"The first step is recognizing that conspiracies do, in fact, exist."

October 25, 2020 1:54 PM

How to Talk to a Conspiracy Theorist. "I find myself saying to believers, “I don’t know if you’re right or wrong, but if you were right, I would expect the following to happen,” referring to any number of established conspiracies whose unmasking all followed a similar pattern. My goal is usually to press the believer’s own recognition of internal contradictions so that the belief itself gets harder to sustain." Also.
posted by storybored (34 comments total)

In case you hit the paywall on the first link, here's what they don't want you to see.
posted by chavenet at 2:26 PM on October 25, 2020 [20 favorites]

Great article, but it ended too soon. I kept scrolling to find more. Would love to read a longer exploration of the psychology behind conspiracy theorists and the way different approaches make their appeals to varying levels of effectiveness.

One thing I've been trying lately is to shift conversations from focusing on intent to focusing on impact. For example, with Covid, questioning how useful it is for us with no real insider knowledge to focus on the origin of the virus (and therefore any intentions of those who were "involved") rather than how it's affecting us right now and what we can do about it. I try not to be dismissive of the possibilities that the person is putting forth and at the same time try to engage them in helping me solve the problem I'm currently having about Covid, e.g., that way that it's stressful and worrisome for me right now, etc.

So far that's worked moderately well, but I'd be curious how that approach could be effective from the conspiracy theorist's point of view, if it appeals to the core emotional trigger (as the author suggests). And why.
posted by iamkimiam at 2:45 PM on October 25, 2020 [8 favorites]

I read a remarkable observation about QAnon on RationalWiki:

The reality of sex trafficking is rather different than QAnon proponents would like to have one believe. ... most of the survival sex involving children is because "the child is homeless, has run away from foster care or has been kicked out by their parents, often due to being queer or transgender. Many of these kids end up trading sex for money, drugs or a place to sleep because it’s their only way to survive." The problem for these homeless teens is often that foster care and other support systems that could keep them off the streets and out of prostitution are often chronically underfunded. So, the situation then is that deeply conservative parents form a pool of people who are likely to reject their LGBTQ or nonconforming kids, who hate taxes and funding social services, and who form a base for QAnon recruitment. This amounts to a form of psychological projection wherein QAnon supporters baseelessly accuse liberals of the most wildly reprehensive actions for which conservatives are in reality at least partly responsible.

I think about that a lot. Here are conspiracy believers who see real suffering and sorrow in the world but cannot bear the cognitive burden of changing their minds or accepting responsibility. They are feeling real sorrow, just as the true believers who think that abortion actually kills babies, and that real sorrow is just as dangerous -- or more, if it starts an actual civil war.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:54 PM on October 25, 2020 [114 favorites]

I’m having a hard time right now dealing with a guy on another forum I go to who is absolutely convinced the Hunter Biden laptop story/conspiracy is completely true. The problem is, they aren’t a frothing-at-the-mouth maga. They’re normally pretty level-headed. But, on this issue, they discuss it as if they were talking about the sky being blue. I’m at a loss as to how to rebut their points.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:59 PM on October 25, 2020 [5 favorites]

I had a friend that was telling me that covid was a bioweapon. This is how I discussed it with him.

I hung up. I had had quite enough of his bullshit.
posted by Splunge at 3:16 PM on October 25, 2020 [26 favorites]

I've got a couple of Qanon and just plain crazy friends, and not wanting to engage, but only to change the subject, I say: "there may or may not be something behind what you are saying, but I have no way to know, nor to confirm or deny any of that, so what do you think about this off white on the big wall here?"
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:29 PM on October 25, 2020 [2 favorites]

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
posted by chavenet at 3:36 PM on October 25, 2020 [6 favorites]

I like the specific tip of asking questions based on actual conspiracies, like about the infrastructure and support staff that would be necessary for these enormous operations. That won't work for the total loons, but someone at risk but still mostly rational might get coaxed back out of it by engaging their critical thinking skills.
posted by Scattercat at 3:46 PM on October 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

When people talk any kind of crazy, I try to operatively condition them, by immediately turning away and directing my attention at something else. Does seem to work, do it enough and they get it, and stop bringing that shit up. I can only hope that the effect is at least slightly lasting outside of my presence.
posted by StickyCarpet at 3:49 PM on October 25, 2020 [4 favorites]

It sounds a lot like talking to toddlers.
posted by The Card Cheat at 3:57 PM on October 25, 2020 [10 favorites]

Toddlers display a more genuine, reflective interest in the world, however.
posted by Ahmad Khani at 4:02 PM on October 25, 2020 [28 favorites]

I wish the sex trafficking stuff was all QAnon and fringe wackos but last month the Senate Republicans released a “report”, debunked by Snopes in a lengthy article, which amongst loads of other crap alleged involvement of Hunter Biden in human trafficking based on “extensive public reporting” which unsurprisingly turned out to be a single New York Post piece.

