Conspiracy Theorists: It’s all about the fantasy
One of the most exhausting things about conspiracy theorists is their imperviousness to logic. No matter how many facts you prove, no matter how many of their arguments you destroy, they return to their base beliefs. Collisions with reality don’t affect them, either. Sovereign citizens insist their view of the law is correct, even when they lose case after case and rack up fines and jail stays.
“It’s stupidity,” critics say. But a significant minority of conspiracy theorists have advanced degrees.
“It’s a lack of education,” critics say. But again, some conspiracy theorists are well educated; and most conspiracy theorists, regardless of formal education, had an average understanding of the facts before they fell down the rabbit hole.
“It’s mental illness,” critics say. Conspiracies are natural draws to people with the paranoid varieties of mental illness, but there aren’t enough of them to come close to filling out the ranks of conspiracy theorists.
So what is it? An interview with a former Flat Earther offered a hint. He credited debunking videos with convincing them the earth is round–but not at the height of his belief. He wasn’t receptive until Flat Earth lost some of its appeal and he was looking for a way out. That’s because at its heart, a conspiracy theory isn’t about facts or scientific logic. It’s 100% about emotional reasoning. To put it another way…
It’s all about the fantasy.
Each group coheres around a fantasy, which can become so important to members that it overrides reality:
- Sovereign Citizens: I’m powerful, independent of all strictures except the ones I choose. No one can tell me what to do.
- First Amendment Auditors: The cops aren’t in charge of me, I’m in charge of them.
- Militia and Preppers: I can protect my family/group/nation against the dangers that are on the verge of overtaking us.
It’s not strange that each group has a core fantasy. All groups do. Each religious group offers its adherents a different worldview, schools offer the fantasy of belonging and achievement, cat rescue groups offer the fantasy of helping the helpless. Some fantasies are more achievable than others. If you join a reasonably well-run cat rescue group, you will rescue some cats. If you join your local church, you’ll find togetherness and pull off some modest charity projects, but you’re not going to bring about an enlightened world of peace and justice, bathed in God’s love.
Healthy groups keep achievable goals front and center. As soon as the wilder fantasies take center stage, things go… very badly. If your church believes a better world is coming, but it’s going to take a while, and the best way to help it along is baby steps like food banks and addiction outreach, then you’re going to stay connected to the rest of the world. If your church says the better world is coming any second and you, you personally, have a vital role in making it happen, you’re screwed.
This can happen in any organization. Cat rescues can go weird and Messianic just as easily as churches can.
What makes conspiracy theorists different is the strength with which they believe in their fantasies. The fantasy can be all-enveloping, overwriting the person’s entire understanding of the world. For example, both First Amendment auditors and sovereign citizens are dedicated to proving the police and courts have no power over them, and as a result of their, um, unique methods, they spend huge amounts of time in the power of the police and courts. Pointing this out to them does nothing. They’re perpetually on the verge of winning their cases. They’ve won all their previous cases. (Even ones where they pleaded guilty and paid a fine, or spent time in jail, or had to go on the run.) The time they spend in court is time someone else doesn’t have to spend in court, so it’s worth it. Any minute now they’re going to be validated, and they’re going to usher in a new age of freedom for all.
If their reasons sound like excuses, it’s because they are. The intellectual trappings of sovereignty and auditing are a shell. The real engine that drives conspiracy theorists, the untouchable core of their belief, is an emotion.
The fantasy is all about the emotion.
Someone who gets into cat rescue to feel loved by foster cats is going to have a different experience than someone who wants to feel triumph over animal abusers.
Fantasies are composed of two things: a vision and an emotion. The vision, the part that’s easiest for outsiders to see, is just a lens. The emotion is the burning light behind it. People are drawn to a fantasy because it gives them a chance to feel a particular emotion. The fantasy has more or less power over them based on their need for a hit of emotion. And if the fantasy feeds their need for emotion efficiently, then attacking the vision, the intellectual part of the fantasy, isn’t going to do a damn thing.
