"Why do Conspiracy Theories Work?" Why? Radio Episode with Quassim Cassm

6:52PM Sep 1, 2021

Speakers:

Announcer

Jack Russell Weinstein

Quassim Cassam

Keywords:

conspiracy theories

theories

people

conspiracy

political

question

philosophy

weinstein

trump

epistemological

political agenda

protocols

pandemic

view

government

philosophical discussions

promote

official

power

thinking

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The episode can be found here: https://philosophyinpubliclife.org/2021/07/12/why-do-conspiracy-theories-work-with-guest-quassim-cassam/

Why philosophical discussions about everyday life is produced by the Institute for philosophy and public life, a division of the University of North Dakota's College of Arts and Sciences. Visit us online at why Radio show.org

Hi, I'm jack Russell Weinstein host of why philosophical discussions about everyday life. On today's episode, we'll be asking why conspiracy theories work with our guest qaseem kasamh.

Two things always come to mind when I discuss conspiracy theories. The first is an interesting factoid I learned from an online documentary, they could never have faked the moon landing in 1969 because technology wasn't advanced enough. Apparently, it's harder to instantaneously convert live video to slow motion than it is to land on the lunar surface. The second is a quote from the television show The X Files, Agent Sculley challenges her partner's assertions about government cover ups by reminding him that quote, these are the people who created the Susan B. Anthony dollar. If you recall, the American government stopped minting the coin because it was the same size as a quarter. People and vending machines kept confusing the two it was an unparalleled example of mass and competence. I like these anecdotes, because they're about different things. The first reference is facts and tries to refute a conspiracy by using reason and science. The second seeks to alter someone's willingness to believe one is about truth. The other is about people. Challenging conspiracy theories requires a complex mixture of both. Most people who believe them do so precisely because they appear contrary to how things seem. Not being obvious is their virtue. They represent secret knowledge that makes believers feel special, and this is why philosophers have such a hard time engaging them. From its inception, philosophy has tried to separate argument from arguing. With a few exceptions, philosophers have held firmly to the notion that a cogent presentation of logic and evidence can move even the most recalcitrant thinker. If we could only curtail emotion, bias, ignorance and ego the tradition tells us we could persuade people of every truth, appearance is not reality. Your moral and religious worldviews are inaccurate, you're not more important than anyone else. Reason is what makes human beings different from animals the Greeks insisted, as such, logic can best motivate what has come to be called cognitive change. The popularity of conspiracy theories changes this objective fact and well constructed inferences don't seem to convince people they're wrong about for example, Democrats running a pedophile ring in the basement of a washington dc pizzeria that has no basement vaccines causing autism, even though hundreds of years and billions of data points show otherwise or Jews controlling the world despite being the most victimized and displaced ethno religious group in history. conspiracy theories aren't just wrong, they're catastrophic to the Western philosophical account of human nature. On today's episode, we're gonna face this head on will ask what makes a conspiracy theory different from other false beliefs, explore their purpose and tenacity and ask about the people who believe them not just the details of the theories themselves. This will require a mix of philosophy, psychology, sociology, and politics. It should be fun. But there is a problem though, and I'll call it contempt. The thing about conspiracy theories is that people who don't believe them judge harshly those who do considering them at best ignorant dupes and at worst, racist, sexist, anti semitic homophobic fascists, adherence also feel analogously about those who don't believe they call the skeptic slurs like sheeple or lib tardes. They consider them expendable and legitimate targets of abuse or violence. Both groups think they're better than the other, so it becomes very difficult to separate the veracity from the venom. Ironically, this is where philosophy really helps the same commitments that make conspiracy theories so problematic to philosophers the separation of facts and belief, the divorcing of truth claims from those who make them the bifurcating of reason and emotion. These allow philosophers to look at the phenomena more dispassionately. On the show today, we can ask whether a conspiracy theory is racist without condemning those who spread it, we can challenge the details of a narrative without belittling proponents who assert connections that are not really their philosophies analytic method can help us disarm the weapons that conspiracy theories have become. Now, I don't mean to claim that some conspiracy theories aren't dangerous or that some people don't need to be reined in. Instead, what I'm suggesting is that the topic is much more complicated and nuanced than we're usually led to believe. Our conversation shouldn't be about who's wrong and who's crazy, but what purpose these theories Serve and who benefits from spreading them. But here I'm anticipating our guests and I should leave those recommendations for him to make. In preparation, then I offer this. Whatever one believes or rejects, we cannot doubt that conspiracy theories play a key role in the conflicts of our day. If we don't take them seriously, we give them more power. Philosophy may be an ineffective antidote, but it's an excellent tool for understanding. If we've learned anything from human history, it's that the things we don't interrogate, are infinitely more dangerous than the things we do. If philosophy gets nothing else, right? He gets this.

And now I guess Cassian kasamh is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick in England, is written six books on a range of subjects, including 2019 is aptly titled, conspiracy theories. casino Welcome to why. Hello, it's great to be here. If you'd like to participate, share your favorite moments from the show and tag us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Our handle is at why radio show why radio show you can always email us at ask why umd.edu and listen to our previous episodes for free at why Radio show.org Alright, so qaseem the the phrase conspiracy theory seems to be inherently negative even in my monologue, I said I treated as something to overcome. Is this unfair? Is the term itself distorting the debate?

Well, I think you're absolutely right, that the way the term is used today is is very often negative, to describe something as a conspiracy theory, in the eyes of many people is to is to dismiss it. But of course, it's a further question whether the label conspiracy theory has to be used that way. And there are people who think that we should use it in a more in a more neutral and more judgmental way, as well.

is, I don't know how to, I don't want to hop on the self reference thing right away. But is it a conspiracy theory that conspiracy theories are so powerful? Are we making too much of them? Or are they really do they really have the impact that we think people that people think they have?