Unfortunately the civic foundations of our society have been shot through with this stuff, on purpose, since the beginning:

It’s worth asking: Do we actually live in a particularly paranoid era? As a way of understanding the world, the conspiracy theory has deep roots in American politics — beyond the New World Order and the Red Scare and back into the 18th century. Around the time of the Revolutionary War, conspiracy theory wasn’t the provenance of marginalized cranks, but a basic mode of thought for the thinkers and revolutionaries, whose belief in a “comprehensive conspiracy against liberty,” as the historian Bernard Bailyn wrote, “lay at the heart of the Revolutionary movement.” They weren’t alone: obsession with conspiracy was also at the heart of nearly every turn in the French Revolution just a few years later; pamphlets from the era could easily compete for clicks against the stupidest stuff on YouTube.

The conspiracy theory, most easily defined as an account of the world in which power is wielded and change effected by small, secret groups, has antecedents in anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic myths of the Protestant Reformation (and before). But it only began to flourish as theory during the Enlightenment, with the emergence of what we might call modernity — a recognizable political culture and a secular sense of history, in which the world follows rational, legible patterns of cause and effect, and in which humans, rather than God, are agents of socio-political transformation. This “man-centered causal history,” according to Gordon Wood, meant that “all enlightened thought of the 18th century was structured in such a way that conspiratorial explanations of complex events became normal, necessary, and rational.” Any seeming boom in conspiracy theories likely represents as much the ascendance of a mode of thinking (or even a theory of politics) inherent to modernity as it does a significant change to culture or discourse.

For early American anti-Catholic mythology see: Pope Night.

(Not to say, by mentioning the eighteenth-century anecdotes, that it's not extremely severe right now in 2020; and what's more it's an existential threat to humanity in combination with nuclear weapons here and all over the world.)
posted by Charles Bronson Pinchot at 5:24 PM on October 25, 2020 [10 favorites]

Whereas, in conspiratorial formulations, there’s often an exhortation to “stay tuned.” QAnon, like a lot of conspiracy theories, bears with it the endlessly deferred structure of the Rapture.

I think comparing it to a religious belief (however wacky and far out there) is giving it more respectability than it deserves. I've said it before, but the difference between a real conspiracy and a conspiracy-theory-cult like QAnon is that the latter is structured like a Saturday morning kids' cartoon. He talks about how unrealistic it is that these conspiracy theories have all these underpaid, underappreciated "minor employees" who despite all that, somehow never speak up or come forward - but that's 100% typical cartoon logic at work there. Megatron, Cobra Commander, Shredder, all the bad guys always have an army of faceless, totally disposable yet inexplicably loyal minions, as many as the plot requires. Likewise, even though everybody knows exactly who the main Bad Guy is, the main Bad Guy always gets away to threaten the good guys again next week. And of course, there's always a Plot To Destroy the Nation, or Take Over the World, or whatever the plot of the week is - and it's very dire and very scary and very threating, but it also....never actually occurs. The country never actually gets destroyed, the world never actually gets taken over, and liberals never actually confiscate everyone's guns/institute Sharia Law/whatever the current plot is supposed to be. Yet somehow, even despite all the obvious cartoonishness of it, it all adds up to something that keeps them coming back, week after week.
posted by mstokes650 at 5:40 PM on October 25, 2020 [58 favorites]

This amounts to a form of psychological projection wherein QAnon supporters baseelessly accuse liberals of the most wildly reprehensive actions for which conservatives are in reality at least partly responsible.

w/the ongoing Epstein revelations, I've now just taken as a rule of thumb that *all* wild right wing allegations are, in fact, projection. I fully expect them to find bodies before that investigation is over.

Holding out a modest amount of hope that the cannibalism is artistic license.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:22 PM on October 25, 2020 [13 favorites]

He talks about how unrealistic it is that these conspiracy theories have all these underpaid, underappreciated "minor employees" who despite all that, somehow never speak up or come forward ...