That’s why true-believer sovereign citizens don’t care that their professed need for freedom leads them into a hell of a lot of jail time. It’s not freedom they want, it’s a hit of sweet, sweet defiance.
They have to be in contact with the justice system to prove the justice system can’t touch them. That’s central to their fantasy. They can’t sit at home, happily musing about how the police are powerless over them. It doesn’t make them feel omnipotent, defiant–and that feeling of defiance is the real engine behind both movements. They have to seek the police out, to get in their faces and prove that you aren’t the boss of me.
What’s behind the need for defiance?
A gaping chasm of powerlessness.
Many sovereign citizens and First Amendment auditors are working-class, poorly educated, often black. They may have been touched by the self-reinforcing triangle of addiction, unemployment, and mental illness–if not in their lives, then in their parents’ lives. They may have already had criminal records when they joined the movement. Some of their stories are as simple as “born poor to awful parents who taught them all the wrong lessons”; others are complicated sagas of early success destroyed by a breakdown or alcoholism. Either way, if their lives didn’t start in the toilet, they’re in the toilet now, and they see no way out.
Enter a movement that offers them belonging, brotherhood, a chance to feel proud of themselves, and the promise that they can defeat the system that’s crushing them.
Yeah. I’d join too.
Breaking the fantasy
You’re not going to shake someone like that out of their beliefs with logic alone. You have to offer them an alternative that promises all the same things, without any drawbacks of the sort they’re most sensitive to. (For example, if they’re fiercely resistant to shame, then a solution like “Admit you made the traffic stop unnecessarily difficult and tell the judge you won’t do it again” isn’t going to fly.) And you can’t do it when they’re high on the euphoria of being powerful and right and on their way to a six-figure settlement from the court system that jailed them unjustly. You have to wait until they’re receptive… which will happen when they’re ready, not when it’s convenient to you, and definitely not in the middle of an argument in the comments of a YouTube video.
To put it another way: The only way to break someone out of an all-encompassing emotional fantasy is to offer them an even more satisfying fantasy. To do that, you have two options:
- If they’re in the enraptured phase of their fantasy, offer them a fantasy that adds to their current fantasy. If they’re a Young Earth Creationist, offer them Flat Earth. If they’re a sovereign citizen who believes only the federal government is legitimate, tell them the federal government lost its legitimacy sometime in the last century, and now no government is legitimate. If they believe no government is legitimate, tell them about the Freemasons and the New World Order.
This is why people who are absorbed into one conspiracy theory are likely to be pulled deeper and deeper in: Conspiracy theories are additive.
- If they’re losing interest in their fantasy, find out where their doubts are and offer them counterevidence that doesn’t touch their sore spots. This is how the former Flat Earther weaned himself off Flat Earth, how fundamentalist Christians leave fundamentalism, and how atheists drift back into Christianity. It’s also how your boyfriend convinced you to leave the job that paid so well but was making you miserable.
(Remember, all groups are bound together by a fantasy. All of them.)
The first option makes people worse, not better. The second option works only when they’re ready for it to work. If you want to change a conspiracy theorist’s mind, be patient, non-judgemental, and prepared with a vast array of facts and arguments, so you can meet them wherever they are; and be ready to wait a long, long time, because first, their fantasy has to fail them.
In conclusion…
Argue with conspiracy theorists for fun. (They’re mighty entertaining.) But don’t expect to change their minds. They’re not stupid, uneducated, or mentally ill. They’re in the grips of a fantasy that meets their emotional needs far better than reality ever could, and no mere appeal to logic is going to shake them loose.
But as you draw away, respect the power of their fantasy. They’re not alone in their beliefs, and the sheer mass of people who believe hasn’t created a reality check within the various conspiracy movements. Something’s wrong with the world, something wrong enough to push huge numbers of people to turn to anything but reality for answers.
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OK. I give up. I’ve tried to comment–a real comment–five times. the testing one went through, but none of the others. What gives?
I’m sorry my site lost your comment. That’s frustrating. No idea what’s causing it, but the next time I’m on a computer instead of my phone, I’ll pop the hood and find out what’s going on. Hopefully your comments are just awaiting approval.
