How people start to believe in conspiracy theories
Chemtrails, Vaccines, 5G-hazards, Jews, Illuminati, and so on. Conspiracy theories run on the net and in the minds of the most paranoid people
Before his death, italian professor and writer Umberto Eco declared in a interview that “social network have become platforms for idiots”, and he was absolutely right.
Nowadays an out-of-control diffusion of fake-news and conspiracy theories through Facebook, Twitter and Youtube has often determined the outcome of some elections all around the world: the Brexit just three years ago and the new rise of far-rights all around Europe and Americas are just example.
And after all a new research showed that in USA more than half of the people believe in at least one or two of these conspiracies
But now it comes a question: how the people start to believe in conspiracy theories ?
The Bentall and Freeman study
Recently, by Facebook, I discovered an article on Springer.com published by Daniel Freeman and Richard P. Bentall, psychiatrists coming respectively from Oxford and Liverpool universities.
For their study, the two psychiatrists have analysed a group of 5645 people, whose datas were in theUS National Comorbidity Survey-Replication (NCS-R). Those people had completed the item “I am convinced there is a conspiracy behind many things in the world.”
The result was that 1618 people ( the 26,7 % ) endorsed the conspiracy belief item. According to the studies these individuals were more to be:
males; currently unmarried; less educated; in a lower income household; outside the labour force; from an ethnic minority group; not attending religious services; taking a weapon outside; and perceiving themselves as of lower social standing compared to others. Individuals endorsing the conspiracy belief item had lower levels of physical and psychological well-being, higher levels of suicidal ideation, weaker social networks, less secure attachment style, difficult childhood family experiences, and were more likely to meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder.
So, according to the study the typical conspiracy believer is the typical person whose life “sucks” but it’s not his fault but it’s always SOMEONE ELSE’s fault.
And embracing conspiracy theories is, for these people, a sort of consolation or medicine against their “miserable life”.
Unfortunately I have to say – also looking to the anti-immigration and no-vax psychosis spreading around the web – that also most of people with high reputations are embracing these dangerous stuffs.
Three different categories of conspiracy theorists
So I think I will take three different categories, based also to a discussion on Facebook I had about the Bentall and Freeman study:
Category 1: the idiot
Well it could look like an offensive term, but it’s a reference to the Lars Von Trier’s film “Idiots” .
The “Idiot” is surely the category that belongs to the group of people analysed in the study. He’s usually a person without job, relationship, or basic studies and with a probably sad life.
But despite the miserable background this person proclaims himself as an expert at the same level of Einsten or Stephen Hawking and it’s the perfect example of the Dunning Kruger effect.
It’s easily to find these type of people in the greatest part of flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, or chemtrail believers.
But there could be also some exceptions, there are people who have had at least one graduation but they threw it away in the trash ( metaphorically ).
One of these examples is, in Finland, Marco De Wit, the 51-years old founder and owner of the racist organisation Suomen Kansa Ensin ( Finnish People First ), also knows as SKE, or SKEtsot.
This guy got a Philosophy master years and years ago at the University of Turku, but after that he worked in a funeral company which bankrupted almost ten years ago.
After the bankruptcy, he decided not to get another job, but he thought that all his failures were SOMEONE ELSE’s fault, and as we know, that “SOMEONE ELSE” refers to immigrants, jews, gays, or the entire EU. So he took part in different racist organisation and now he’s the owner of SKE with his drug-addicted girlfriend.
category 2: the opportunist
The Opportunist is almost the opposite of the Idiot, because usually is a person with a very high education, a professor or a doctor who decided to embrace pseudoscientific arguments just for money, ego or blind faith.
The antivax psychosis has unfortunately rubbed off on most personalities of science, like for example the Nobel Prize Luc Montagnier, known for the discovering of the HIV-virus in 1983.
In these last 10 years Montagnier has embraced a lot of antiscientific arguments: he supported homeopathy and water memory as alternative medicines, and he became a sort of idol for the no-vax communities.
Another dangerous personality was Ryke Hamer, a German doctor who lost his licence in 1986, he’s known for his pseudo-treatment named as “Germanic New Medicine” for the cancer treatment.
This treatment was based on this absurd assumption: do you have a cancer? It’s due surely to old traumas or unsolved conflicts and there’s no need for traditional treatment. Unfortunately his “therapy” has caused several deaths ( last one happened three years ago in Italy ) and he was forbidden to practice his “therapy”.
And even if Hamer died just two years ago in Norway, most of his sick ideas have been spread all around the world, and there are still several doctors or ex doctors using strange methods like him, like laetrile, bicarbonate or drinking simple fruit juices.
In Finland, one example is Juha Ahvio, doctor in theology in the University of Helsinki, who has so long embraced position between Christian Fundamentalism, racism and conspiracy – he’s also a climate change denialist, how could hell be any worse ?
He’s also one of the most important contributor to OikeaMedia ( in Finnish right media ), a sort of Finnish version of Breitbart ( or better to say BreitFart ).
category 3: the feeble-minded
It’s almost similar to the “Idiot”, but differently from the first, the “Feeble-Minded” is generally a person with a lot of phobias, fears and paranoias, and sometimes he could be a person with a mental sickness.
The “Feeble-Minded” believes in everything that the “Opportunists” write on the papers or on the netpages and the “Idiots” spread around the social networks, even if the stuff they spread is without logic.
And unfortunately I have to say that in several religious circles, included Christians, the concentration is very high: one example is the Satanic Panic between ’80 and ’90 years where there were “testimonies” of people victims of satanism or other conspiracies.
But the truth was that most of the people were simply mentally unstable, one was Rebecca Brown ( whose story I wrote last March ), another was John Todd ( a drug-addict and pathological liar who went in jail for raping two girls ), and so on.. ( And social networks didn’t exist that time )
but even if those stories have been debunked long time ago, there are still people who still firmly believe in them, people with a completely distorted vision of Christian faith, probably ex drug addicts or alcoholics.
In Finland one example is Johanna Tukiainen, the “Destroyed Woman” of our Echoes’ song. She was stripper with a long story of drugs, alcohol and troubles with the law.
And after gave the life to Jesus three years ago ( I was there assisting the process ), her mental situation has continued to go from bad to worse, this due to the long time of drugs taken during her past years, and her Facebook profile is a confused mixture of random Bible verses and conspiracy theories like Illuminati or chemtrails. She also declared to have a vision of the demon and the hell in Miami four years ago, but listening very carefully it’s more a hallucination than a “vision”
I have to say, it’s great that a drug addict gives life to Jesus, the problem is that he needs always help.