That's a great question. I mean, one thing that people sometimes accuse me off is being a conspiracy theorist about conspiracy theories. And and I think there's something in in the idea that, you know, going on about the power and influence of conspiracy theories, and the people who put them forward is itself a kind of conspiracy theory. But if it is, then I think it's a true one. So maybe that has some bearing on, you know, a key question here, which is, when we talk about conspiracy theories, should we be building into the label that conspiracy theories are false? Or again, is there a more neutral way of using the label?

So would a true conspiracy theory just be a conspiracy? Or is it true conspiracy theory, still a conspiracy theory?

Well, if it's a conspiracy theory, it's got to be a theory, right? That's the that's the, that's the minimal condition. And so if you think about what a you know what a conspiracy is to begin with. So supposing you think that a conspiracy is when you have a small group of people working together in secret to do something bad. So then a conspiracy theory looks like it's just a theory that explains some happening, usually a significant happening by blaming it on a conspiracy. And that seems a perfectly neutral description, and it's built into that description that you have a theory here. But that way of understanding conspiracy theories then raises all sorts of further questions that I guess we need to go into. Like what? Okay, so here's an example. I think this is always a really great example to start off with. Supposing you are thinking about the official account of 911, that is to say, the account of 911, given in the report of the 911 Commission, and you're comparing that with the inside job theory of 911. That's to say that 911 was an inside job that was planned and execution by people working on behalf of the Bush administration. Okay, so question, which of these is a conspiracy theory? Now, the first thing to notice is that both of these theories explain 911 by reference to a conspiracy. Okay, so in the case of the inside job theory, that conspiracy is one involving the Bush administration in the case of the official account, anon 11. The conspiracy was an Al Qaeda conspiracy. So both of these, both of these accounts of 911 both of these theories certainly posit a conspiracy to explain what happened. So the question I would want to ask is okay, so So are they both conspiracy theories, then? Now, if you understand conspiracy theory in the very neutral way that I understood it, then it looks as though they are both conspiracy theories. But on the face of it, there seems to have something a little bit odd to describe the official account of 911 as a conspiracy theory. I mean, people don't go around saying, I mean, people, you know, attack the 911 Commission Report, but they generally don't attack it by saying, Oh, it's just a conspiracy theory. Right. So that seems to suggest that when we talk about conspiracy theories, we actually distinguish between what you might call big CBT conspiracy theories, that theories like the inside job theory, and conspiracy theories in a kind of small, small t sense, that's to say, theories that just explain something by reference to a conspiracy. But, but I think the question for your your listeners is, you know, do you think that these two theories or conspiracy theories, in the same sense, and I want to say, you know, they aren't I mean, they might be a sense in which they're both conspiracy theories, but they are conspiracy theories in very different senses. And that's a kind of absolutely fundamental point, I think,

sort of three aspects of the comparison that come to mind as you're talking. The first is that one is official, and one is unofficial. The second is one has clear evidence, also official evidence in one doesn't. And the third is that one has a particular set of bad guys, and the other has a different set of bad guys. And who, who thinks those people are the bad guys may change is what we're going to call a conspiracy theory. Is it a personal criteria? Or is it something like a, what we're calling capital T conspiracy theory has to have an unofficial element has to have harder to find evidence has to have a non sort of obvious bad guy.

Yeah. Okay. So I think you've you've you've actually just hit the nail on the head there. Right. So if you go back to your, your initial set of contrasts, so one was the contrast between official and unofficial. So, so one big difference between the 911 Commission report and inside job view, is that is that one is the official view. And the other is contrary to the official view. And so I want to say that the theories that are most commonly referred to as conspiracy theories, that is to say conspiracy theories with a big C and a big T, are contrary to the official view. So that seems to me to be at least a core feature of conspiracy theories in that sense. I mean, there are there are one or two wrinkles with that, but but let's just stick with that simple characterization. Then you talked about, you know, the kind of the kind of evidence that there is for these theories. And again, I think there's that, you know, there's a key contrast here that the official report, the 911 Commission is based on a whole mass of of evidence about our kind of involvement in 911. Whereas the inside job theory of 911, by its nature has got to be highly speculative, right? Because if it's, if it's a conspiracy, then good conspirators don't leave evidence behind. So it, you know, by their nature, these theories are not going to have the same kind of evidential base, as the official as the official view. And then the third thing that you said was, well, you know, these two theories have different bad guys. And and, you know, I think that's another, you know, very important point that, in the case of the official report of the 911 Commission, I mean, the bad guys were members of a terrorist organization, that we're attacking America attacking the American state, American government, American people, whereas in the case of the inside job theory, the bad guys are the government, the bad guys are the state itself. And that's another I think, important feature of big CBT conspiracy theories. So, you know, so they're countries to the official view, they are highly speculative. And they usually identify the government itself or agents of the government as the bad guys.

Is this sort of thing especially the the last example, a call it culturally idiosyncratic, and what I mean by this is, right, you're out of England. I'm in the United States. Are the English going to have not just, you know, different conspiracy theories, you're gonna have a theory about the Duke of something rather, and I'll have a theory about the governor of something rather, but are the English gonna have different types of conspiracy theories and different understandings of what Ral The conspiracies existed as the Americans or have you found that, you know, England, America, Indian and Chinese, basically conspiracy theories have that same cross cultural structure.

I think they have the same cross cultural structure. I mean, in the UK as a child. I, like lots of children celebrated something called Guy Fawkes Day, which is November the fifth. So Guy Fawkes Day celebrates and marks and attempt in 1605, by a group of Catholic conspirators to blow up the British Parliament. Right? So So, you know, there you have a conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory about what a bunch of people did to overthrow the government. But if you look at, you know, a popular conspiracy theory in the UK today. So one popular theory is that Princess Diana, was the victim of a hit, organised by the royal family. Right now. I mean, that's, that's a classic conspiracy theory that's actually quite different from the Guy Fawkes theory, right? Because because, of course, in the in the dyana theory, it's not outsiders conspiring against the establishment. It's the establishment, conspiring against outsiders, effectively. And so that's that's the that's the exact same feature off of conspiracy theories in the UK context that identified in the US context, which is that, you know, conspiracy theories today are, are basically theories, very often theories about people in positions of power, abusing their power, by conspiring against the rest of us. And I think that is an absolutely fundamental feature of the modern conspiracy theory.

