How conspiracy theories took hold of America

By F D Flam

Millions of Americans believe that invisible entities are driving the country’s politics — shadowy deep-state actors that are allegedly controlling events, hiding toxins in our food and water, and peddling dangerous — even deadly — vaccines. These conspiracy theories have helped propel people like Donald Trump and Robert F Kennedy Jr to prominence with their promises to provide transparency and save us from these threats.

Polling data indeed shows that 41 per cent of Americans believe the deep state exists; more than half — 54 per cent — suspect multiple actors were involved in the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963.

Their skepticism doesn’t come out of nowhere. History has given Americans a lengthy list of reasons to distrust their government. Our leaders lied about the Vietnam War. The rationale for invading Iraq was built on lies. Big pharmaceutical companies have harmed us with their products, from Vioxx to OxyContin.

Yet, while headlines proclaim that conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, a closer look at the data and our country’s history shows something less pathological. We hold a broad spectrum of beliefs, from radical conspiracy theories at one extreme to reasonable concerns about abuses of power in government and big business.

There is no evidence that a deep state has taken control of the world — or is plotting to — but the conspiracy theory’s origin is rooted in history. In an essay for Scientific American, historian Kathryn Olmsted and intelligence expert Simon Willmetts point to a long trail of government secrecy that fostered that mistrust, including covert CIA missions during the Cold War that went beyond a defensive stance.

There were covert CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders, sometimes even conspiring with the Mafia to poison people, Olmsted said. Prison inmates were used as unwitting subjects in government experiments with LSD and mind control. The US Public Health Service conducted a study of untreated syphilis on Black men without their knowledge. The “war on terror” produced a new list of outrages.

Olmsted and Willmetts cite a famous 1964 essay by historian Richard Hofstadter on The Paranoid Style in American Politics. It goes back as far as 1790 when Americans spread conspiracy theories about the secret society known as the Illuminati. Hofstadter describes this paranoia as thinking that takes legitimate concerns and blows them out of proportion and context. The targets moved to Catholic immigrants and then communists.

Past exposes of deceptive covert activities often came from celebrated investigative journalists and were embraced by the political left. Recently, fighting the deep state has become a cause on the right and expanded to include ordinary, non-covert government workers at places such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.

The pandemic and its handling made things worse.

“People tend to be more susceptible to conspiracy theories if they are feeling out of control or fearful or left behind,” said Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol. People were fearful and uncertain.

Fear became politically polarized with debates over the government’s sudden heavy-handedness. Businesses and schools were ordered to close, mask and vaccine mandates were instituted, and people were told to stay in their homes indefinitely. Some Americans feared receiving a relatively new vaccine and were confused over poorly explained and sometimes conflicting information. Some government and health officials exacerbated problems by spreading misinformation.

During his Senate confirmation hearings last week, Kennedy, Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, leaned into those fears, promising “radical transparency.” He claimed his years-long criticism of vaccines was motivated by his desire for more data on their safety. However, as several senators pointed out, reams of such data already exist.

Lewandowsky, who has studied conspiracy theories, said more data rarely brings satisfaction. “There’s always going to be more that people think you’re hiding,” he said. That said, more transparency about the Covid vaccines and mandates might have prevented the increasing distrust driving some parents to forgo well-established childhood immunizations for their kids.

Some employers required more booster shots than even some respected immunologists and vaccine advocates considered necessary. In such circumstances, being told “vaccines work” felt evasive, especially once it was determined that the vaccine didn’t guarantee protection from infection or transmission of the virus to others.

People didn’t have to be conspiracy theorists to wonder how scientists could be sure the outbreak wasn’t started by a lab accident.

It’s also natural to be curious about those classified documents on the assassination of JFK that President Trump has ordered released. Conspiracy theorists tend to equate holes in the case as proof of an elaborate conspiracy between the CIA, mafia and Cuban government in Kennedy’s assassination. That may be an illogical leap, and no amount of data will satisfy them. But those further down on the suspicion spectrum still want to know what’s been classified and why.

Wanting more transparency about government operations and more information about our drugs and what’s going into our food isn’t unreasonable until it becomes extreme. Social media has helped push people into echo chambers where one side mocks the other side for either chasing phantoms or being blind to real threats. However, we’re not as sharply divided as we’ve been led to believe.