existence but that, for obvious economic reasons, we cannot apply in many other relevant areas.
Conspiracy theories and denialisms, in short, can be framed as one of the ways that people have of explaining the reality of certain events. They attribute meaning to a fragmented world characterized by uncertainty—a world that they often reject—and in this way reduce their sense of anxiety.
Recent studies seem to confirm that a state of anxiety can push people to think in a way that is closer to a conspiracy mentality. In May 2018, the American Psychiatric Association presented the results of a survey conducted in the United States that showed that 39 percent of Americans were more anxious than they were the previous year, especially regarding health, relationships, security, politics, and the economy (American Psychiatric Association 2019).
The data are corroborated by other reports, such as another Pew Research Center poll from the same year showing that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans feel that their party has lost ground, in recent years, on issues they consider important (Loggia 2019). It would be interesting to know today, in the aftermath of Trump’s attempted coup d’état with disinformation and conspiracy theories, what the American people think about these issues.
These existential crises, combined with the idea of not having a say in important matters, fuels conspiracy thinking. In these situations, conspiracy theories offer comfort because they provide comfortable scapegoats and make the world seem simpler and more controllable than it actually is.
These people, in short, can believe that if there were no bad guys, then everything would be fine. Instead, those who don’t believe in conspiracy theories simply have to admit that bad things, or things we don’t like, happen and are out of our control.
Mechanisms to protect one’s self-esteem seem to come into play, which allow one to attribute responsibility for one’s own disadvantage or one’s values to specific subjects or to the system in general.
It is therefore a question of finding a way to counter conspiracy theories without questioning the identity of a person. As Joanne Miller, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, and colleagues put it: we should not attack individual beliefs but rather the reasons that lead people to believe conspiracy theories (Miller et al. 2016).
It means working to improve citizens’ trust in institutions and in those who govern, but it also means addressing the profound sense of anxiety that surrounds people in the face of a complex—and in many ways frightening—world. Why are there conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, 9/11 attacks, or, even before that, the assassination of President Kennedy? Why is the idea of a pandemic that puts the entire planet in crisis rejected? Because they are unpredictable (or unwanted by many, as in the case of Trump’s loss) events that are, as such, terrifying. If not even the strongest country in the world, the United States, its president, or even the entire planet, can be considered safe, then it means that none of us can ever truly be safe. And that’s what frightens us.
It is much more reassuring to think that these events are the result of elaborate plans put in place by some powerful, hidden, evil cabal. Believing this is tantamount to thinking that someone always has the world’s situation under control, even if it is someone with evil intentions. It means that we are not at the mercy of chance and that, at worst, we only need to find a way to take the “bad guys” out of the picture.
One can imagine fighting against the Jews, George Soros, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, or even Reptilians and Satanists. But fighting against chance and the unpredictable is impossible.
References
American Psychiatric Association. 2019. Americans’ overall level of anxiety about health, safety and finances remain high (May 20). Available online at https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/americans-overall-level-of-anxiety-about-health-safety-and-finances-remain-high.
Loggia, J. 2019. Republicans, Democrats both see less reason for optimism in 2019 than they did in 2018. Pew Research Center (January 29). Available online at https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/29/republicans-democrats-both-see-less-reason-for-optimism-in-2019-than-they-did-in-2018/.
Miller, Joanne M., Kyle L. Saunders, and Christina E. Farhart. 2016. Conspiracy endorsement as motivated reasoning: The moderating roles of political knowledge and trust. American Journal of Political Science 60(4): 824–844. Available online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/24877458.
Vidal-Naquet, P. 2005. Les assassins de la mémoire. Paris, France: La decouverte.