And and in a little bit, I want to talk about that, I want to ask a question. Again, it's not perfectly formed, and it's a little tangential from, I know, the stuff that you've written, that I've read, but you bring up guy Fox, and most Americans will know guy Fox from the mask, right? The classic mask that has become a symbol it was in the movie V for Vendetta, it has become a symbol of rebellion, I'm sure, in part because of the history does when a pop culture takes a conspiracy theory, or a conspiracy, and uses it for its own purposes? Does that give more credence to the idea of conspiracy theories? Does it make it more powerful and believable? Or does it disarm the conspiracy theories? Because now in some sense, we're all part of the same game?

I think it does give it additional power. I mean, one thing that that if you're a critic of conspiracy theories, as as I am, I mean, one thing that people often say is that, you know, the thing about conspiracy theories is that they hold the powerful to account. And if you just dismiss these theories, then you're essentially just a kind of lackey of the powerful or lackey of government. And certainly, if you think about something like, like, like Guy Fawkes, I mean, there you have a theory about people taking on power, trying to trying to overthrow the established power, but the difference is, in that case, the thing that was taking on the establishment was the actual conspiracy, right? Whereas today, the thing that's supposedly taking on the establishment are theories, conspiracy theories. So people who put these theories forward, I mean, people who put forward you know, conspiracy theories about 911, you know, for them, it's often a kind of expression of suspicion about, you know, the Bush administration, and it's your iraq policy. So what happens is that is that a certain kind of criticism of government or skepticism about government takes the form of a conspiracy theory? And you know, and then the question is, if you if you want to attack the government, if you want to criticize the people in positions of power and privilege, are these theories actually, the most effective way of doing it and I want to say, you know, that they're not.

And and, again, after the break, I want to talk specifically about these political dimensions, but you're hinting at something which you You refer to in the book as the Oliver Stone defense. And let me ask you what you mean. Because there's there's the question of the conspiracy theory being true. But then there's the question of, well, the conspiracy theory may not be true. But it's a stand in for what's true. It's it's symbolic, it's analogous, it doesn't get it right. But it gets the essence, accurate. And why is this the Oliver Stone defense? And why is this an approach we're thinking about? As opposed to just saying, look, conspiracy theories are true, or they're not. And if they're true, they're valuable? If they're not, they're not.

So all of a stone was the director of a movie that came out in the 1990s, called JFK about the Kennedy assassination. So so in that movie, I mean, essentially, the movie proposes one, if not multiple conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination. And when the movie came out, it was attacked by people who know about these things for a whole bunch of of inaccuracy in its portrayal of those of those events. I mean, as a piece of history, I think the movie is an absolute travesty. So when confronted by these criticisms, all of a stone said something to the effect that well, you know, maybe maybe the things that I was saying in the movie, were literally true. But they will, nevertheless, they captured a deeper truth about the deep state and government. And in that sense, the movie is truth full, even if not literally true. And I think this, this kind of brings out a really important aspect of conspiracy theories, you know, that conspiracy theories are stories, they're narratives. And they're supposedly, you know, they're stories with a lesson stories with a moral, they're kind of essentially morality tales. And one of the lessons of conspiracy theories today is supposed to be something about, you know, the evils of the deep stage, or the corruption and malfeasance of people in positions of power. Now, I mean, you know, if you were, if you were a kind of on the political left, you know, you might be very sympathetic to those sorts of criticisms of the state of the world today. But, you know, our conspiracy theories, the best way to give expression to those sorts of criticisms to give expression to that kind of skepticism. And I guess what I want to say is that is that, you know, there are a whole bunch of reasons for not going down that path, you know, that if you if you think that the government is up to no good or that the state has too much power, that politicians are corrupt, I mean, there are perfectly legitimate ways of making that case, without resorting to conspiracy theories. And I think that's what you know, one of the things I want to say to do, people on the liberal wing of politics who endorse conspiracy theories, which is you know, you don't have to be a conspiracy theories to say, the things, some of the things that you you want to say,

we're gonna have to take a break, when we get back, I'm going to ask you a version of this question, which is, given what you just said, are conspiracy theories, a form of literature and have they have they replaced protest literature, so to speak, and then and then we'll move on to the epistemological versus political defenses, which, which I'll explain all that when we get back. But before then we'll take a break, you're listening to jack Russell Weinstein Cassian kasamh right after this.

The Institute for philosophy and public life bridges the gap between academic philosophy and the general public. Its mission is to cultivate discussion between philosophy professionals, and others who have an interest in the subject, regardless of experience or credentials. visit us on the web at philosophy and public life.org. The Institute for philosophy and public life, because there is no ivory tower.

You're back with wide philosophical discussion with everyday life. I'm your host, jack Russell Weinstein. We're talking with qaseem kasamh, about conspiracy theories, and I was gonna talk about something else but but right before the break, I did something which I then spent the last the next 30 seconds thinking about, which is, you know, normally I say, you're listening to a philosophical discussion with that everyday life. We'll be back right after this. But what I actually said was, you're listening to jack Russell one And qaseem kasamh, right after this, which makes no sense, but it sounded good. The rhythms of my language were such that you probably didn't notice. But now I'm going to obsess over. I feel like the conspiracies that we talk about every day, follow that pattern, I have had two colleagues, one who's passed away, and one who is still my colleague, who have been absolutely convinced that there have been conspiracies to destroy the humanities at the University of North Dakota, that the goal of the administration is just to obliterate our department. And then any time they make a decision, it adds fuel to that fire. I have another colleague in the English department who always says, Don't confuse being evil with being incompetent, that that that, that sometimes you make bad decisions, and it looks like you're being evil, when actually you're just making mistakes. I bring that example of those examples of cussing, because I wonder how much of conspiracy theory is about the sound of truth, the rhythm of truth, and the assumptions, that there's bad intentions behind things that actually just sort of happened.