I wouldn't be surprised if some scam artists are doing so as we speak. A guy named Alberto Rivera claimed to be a defrocked Jesuit who had taken part in the sort of thing that anti-Catholics believe the Church is up to, with the New World Order and so forth. Jack Chick hung his hat on Rivera's claims and wrote anti-Catholic tracts based on them. Was Rivera ever a priest? He was not. But did it matter? I will bet that some fake QAnon "whistleblowers" are out there, like what's-his-fuck who pretended to be JFK Jr.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:33 PM on October 25, 2020 [5 favorites]

I thought Garret Bucks in Anne Helen Peterson's newsletter had a good point - that if you are confronted with a serious problem at a societal level but you've been raised in a highly individualistic mindset, you have to twist things to make them fit.

"For a white Evangelical, the idea of Black Lives Matter might make sense. But the need for collective shifts of power structures doesn’t make sense — at least in their world. Of course they would jump at something like QAnon, which, instead of suggesting that the “bad guy” is actually the system, suggests that the bad guy is an actual set of bad guys, individual and malevolent bad guys, doing specific actions that you can then oppose."

So perhaps one thing that might help is for us to get better at explaining how a system can have a problem which isn't necessarily the fault of any one person.
posted by harriet vane at 10:25 PM on October 25, 2020 [16 favorites]

For a white Evangelical, the idea of Black Lives Matter might make sense. But the need for collective shifts of power structures doesn’t make sense — at least in their world. Of course they would jump at something like QAnon, which, instead of suggesting that the “bad guy” is actually the system, suggests that the bad guy is an actual set of bad guys, individual and malevolent bad guys, doing specific actions that you can then oppose."

White supremacists would be a convenient bad guy that would make more sense than QAnon, but white evangelicals who support Trump are White supremacists so we can't have that.
posted by benzenedream at 11:02 PM on October 25, 2020 [7 favorites]

Colin has missed the point. Eric is his friend, and he wants to help him. But Eric's behaviour is hurting other people.

How to talk to a conspiracy theorist : 'If you don't stop hurting people, I can't be your friend.'
posted by Cardinal Fang at 1:07 AM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]

Conspiracy believers tend to be good at using the Gish gallop. The moment you're about to succeed convincing them of the lunacy of one of their talking points, they move on to the next.
Only try to reason with them if you have lots of spare time and infinite patience.
posted by farlukar at 3:04 AM on October 26, 2020 [11 favorites]

I’m at a loss as to how to rebut their points.

At this stage, depends on what the points are.

Calling Hunter's getting paid to be on a board or running an investement thing? Social media reaction affecting accounts? Personal pictures/videos? Other claims?

There are some hills to die on depending on the point. How Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976) can be taken as corruption needs there to be a defined benefit for a known payment and that has lead to todays Trump family actions while in power. The history of Justice Powell is hardly a conspiracy as, well, there is no secrets to his thinking, proposed plan and the implementation of the plan per his memo. Now the memo was not ment to be known to the public and yet here we are knowing about it so is that a failed conspiracy?

One aspect of the reaction of the social media companies is wanting to minimize the grief from advertisers and government regulators. Plenty of ink can be spilled over advertising. (to listen to such ink spillage Attack Ads!. His "the drapes must not clash" mantra would be a rather good fit for an advertising grief discussion.)


Qanon -> good at gish gallop

Considering Q started as "Hillary is going to jail" and then added the pedo angle and now according to at least 2 "Q Anon" maps have UFOs/Majestic 12/Northwoods Document/Frankland scandal and one had Dynacorp/BCCI there is a whole lotta gish to gallop in that wide of a range. The pedo angle is a good hook - who wants to poo-poo kids suffering?

The Q believer I interact with can't define what 5G is nor could s/he tell me the founding claims of Q. But no way in hell could I talk him/her out of JFK jr was gonna be the new running mate on Oct 17th in Dallas. (and then calling and asking if drinking turpentine as you can't afford healthcare is a good plan and you need to check with me. When you are calling me and asking if drinking turpentine is a good idea you are scraping the bottom of the barrel. But supporters of turpentine consumption have been linked to here on The Blue as thinkers of deep thoughts - the peeing freedom gal so its not like people of The Blue are immune to q-esque things.)