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I’ve seen similar commentary lately about how anti-vaxxers’ fantasy is largely about control and guilt. In a science-based, data-driven system, you can never do enough for your kid; there isn’t enough energy or hours in the day, some things that sound good now may be proven harmful in the future, and some things are just out of your control. A lot of parents wonder what they could have done better, and wrestle with guilt.
So it’s appealing to rely on a fantasy which promises that you ARE doing the right thing for your child, which guarantees the child will be okay, and says that what’s really important is loving your child and trusting your gut.
Ditto, many anti-vaxxers – overwhelmingly fairly-privileged white women – may be having their first bad experiences with conventional medicine during pregnancy, since there’s a lot of prenatal care involved, pregnancy is pretty uncomfortable, and some percentage of medical professionals are jerks (like any other group).
It’s easy to imagine that, with a cocktail of anxiety and guilt already brewing, a sexist doctor or a humiliating procedure might crystallize into … not wanting the baby to feel this way, which means keeping them away from that mean, mean conventional medicine.
Thought you might find it interesting too; I’m fond of exploring how different demographic groups often find different fantasies appealing, even when the emotions involved are similar.
That’s a great deal of speculation. I’m not an anti vaxer – but I understand that the underlying foundation of their movement, and many conspiracy theories, is a lack of integrity in the institutions they question. The last several decades have been riddled with doctors and scientists who have taken corporate funding and produced the results corporations wanted. From sugar to tobacco, to oxycontin, to climate change and more than I could name.
A generation ago the word of science and doctors was sacrosanct – they were believed to have an absolute kind of integrity and adherence to ethical principals. The pervasive corruption of capitalism in medicine and science has been exposed time and again eroding the general public’s belief in their integrity.
Couple that with soaring rates of developmental disabilities that were once considered rare, parents are going to be scared, not trust the advice of doctors and scientists who will alter their expertise for the right monetary compensation and look for their own answers.
The timeline for autistic symptoms first becoming apparent in children coincides almost exactly with the MMR vaccine schedule. It’s a correlation and people latched onto it – simple fear, lack of trust in the integrity of the experts and a correlating timeline of symptoms to supposed cause give the movement its perpetual motion.
A growing and publicly exposed lack of integrity, ethics, and professional accountability among experts in medical and scientific fields is real and valid. It serves as a launching pad for a variety of conspiracy theories.
As a society, in so many different ways we are facing a question of value – if monetary value is the highest of all values, then there is no objective truth, because truth becomes mutable to the highest bidder.
Conspiracies don’t spring up in a vacuum – the environment also has to be conducive, and we, as a society, are responsible for creating an environment very hospitable to magical thinking and the proliferation of pseudoscientific reasoning. No one is above or better than those duped into that kind of thinking if we actively participate, support, and profit from systems that engender that level of societal distrust.
HBomberguy, on YouTube, has talked about this sort of thing in some of his recent videos. He ends his video on flat earthers with surprising sympathy. His patreon supporters got an early look at a video he did on the war on Christmas and he’s much less sympathetic in that.
It’s just an interesting topic- why people insist on believing things that are clearly untrue and logic that doesn’t make sense at all.
Yes, it is perfectly healthy to not want your children to be treated poorly in the way you have. There is a higher percentage of “jerks”, in this case sadists who are often sexual sadists, in women’s “health”.
As long as we’re looking at the psychology, the people who believe in vaccinations that’s good for their children want to believe they are doing the right thing. They want to believe that the easy path, the one they will not catch as much flak for, we’ll be right. Because he wants to do the hard thing?
But the truth is that all you have to do is read a few scientific studies about the ingredients of vaccines and the effects they have on the body to see that more than anything, vaccination is a dysgenics program. Always has been.
So-called modern medicine just isn’t going to be able to help reform the human genome when it comes to immunity. Our bodies communicate with the Earth to Foster the elements for immunity needed the most given our place and Circumstance.
Germ theory is 240 years old, and still considered a theory. Interesting. Take a look at terrain Theory.