I think that is at a psychological level, one of the really important features of, of conspiracy theories. So psychologists talk about what they call cognitive biases. And one bias that people talk about is this is something called intentionality bias, which is basically the assumption that things happen, particularly bad things happen because someone intended for them to happen. They don't just happen by chance, or by accident, or simply as a result of people's incompetence. And I think that is an important kind of psychological driver of, of conspiracy theories. I mean, if you think about the, you know, the pandemic, and the all that stuff about, you know, the virus being manufactured in the lab in China, or being circulated via 5g masks, and something about Bill Gates involvement. I mean, all all of those are attempts to kind of say that, look, this just didn't happen. There was no accident, you know, all of this stuff happened, because it was intended to happen. And I think that is, you know, a common enough cognitive bias that human beings suffer from. And I think there are a whole bunch of other psychological drivers of belief in, in conspiracy theories. And and, you know, one one kind of broad issue here to think about is, to what extent can we really give a kind of complete explanation of belief in conspiracy theories, in psychological terms by reference to these sorts of psychological features? So So I mean, I think that we, we can't give a complete explanation. But psychology is, obviously is important.

I think about you know, those days when I'm in a bad mood, and I stub my toe or, and I just I say, to the universe, or to God, or whatever, you know, what did I do to deserve this? Right, what am I being punished for? And and it feels like that that same sort of thing. Which brings me back to the question I ended with before, this sort of the human search for a grand narrative, the human search for explanations that are understandable to us. Can conspiracy theories play the role that literature has historically played in terms of giving meaning in our life giving agency to things that we need to have agency? Does? Is that a coherent way of looking at it at all?

It absolutely is. I mean, the analogy I would draw actually is not with literature, but but actually with with religious belief. I mean, if you think about a kind of religious mindset, you know, one important aspect of this mindset is the idea that the way the world is today, it didn't just happen by chance, you know, that somebody, namely, God was pulling the strings, designed things in a certain way. And that's why they are as they are. So there you have a kind of, you know, the most global grand explanation imaginable. And for lots of people, I mean, the point of this explanation is that it gives it gives what would otherwise seem quite random events, it gives the meaning. And I think conspiracy theories are like, you know, in a way like that, so if you think about, again, the pandemic, if you think it's just one of these random mutations that happened, because of you know, interaction between humans and animals in a, in a market in China, the whole thing just seems utterly meaningless and arbitrary, there is no deeper meaning as this is it would, you know, the pandemic is just is just a, you know, a case of stuff happening. But if you think that somebody is, is is responsible for the pandemic by manufacturing and then deliberately releasing a virus, then you've got two things now that human beings you know, value First of all, you have now have an, you know, an explanation for why the pandemic happened. Now, it's no longer random. It's someone's doing. And the other thing that you now have is, of course, someone to blame. So this is like, you know, you stubbing your toe, right? What have I done to deserve this? So? So again, the thought would be, well, what have we done to deserve the pandemic, we say you look for someone to, you know, to blame, and that's what the Coronavirus conspiracy theory it gives you. And I think that at least the explanatory dimension is, is, as I say, quite similar to the thinking that underpins some, you know, some religious belief, it's the search, it's the search for meaning, the desire to avoid having to say that, you know, bad stuff happens just because some people are incompetent, or it's just bad luck. It's the difficulty people have living with that, that I think makes them prone to believe in conspiracy theories.

And is this Um, I don't know, a call by the desperate. I mean, I I read in your book, at one point, you're you're quoting, you're citing some studies, and you say that people are conspiracy minded are more likely to see themselves at being the bottom of the social ladder, that they thought seriously about committing suicide, they have trouble sleeping, they feel less able to rely on family or friends in the event of a crisis. Just does the does the imparting of meaning give people power as well? Because I mean, what strikes me about that is, is that what I hear some of these conspiracy theories, if it turned out that some of these things were true, I would feel worse about the world and and feel like I have less power than if they weren't true. So why do people who are feeling despondent gravitate towards these things that make life more awful?

Yeah, so that's a really good question. I mean, it's, you know, so there are these studies, which suggest that that essentially, that people who are marginalized are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories, and then people who aren't. And and so the, then you might ask, well, what's the attraction of believing a theory where, you know, all this bad stuff is happening, because somebody actually wanted it to happen. And I suppose the attraction is the feeling that you have some sort of special insight or that you you have, you have a kind of knowledge or understanding that other people don't have, and there's a certain sort of satisfaction in in, you know, in this in this feeling of being special of having special knowledge. But I think, at the same time, it's also important to draw a distinction between people who believe or consume conspiracy theories and people who promote conspiracy theories. So So, it may well be that that, you know, consumers of conspiracy theories are attracted by these theories, in part by the you know, the fact that these theories give them kind of some sort of satisfaction in believing them, but the people who promote these theories, I think, for them, there's something completely, completely different going on. And I don't even think that the people who promote conspiracy theories necessarily believe these theories themselves. So in that case, the whole question Why do they believe them is a non question.

This is an excellent transition to the to the other aspects of your analysis because you offer three basic frameworks. You offer the the psychological, which is what we've been talking about explanations, psychological explanations for conspiracy theories, but then you also distinguish between the epistemological and the political and epistemology in philosophy is theory of knowledge. And so what that means is you're distinguishing between dealing with refuting, understanding conspiracy theories as a problem of knowledge and argument and evidence and persuasion versus conspiracy theories as political tools as propaganda as as ways of maintaining or acquiring power. So would you talk a little bit about the distinction between the epistemological and political approaches and we seem so stuck in the epistemological why we should move from one to the other?