The thing I have had the best success is the reframe to "the conspiracy is out in the open and it is congress" idea. Various things that are wrong start with and can be stopped by the elected "leaders". Work to change them vs "researching" youtube videos linked on Qforums.
posted by rough ashlar at 6:11 AM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

The thing I have had the best success is the reframe to "the conspiracy is out in the open and it is congress" idea.

Not me. The difference with QANON is that generic 'Congress' isn't the problem, it's only Democrats, so the fix is to get rid of all Democrats. I mean the main hook of QANON is that the Clintons run pedophile rings and kill people with the support of the Democratic party and it's various boogeyman fund raisers.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:23 AM on October 26, 2020 [5 favorites]

The author made an interesting point at the end of the article. Ask, what is the believer getting out of the conspiracy? In the case of QANON, the believer is ultimately very concerned and upset about children being sexually abused.

Not only is this (in and of itself) a valid and commendable concern, but it might say more about the believer than they realize.

Everyone who experienced childhood sexual trauma in their childhood doesn't grow up to be a QANON believer. (I'm not, for one.) But I can see how that might be the hook for a lot of QANON fans.

The idea that, armed with the info you found on Reddit, you can single-handedly charge in and rescue children from sexual abuse would be deeply reassuring and fulfilling to someone who experienced abuse like that as a helpless child. And who might themselves have dreamed about being rescued that way.

Thanks, Metafilter. I didn't think I'd start out my week by feeling empathy almost to tears for QANON supporters, but here we are.
posted by ErikaB at 8:53 AM on October 26, 2020 [8 favorites]

That's a good point - similar to cult followers, who are often drawn in by the promise of world-saving work.
posted by harriet vane at 9:31 AM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

On the Hunter Biden angle, I usually just start by talking about how fucking terrible nepotism is, and how these spoiled kids are born with a silver spoon, and how kids of politicians get all these free opportunities, get some shared hatred going for the "elites", then pivot to Ivanka and Jared.
posted by benzenedream at 9:42 AM on October 26, 2020 [16 favorites]

It's worth considering that not all populations are equally susceptible to falling for conspiracy theories. CBC has started covering this in recent months -- indeed as harriet vane says, the similarity to cult followers who are drawn in by the promise of world-saving work is striking.

How conspiracies like QAnon are slowly creeping into some Canadian churches points out that

[C]onspiracy theories and church can often fill the same void, because they're trading on the same faith and desire for an authoritative voice — something exacerbated in a time of turmoil and anxiety.

"People of faith are also looking for a big story that explains why things are the way they are," [Pastor John van Sloten of Marda Loop Church in Calgary] said. "So again, these desires — these good desires, in all of us, I believe, as a theologian — they're ultimately meant to be directed to a grand narrator who can be trusted, who is authoritative."

Furthermore,

Colin Toffelmire, associate professor of Old Testament at Ambrose University College in Calgary, says there has been a historical vulnerability to conspiracy thinking in some versions of evangelicalism or fundamentalist Christianity.

"I think that's related to the history of how some Christians in North America have thought about history and science, especially," Toffelmire said. "For example, there's this long-standing objection in evangelical subculture to really well-accepted scientific theories, like the theory of evolution by natural selection."

Those objections — centred in versions of Christianity that believe that everything in the Bible is exactly historical and scientifically accurate — could make certain individuals suspicious of mainstream ideas in science and history, Toffelmire said.

"Some of that is kind of hard-baked into some versions of North American evangelical subculture," he said. "And so that is, I think, almost like an entry point. That suspicion of authority becomes an entry point for very strange conspiracy theories, like the QAnon conspiracy theory."

And it's not just evangelical Christians who are susceptible: QAnon is also taking hold in the "wellness community", where

"[T]here's often a lot of magical thinking." [...] For example, [...] people may turn to crystals or prayer as a Band-Aid solution for their life's problems, without engaging with those problems on a deeper level.

In this case at least, the community is being targeted for radicalization:

Conspirituality, a podcast that examines the links between wellness and conspiracy, has curated a list of more than two dozen wellness influencers who have alluded to QAnon in their posts.

[Los Angeles yoga instructor Seane] Corn says she started to notice it creeping into her social media feed at the start of the pandemic, with its followers using "yoga speak" and wellness branding to radicalize people online.

"The colours might be pastel. The fonts are very specific. There's maybe one post of someone doing yoga. Then the next day it's their food. The next day, it's a lifestyle shot," she said.