And remember, Copernicus and Galileo and all the various greats were hated in their time. Now we take their discoveries for granted and laugh at anyone who doesn’t agree with them. It would be foolish to believe that current science has everything all figured out, and that we are not still in the dark ages in many ways.
You can deny the past few centuries of modern science, including medicine of course. That denial will not change the realities.
I saw this on FB today and it reminded me of your post!
https://www.wired.com/story/please-please-please-dont-mock-conspiracy-theories/
I’m suddenly living this in real time with a friend who insists on posting videos of quiet hospital exteriors proving that the virus is a hoax or at a minimum being greatly exaggerated. When her friends confront her, she is unfazed & just says everyone is entitled to their beliefs. Her “beliefs” entail rejecting the story told by all of the world’s leaders, health authorities and the mainstream media & replacing it with her own hunch. It’s infuriating & I finally had to block her after she invited people to just keep commenting on her posts because that spreads her message further.
LML, I know people like this, too. I was venting about it to a friend from China (I used to live in Shanghai) who has already lived through most of the phenomena we’re seeing. My friend said, “when their friends and family begin to die, they will understand this is not a hoax.” I think some people just really aren’t used to being inconvenienced, and this first big jump into discomfort is jarring.
Quiet Hospital exteriors is very telling. In a real pandemic, there would be a lot of coming and going. We would not have empty hospitals like this. Maybe it’s time you really examine your own deeply held beliefs.
Yes, “quiet exteriors” are indeed “telling:” They’re quiet because hospitals no longer have enough beds to treat covid patients, they are not allowing visitors nor are many of them performing elective procedures. Notice the hospital parking lots are far more empty than prior to the pandemic and then conclude there’s no pandemic. No, people are not “coming and going” because there *is* a pandemic. Many of those who do come out of medical facilities are found in the back of the facility in reefer trucks.
Duh.
I ran into this online as well, but with someone I didn’t know. When I asked for evidence they told me to think for myself and stop watching CNN.
Last week a Virginia pastor contracted Covid-19 from a trip to New Orleans and died eleven days after sharing a meme that blaming the media for making Coronavirus look much worse than it actually was. People are still insisting on going to large church services and Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, had its students come back after spring break, so I”m just sort of waiting to see what happens with all that. It’s interesting being in a situation where conspiracy theorists are so likely to get hit so hard by the thing they’re denying.
Some of these coronavirus deniers are in for a very cruel awakening. But there are probably others who will never admit they were wrong. They’ll either insist that the overall number of deaths was exaggerated, or they’ll claim it was biological warfare against Christians, with a bioengineered virus and a plot by evil medical professionals to prevent people from recovering.
There is a psychologist in Germany, Sebastian Bartoshek, who wrote his dissertation about this and had some media attention. He isolated 5 risk factors for people who believe in cts.
1. Political extremism, either end of the spectrum and 2. Very religious. These are the two strongest indicators.
3. Female (This is a bit complicated, the majority of conspiracy believers are women, yet men believe the more outlandish stuff. While the distribution for the amount of people who believe in a ct to the frequency of the ct, looks like a Gaussian normal distribution for women, for men there is a small peak at the far end of the spectrum. This might be a hint on that some cp stuff is a personality trait thing linked to healthy scepticism, for some it might be something different, with a difference between men and women)
4. Low education, and 5. Low income (I do not know how he separated feelings of social disadvantage vs actual social disadvantage, but he too argued that cts can give people a feeling of superiority, which is attractive for the disadvantaged)
He notes that these factors are measurable, yet have a huge error, meaning they are far from being determining factors. Apparently there are studies showing that cts get more popular in uncertain political and financial times. Which, uh, seems to get confirmed on the largest of scales at the moment.
“Low income” and “low education” are really interesting because one conspiracy theorist type I know has his political views shaped by the fear that with taxes will take away what he’s worked for through his life, and has indicated that he’s insecure about his level of education. He seems to use some of the conspiracy theory stuff he subscribes to as a way of feeling superior to other people, like, “I know this information, I am smarter than you.” Except of course it’s usually proven wrong with a quick google search.
—Guards! Guards!