Well, I think the people who are stuck in the epistemological philosophers epistemologists who Write about questions like, you know, his belief in conspiracy theories. justified? Is that that is to say, is there good evidence for belief in these theories? And if there isn't, then does that show that people who believe these theories are intellectually defective in some way? So that's the kind of epistemological approach.

I want to talk for just a second, I apologize. But at least in some way, and tell me if I'm wrong. YouTube, and all the internet is stuck in this mode, because when you when you follow the rabbit holes in conspiracy theories, what you get is a lot of people arguing about details and arguing about facts. This is true, this is not true. The CIA was involved in Kennedy No, the CIA was focused on the Bay of Pigs and yeah, and, and like the example that I used in the beginning where, you know, slow motion video, Agra fee was not technically viable at that point. Is that still the epistemological framework? Because you're you're arguing about details, or did I misunderstand?

No, that's still that's still epistemological. I mean, that's that's epistemological, in the sense that now you're looking at what the actual evidence is, for a particular theory. What philosophers are interested in is not just questions about, you know, what the actual evidence is, for a particular theory, but questions about the nature of evidence and whether people are being irrational in believing conspiracy theories. So this is all, you know, looking at these theories, as you know, genuine attempts to tell the truth. And then the question is, are they successful? in those terms, are we justified in believing that they are successful? That's the epistemological approach.

But you think that that's a dead end? And we need to move to a different framework of understanding? Yeah,

yeah. I mean, absolutely. You know, so, so, so I want to say that, that, you know, the, the essence of conspiracy theories is that they are political conspiracy theories are they're typically as an expression of a person's political outlook. And they are there to promote, usually a political agenda. So let me just kind of give you a couple of examples. So in the US, there's research that shows that Bertha birthers, about President Obama are much more likely to be Republicans, whereas truth is much more likely to be Democrats. So you know, that's one nice illustration of the way that you know, which particular conspiracy theories theories, if any, you believe is going to be tied to your background, political, political beliefs. And I think that's a really a really kind of key point, because the psychologists, you know, talk tell us, you know, why people believe conspiracy theories, but they don't tell us why they believe the particular conspiracy theories they believe. And I want to say that you really can't answer that question without looking at people's background political commitments, on the business about, you know, not just expressing one's political views, but advancing one's political agenda. I mean, there are, you know, they're kind of many examples of that. I mean, I like the one, you know, the example of the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories. So the idea that, that the Sandy Hook shooting was, was a false flag. You know, why would anybody believe that? I mean, you know, from my perspective, that just seems completely absurd and, and baseless. But if you think of it as as if you think of it in political terms, it starts to make, you know, a lot more sense, right. So if you have a have a, an anti gun control political agenda, then obviously events like Sandy Hook are going to be a problem for you. Right? Because, you know, there might increase support for greater government control. So how do you deal with that? Well, by saying it never happened, you know, by by promoting a conspiracy theory. And a lot of conspiracy theories have this sort of, kind of broader political stroke ideological agenda. That's really what these theories, you know, are for. And if you think about the people who promote these theories, you know, think about whoever first came up with the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory. I mean, why did they do it? What were they trying to achieve? by promoting this theory? Did they promote this theory because they actually believed it or because it fitted in with a kind of political agenda. So I want to say that that you know, it this is a really fundamental feature of conspiracy theories that you just miss out. If you just focus on the epistemology you know, conspiracy theories are political. Indeed, I want to say that, you know, the classic conspiracy theories are really forms of political propaganda and that is actually rather fundamental to what these what these theories All.

So so suddenly it comes to mind when I'm thinking about the associations that you're talking about is the conversation that I had, in the other radio show that I do philosophical currents where I talked about this meme that was going around that said, you know, someone wrote, how do I tell if someone is vac is vaccinated and someone isn't. And someone responded, ask them who they voted for, that, that the republican Trump voters are going to believe the vaccination conspiracy theories and the non Trump voters are not. And that also makes me think of, um, you know, I mentioned and you mentioned quite often in the book, the various anti semitic conspiracy theories, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. And, you know, for millennia, Christians in particular, have believed horrible things about Jews, but this was a political move endorsed by the church, that was the political power at the time, whether it was you know, what we now call the catholic church or, or various other denominations. This too is political, right. So even if the the sort of the laity or your average religious person just believes the story, because they're told the clergy has political reasons to advance this theory, to, I'll put it simply to, you know, to beat their competitors. Right. I mean, that's what you mean by political as well, right.

Yeah. I mean, that's right. You know, so politics is absolutely, absolutely everywhere. I mean, if you think about, you know, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, I mean, I don't know how well known this is to your, to your listeners, but but you know, the protocols were a forgery, dating back to the early 20th century, purporting to describe a secret meeting of Jewish elders, plotting world domination. Now, the author of this forgery, I think, was a member of the Russian secret police. And of course, the whole thing is that is it is a complete fabrication. But the thing about the protocols is that they, you know, they caught on. So in the States, Henry Ford was very active in distributing free copies of the protocols, the protocols were taken up by the Nazis, they were quoted approving the by Hitler in mind camp. And they are the, you know, the, in a way, they are the archetype for all subsequent anti semitic conspiracy theories. Right. And so then you ask the question, okay, so what, you know, well, how do we understand and anti semitism? What is that? Well, you know, I mean, that is, as you as you said, you can think of that you should think of that not just as racist, but also as political. So if you think of conspiracy theories today, you know, that conspiracy theories directed against George Soros, or theories that identify the conspirators by emphasizing their Jewish names like, you know, Rothschild, and so on. These theories fit into a part of a long, anti semitic conspiracy, tradition. And, and that is one, you know, really, really fundamental sense in which these theories are, you know, our political anti semitism isn't the only political objective of conspiracy theories, but it's historically been a very, very central one.