"But on maybe the fourth day, there's going to be a post that says, you know, very prettily "COVID is a hoax" and then a bunch of slides that keep giving misinformation and invite you to another link that then gives you more misinformation." [...]

Ali Breland, a reporter for Mother Jones who has been covering the overlap between QAnon and wellness, agrees.

He told CBC Radio's Day 6 earlier this month that wellness communities were already rife with anti-vaccination sentiment.

posted by heatherlogan at 10:11 AM on October 26, 2020 [7 favorites]

Conspirituality, a podcast that examines the links between wellness and conspiracy, has curated a list of more than two dozen wellness influencers who have alluded to QAnon in their posts.

This is not only really, really bloody scary, it also deserves a post of its own.
posted by Cardinal Fang at 11:38 AM on October 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

When it comes to Q, I've found tracing it to its origins helps. For my family it helps that they'd believe me when I said that I was watching when Q was born but for others the Q Origins Project might be useful.
posted by charred husk at 12:53 PM on October 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

I just finished The Masks of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson yet again. If you want a descent into the madness of conspiracy, you could do worse.
posted by Splunge at 4:25 PM on October 26, 2020 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile: EXCLUSIVE: Donald Trump's campaign is paying for private security to enforce a QAnon sign ban at his rallies and remove protesters who Secret Service aren't allowed to throw out

Wonder if they've been a problem for his rallies VS him being told the optics are bad.
posted by rough ashlar at 11:22 AM on October 27, 2020

Conspirituality, a podcast that examines the links between wellness and conspiracy, has curated a list of more than two dozen wellness influencers who have alluded to QAnon in their posts.

Erik Davis, who has been paying close attention to this particular intersection for years, has some interesting things to say about it in this podcast.
posted by ryanshepard at 11:23 AM on October 28, 2020

Thorzdad: I’m having a hard time right now dealing with a guy on another forum I go to who is absolutely convinced the Hunter Biden laptop story/conspiracy is completely true. The problem is, they aren’t a frothing-at-the-mouth maga. They’re normally pretty level-headed. But, on this issue, they discuss it as if they were talking about the sky being blue. I’m at a loss as to how to rebut their points.

Oops, looks like the dog ate the Trumposphere's homework: Tucker Carlson Reports He Lost Only Copy of Documents That Nail Biden ...within hours of announcing he had them, if I understand correctly.
posted by XMLicious at 4:13 AM on October 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Colin has missed the point. Eric is his friend, and he wants to help him. But Eric's behaviour is hurting other people.

How to talk to a conspiracy theorist : 'If you don't stop hurting people, I can't be your friend.'

Ironically I actually think that your position is the one that doesn't help others. "You're hurting others, therefore I can't be your friend" is essentially a position about your personal taste rather than about social good. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but simply personally refusing to have contact with bad people is about personal morality and not about impact on society. Would Colin have had more impact on Eric's behaviour by refusing to associate with him? It doesn't sound like it.

People are perfectly entitled not to associate with people who are hurting others! In many ways its very sensible but I don't think that it's a superior position from the point of view of the people being hurt, especially if there are ongoing efforts to pull people away from damaging ideas. There are obviously subtleties here - just staying uncomplicated friends with white supremacists on the basis that you don't want them to further radicalise looks a lot like not being too bothered by white supremacy for example - but I don't think automatically pulling back from people who are wrong is the optimum strategy either.
posted by atrazine at 4:44 AM on October 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Relevant, in the Boston Review: When Democracy Ails, Magic Thrives.

This preponderance of the mystical, the miraculous, and the conspiratorial may seem at odds with our supposedly rational, modern democracy. Yet a new book by historian Monica Black suggests that the irrational was never absent from the postwar order—and, moreover, that florid eruptions of mystical thinking often accompany periods of extreme political upheaval. Black’s A Demon-Haunted Land makes this case by examining the spasm of magical thinking that convulsed West Germany in the decade after World War II. During this time, the Federal Republic of Germany, which today stands as a beacon of liberal democracy, was beset by witch scares and false messiahs. Painting a portrait of a land unable to come to terms with its violent past—and with the crimes of Nazism in particular—Black also suggests troubling parallels between the young republic and our own.

posted by Fiasco da Gama at 9:44 PM on October 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
posted by chavenet

Or... the greatest trick the priests ever pulled was convincing the world that God exists.
posted by Splunge at 4:29 PM on October 31, 2020