So so we had a last year, Jason Stanley, on the show, we talked about propaganda, and one of the things that he talked about was the fact that the Q anon conspiracy is pretty much a mixture of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the what's called the blood libel, the the idea that Jews of kill Jesus in the Messiah and Christian children, and we are not talking about propaganda in detail, you make an analogous move by suggesting that we need to understand conspiracy theories, at least in some form as a kind of propaganda right you actually quote Jason in the book Why should we start thinking about those two things in tandem? What what the conspiracies? What is propaganda have that helps us understand conspiracy theories?

Okay, so let's just take a step back, right. So so i think that you know, quite often if you want to understand what a thing is, it's really helpful to ask the question, what does it do? What's it for? And so, if you if you want to understand what a carburetor is, a good way to understand that is to understand what a carburetor does in a car engine. So with conspiracy theories, a good start is, you know, what are these theories for what purpose do they serve? So as I've just said, I think that they serve the purpose of promoting various political agendas, including anti semitic and other extremist political agendas. So why talk about why talk about, you know, propaganda in this context? Well, you know, propaganda is basically any form of writing or any image. That is that tries to influence people's beliefs by manipulating their emotions. And I think that that's exactly what conspiracy theories do. They try to influence people's political beliefs by telling seductive stories that play on people's play on people's emotions. And, and of course, these stories are not just stories, they're stories that have, you know, terrible consequences, real world consequences, you think of the, the role of the Protocols of the Elders design in the Holocaust, you know, that's an example of, you know, a story. I mean, a ridiculous story having incredible, terrible, catastrophic, real world impact. And I think it's it. I quote, Jason, because I think it is actually really helpful to think in terms of a kind of propaganda model of conspiracy theories. So if you're presented with a conspiracy theory, you know, first question you should ask yourself is, what is this theory trying to achieve? What is its purpose? What is its agenda? And of course, that's a sort of exactly the sort of question that conspiracy theorists themselves like to ask. So I think it's fair enough to ask it about them and their theories.

So this leads us to reconsider something that we talked about in the very beginning of the discussion where we talked about the distinction between an official explanation and a not an unofficial explanation, because we're living right now in a revival of a certain kind of political conspiracy theory, the Trump administration and the Trump candidacy. And of course, many of Trump's followers are just swimming and conspiracy theories and reveal new ones at the same time. In England, Boris Johnson, the Brexit folks. They had their own stories to tell, which, you know, in my opinion, has led to terrible consequences. So, if if the leadership in, you know, the democracies are spouting conspiracy theories, what does that say about the condition that, well, conspiracy theories tend to be an unofficial rather than an official explanation?

Yeah, so that's why that's why I said that, you know, that criterion for being a conspiracy theories is kind of complicated, right? So if you if you if you wind the clock back, you know, 20 3040 years ago, and you said, well, what's the official view? Well, the official view is, you know, the view of the government. It's the view of the federal government and the states. That's the official view. I think, with Trump things have become kind of much more complicated, because although, you know, Trump was the president. It doesn't follow that the things that he said, Well, the official view, and that doesn't follow because the Trump presidency was a kind of insurgent presidency, as I as I see it. I mean, Trump was really kind of an outsider, who, for a while took control of government, but wasn't of the government was an off the off off of the traditional, traditional establishment. And so, you know, if you then say, Well, if Trump said that there's a conspiracy of such and such a conspiracy, and how can you say that that's contrary to the official view when it's coming from the from the President? Well, you can still say that because of course, this was a president whose views were themselves, not the official view. I mean, he was, you know, a completely exceptional character. But but but it has, you know, this has sort of muddy the waters in terms of in terms of figuring out well, what, you know, what, actually, what is the official view? I think that, you know, now that we're in the states maybe at least temporarily returned to you guys as a kind of more normal, not more normal presidency. It's much easier to say that the stuff coming from the Biden administration represents, in some sense, the official view, whereas you wouldn't have been so comfortable saying that in in regards to Trump.

Yeah, I can't think of how many conversations I've had, where people were saying, well, that's what Trump said. But that's not what he meant, or recognizing that what was going on on Twitter or the rallies was was really different. And so then they're the people who will believe that the stuff that Trump says on Twitter is the real stuff. And he's playing the government and then other people who think that the stuff that happens in the government is the real stuff. And he's playing his followers. And, and it becomes tremendously complicated, which, of course, is the world of conspiracy theories. Right. I mean, I suppose how you feel about President Trump is itself? I don't want to say I mean, whether you think Trump itself as a whole Pandora's box of conspiracy theories, including the role that Trump himself plays, right.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I'm, you know, I think I think that the fundamental kind of litmus test really is do you think Trump was, was a victim of a conspiracy? Was he the victim as he, as he, as he claimed? Or do you think that he is the source of a whole bunch of conspiracy theories that he was using to advance his own political objectives and to speak to his base? I mean, you wouldn't be surprised to hear that I, you know, I kind of go for the latter view. But I think this is a really good example of, of how a person's view of conspiracy of conspiracies and conspiracy theories tells you a hell of a lot about their about their politics, right. So if you're an anti vaxxer, you think Trump was was was was more conspired against them, then a conspirator, then that is, I think places you on the, on the republican end of the political spectrum, in the in the US in the US context. And you know, again, it's all about the politics. This is all stuff that you can only really engage with at the political level. No amount of psychological theorizing, or epistemological theorizing is really going to get you to the bottom of these of these sorts of questions, because they don't really engage with what I think is absolutely fundamental conspiracy theories are political.

And this also helps to explain the way that people's personal experience or collective experience, Prime's them to believe certain kinds of conspiracies and not others. You talk a little bit about the African American experience and the African American experience and how the the Tuskegee experiments, prime the black community for believing certain kinds of governmental conspiracies, would you remind us what that is, and talk about? How government conspiracies actually help support the conspiracy theory model?

Yeah, so I mean, one thing is that is that, you know, you're more likely to believe conspiracy theories, if you yourself, or your community has been the victim of conspiracies. So the Tuskegee syphilis study, it was was an experimental scientific experiment carried out by the Public Health Service, where, before the discovery of an effective treatment for syphilis 600, impoverished African Americans were recruited and observed over several decades to see the effects of untreated syphilis. But when an effective treatment for syphilis was discovered, they weren't given the treatments. The study just just just continued. And, and, and the whole thing only came to an end in the early 1970s, when a whistleblower leaked what was going on. So now, if you think, you know, wind the clock forward to the theory that aids was, you know, a kind of manufactured thing by the government targeting particular communities or you know, all you think that the CIA was responsible for distributing drugs in an attempt to Increase Levels of addiction in the African American community. I mean, if you've been the victim of of the Tuskegee experiment, those things don't seem so crazy, right? If the government if the federal government is capable of pulling a stunt like Tuskegee, what isn't it capable of doing? You know, and so I think that's, you know, that's a that's a kind of interesting case of, of people who have, you know, been been victims of conspiracies, the marginalized, being susceptible to belief in conspiracy theories. But that's a completely different thing from conspiracy theories being promoted by, you know, the rich and powerful by conspiracy theories being promoted by people in positions of privilege, in defense of their own their own interests. And so, when one thinks about the politics of conspiracy theories, i think i think that you know, there there are these two lenses through which you can you know, through through which you can, you can view them.

So Alright, let's, let's take a different tack. And let me ask, what do we do about this writing? And obviously, if we're talking about the Tuskegee history, then we should, you know, not exploit the marginalized and you know, and treat people better. But there's all the other stuff that is, you know, how do we help people distinguish between the believable and the unbelievable? And how do we help people be more self critical about their own particular tendencies towards one set or another?

Well, this is such a difficult question. I mean, you know, what we're, as philosophers were kind of rather inclined to say things like, Well, you know, what, what we what people need to do is, you know, they need to be more open minded, and they need to engage in more critical thinking, and, you know, develop these so called intellectual virtues. And if they did, that, they're going to be less inclined to believe in conspiracy theories. And the the problem with that is that is that of course, people who believe conspiracy theories think that they are the ones who are open minded, but they're the ones who engage in critical thinking. And it's not, you know, it's not clear that that merely improving one's intellectual equipment on its own is going to make one less prone to believe conspiracy theories, because that isn't going to address the political and emotional drivers of belief in conspiracy theories. So if you want to, if you want to, you know, address those sorts of things, particularly the political drivers of conspiracy theories, I mean, one thing that I think is is kind of helpful to do is to make people more aware of the history of conspiracy theories of the anti semitic tradition of many conspiracy theories to make people aware of the political agenda of conspiracy theories, and also to make people ask difficult questions about the people putting forward these theories, you know, to actually encourage people to ask questions like, what's in it, for the promoters of these theories? What's in it for them? What did they get out of it? What what's the political payoff for them? What's the financial payoff for them? Right? I mean, conspiracy theory is a big business too. And, and, and, and the hope is that that, you know, by, by, by encouraging people to think of these theories, in that way, is going to be more effective as a way of combating these theories, then, then, you know, then homilies about the importance of open mindedness and critical thinking, I just don't think those sorts of things are going to get you very far not that I'm not in favor of open mindedness and critical thinking. But I think that kind of limited, I think, we need to focus on the political dimension and on making people reflect on the political dimension and on the political incentives for people to promote these promote these theories.

It seems to a certain extent, that, that what you're asking for is a strategic education, rather than sort of the standard, critical thinking approach. And, and this makes me think about the stuff that you were saying, you're writing in your book, how a lot of people who are the proponents of these theories, who are the so called experts, using these theories are not experts in the traditional sense of the term, right, that they don't have the people who are analyzing the JFK assassination are not experts in munitions, right, or or or other such things. How does this sort of strategic approach respond to our changing notion of expertise? And does that mean that in the end, all of this is going to be grass roots chaos? Just each person in it for themselves?

Yeah, so this whole issue of expertise, I think, is is really is really tricky. I mean, I think it is perfectly true that a lot of people who promote conspiracy theories don't necessarily have the credentials to comment on these sorts of issues. You know, so in the case of the Kennedy assassination, which I talked about, in the sort of technical questions about, you know, wound ballistics and bullet trajectories, and so on, so forth, and a lot of people wrote about the assassination didn't really know a whole lot of stuff about that. But but you can certainly point that out to somebody who is inclined to believe these theories, but that's only really going to get you so far because, you know, there's another sort of tradition that is That's really important. I mean, there is the tradition in our intellectual culture of deferring to experts, which we all do, you know, every time we go to the doctor, we, in some sense defer to an expert. But there's a different tradition that conspiracy theorists appeal to, which is really the tradition of make up your own mind, do your own research thing for yourself. And, you know, these are actually perfectly respectable enlightenment ideals. And in some sense, people who believe in conspiracy theories claim to be abiding by those sorts of those sorts of ideals. So I think that these, you know, that they're kind of playing up the expertise line and saying that, you know, you don't have the expertise to really make form of view about these things, you know, is only going to get you so far when talking to someone who says, Well, I'm, you know, I just think it's important that I make up my own mind and think for myself, you know, and there's a whole lot of further conversation to be had about that. But you're not going to get a quick or easy win that way. So that's why I think it's actually if you're talking about strategic education, I would say that the strategic education needs to, you know, needs to actually begin with thinking about, you know, how these theories arose, who put them forward? For what purpose? Did they put them forward? And, you know, thinking in those sorts of ways, I think is going to be more constructive. I mean, not least, because actually, those ways of thinking appeal to some aspects of the conspiracy mentality. Right. So the conspiracy mentality is, you know, a tendency to ask questions, like, you know, who's behind this? What's in it for them? What do they have to gain from this? And I think that, really, what we need to do is to turn the conspiracy that mentality against conspiracy theorists in theorizing itself. And so, you know, think about some talk show host in the states who has a website selling conspiracy related products, and he's out there, you know, ranting and raving every day promoting any number of wild conspiracy theories, you know, so I think the questions we should be encouraging people to ask is, is, what's in it for him? Why is he saying these things? What does he have to gain from promoting these theories? And when you actually ask those sorts of questions, the answers are actually kind of fairly, you know, fairly obvious. You know, there are political incentives, there are financial incentives to promote these theories. And you can perfectly well explain why somebody would want to promote these theories just on that, on that basis, alone. And so that's, that's what I think of as a kind of, you know, more strategic approach to, you know, combating conspiracy theories, as well as, as well as, as I said earlier, making sure that people actually know something about that, about the history of history of conspiracy theories, and I think the Protocols of the Elders design is, is well worth focusing on. Because in a way, that is the you know, that is the Uber conspiracy theory. And somebody once said that, you know, in almost every modern conspiracy theory is just a kind of reworking of the Protocols of the Elders design using that template and use and just, you know, changing the names and changing the changing the objectives. And so, again, getting people to learn about that, I think that's going to be really helpful.

So So I guess this is probably the last question, but it's, it's it's a little, it's a compound question, a little convoluted. It's worth mentioning that one of the they found a copy of the protocols of Elders of Zion on the desk of one of the Capitol Police, who was who was there and not fighting back during the January 6 uprising. So it's very much present. It was a bestseller fairly recently in in Japan, I mean, the thing has a life, a very vibrant life of its own. And so we're talking about it. And part of me wants to link to the protocols so that people will see what we're talking about it and read it and get a sense of they've never encountered before. But then there's other part of me that's like, No, I don't want to do that. I don't want to make it easier to find even though everything's easy to find on the internet. So So that leads me to the, to the two part question, which is, to what extent does educating people against conspiracy theories actually promote conspiracy theories? Is it is it just a catch 22? And in the end, are you feeling optimistic or pessimistic about the future of political discourse given your work on conspiracy theories and extremism and terrorism that you've that you've you've done other writing on?

So on the first thing, I don't think that actually educating people about conspiracy theories necessarily promotes them. Right, so your dilemma about whether to link to the Protocols of the Elders design? So I would say, Well, no, don't link to them. But there are historical writings. So there's, you know, for example, a book by a historian called Norman Cohn called Warren for genocide. That's all about the protocols. You know, it's a link to that that's a way to learn about the protocols from a really respectable historical source, and in a way that won't promote them. On your second question about, you know, am I optimistic or pessimistic in the light of the stuff I've been, you know, I've been working on? I think that, I find that a really a really, really hard question to answer. The thing that I've, you know, that I've kind of got out of the work that I've been doing is just how powerful the drivers are, that lead people towards extremism that lead people towards things like conspiracy theories, they really are powerful. And, and I'm not entirely optimistic about our ability to, you know, to counteract, counteract these forces. But you know, all you can do is try, you know, all you can do is try and actually, you know, just keep hammering away on these really basic, simple elementary points. And hopefully, hopefully, you know, if even you know, a couple of people listening to this show come out of it thinking about conspiracy theories differently more skeptically more critically. Well, you know, that's a win as far as I'm concerned.

Well, one of the things I absolutely will link to is your book conspiracy theories, because it is a very clear, very patient and very, very accessible task that texts that I think that our listeners will enjoy and find to be a comfortable read. It's not it's not overwhelming at all. So Cassia, thank you so much for joining us on why. Thanks. It's been a real pleasure. You have been listening to casino kasamh and jack Russell Weinstein on why philosophical discussions but everyday life, we'll be back with a few thoughts right after this.

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You're back with wide philosophical discussions about everyday life. I'm your host, jack Russell Weinstein, we were talking with qaseem kasamh, about conspiracy theories. And, you know, he said this thing towards the end, which really, I think highlights the great dilemma that's in front of us, he said, the conspiracy theorists think they're being open minded. And they're really expressing the best of our enlightenment values. They're being critical thinkers, they're being detailed. They're trying to look at context, right? The most powerful conspiracy theorists are themselves, full fleshed out robust accounts of something that happened. Yes, they're often self contradictory, but they represent good advanced thinking. So the answer to this power of conspiracy theory is not just to say, be more open minded, be smarter, right, be more critical, because the people who are proponents of them are doing those very things. Because seems response to this is to say, look, this is a political question, not a question of knowledge, not an epistemological question. It's a question of understanding that the people who put forth conspiracy theories have things to gain, maybe it's power, maybe it's money. Maybe it's what what Reddit calls invisible internet points, right? Maybe it's just getting likes on your videos, right? People have something to gain. And so when you're looking at a conspiracy theory, and you're trying to make sense of whether you should learn more, or reject it, share it, ask yourself, who benefits and what do they gain. And the fact of the matter is that this strategy is pretty good for all aspects of life, right? If someone tells you something is true, it's always good to ask, Well, what do they get from it being true? Now sometimes the answer is they get a better life or they get new medicine, or they get, you know, a better president. But sometimes it opens the door to a lot more complexity and a lot more insidious motives, and with conspiracy theories. That's the difficulty. It all becomes so complex, so emotional, so psychological so convoluted that all we have is a strategy of attacking them rather than a solution. You've been listening to jack Russell Weinstein on why philosophical discussions about everyday life. Thank you for listening. As always, it's an honor to be with you.

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