On Feb. 5, the House of Representatives voted to suspend Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from her duties on House committees, citing evidence that the congresswoman posted several provocative remarks ranging from questioning the legitimacy of 9/11 to supporting QAnon, or the theory that high-ranking members of the Democratic party are running a child sex-trafficking ring.
Yes, that’s correct: a political party has taken legal action against one of their own politicians for publicly endorsing inflammatory and largely unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.
This isn’t the only instance where conspiracy theories have played a key role in political divisions. Former president Donald Trump has been quoted numerous times on Twitter supporting theories against his political opponents.
Additionally, Trump has recently begun his second impeachment trial, where he will be tried for allegedly inciting his followers to ransack the Capitol. All this being based upon incendiary remarks regarding voter fraud and corruption within the Democratic Party.
With all this controversy over conspiracy theories, a question must be considered: is this merely a harmless by-product of having the freedom of speech, or is this a new and dangerous norm within the political system?
Unfortunately, current political and sociological trends are supporting the latter, with the climate in Congress becoming more polarized by the day; while Republicans are blaming the monopolization and tyranny of the Democratic party, the Democrats are in a seemingly constant battle trying to stifle Trump and his influential power.
Instead of debating over laws and policies, politics has become a giant game of “he-said-she-said” in an attempt to discredit the other party. Responding to the pressures of a society seemingly descending further into chaos, the American people align themselves with one party and blame all other issues on the other as a scapegoat.
And thus, the stage is set perfectly for a movement like QAnon, whose core beliefs state that Trump is secretly waging war against a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, with members including elite Democratic government officials, some celebrities and even media producers.
The theory first arose in 2017 when an anonymous user named “Q Clearance Patriot” claimed to possess confidential governmental information and began posting cryptic messages on 4chan message boards, later switching to 8chan and then 8kun.
Since then, several thousand Americans have started following the “QAnon phenomenon”, religiously tracking and decoding “Qdrops” or “breadcrumbs” regarding the progress of “The Storm,” a way of referring to a supposed future event when Donald Trump will supposedly take down the cabal and liberate the American government. The largest Facebook messaging group dedicated to QAnon gained 200,000 members before it was taken down.
While it seems crazy that thousands of American citizens believe their government is being overrun with corrupt pedophiles, a recent study conducted by the University of Chicago’s Political Science Professor Eric Oliver explains that this rise in legitimizing conspiracy theories isn’t just a whacky coincidence of fanatical free speech, but a biproduct of political unrest that has been brewing for decades.
In a podcast titled “Big Brains: The Science Behind Conspiracy Theories,” Oliver talks about how conspiracy theories are like believing in the supernatural or paranormal phenomena, in that it involves intuitively explaining an event by making attributions to unobservable circumstances.
“…our intuitions are based in our emotions. And, when we are feeling uncertainty about the world, it generates a lot of anxiety,” said Oliver. “…intuitions actually have a grammar to them… they’re bound by certain types of heuristics. And heuristics are these certain judgmental shortcuts that we make when we’re trying to understand the world.”
Intuitional thinking is the counterpart to rational thinking, which relies only on facts and data present to formulate decisions rather than relying on emotional input. It’s not that thinking intuitively is inferior compared to rational thought, it is merely that these serve as separate thought processes towards evaluating what one perceives as a threat.
The more uncertain the world is, the more conspiracy theories circulate, stemming from people attempting to rationalize their anxieties. Humans are innately adept at psychologically training their minds to relate anxieties to foreign threats and eventually neutralize them; this tactic is how early humans survived the terrors of the wilderness.
Now, in the concrete jungle, what better threat to attribute people’s woes to than the anonymity of government?
As reported by Oliver, a recent survey found that 30% of Americans believe humanity is currently entering the apocalypse. Many of these people are religious conservatives who cite predictions made in the Bible. Additionally, those who are religious and believe in higher, unseen powers are characteristically intuition-thinkers.
While there are also plenty of Democrats who are intuitional thinkers, the history and foundation of the political party prevents these beliefs from coming to the surface. According to Oliver, Democratic policies didn’t start gaining popularity until the early 20th century, which was at the time experiencing a boom of science-based, rational thought, of which philosophies eventually leaked into politics.
As society continued to progress towards the rational and analytical, those who were naturally intuitive thinkers, primarily Republicans, became fearful that their traditional way of life was being infringed upon: disagreements between political parties were no longer about which policies were correct, but whose way of viewing the world was more valid.
“…when we’re talking about the difference between liberals and conservatives and Democrats and Republicans, we’re not simply just talking about differences in philosophy of government. What’s been happening over the past 40 years in the United States, is that conservatism has become increasingly an intuitionist movement,” said Oliver. “As long as this intuitive force was evenly distributed across the political spectrum its effects get muted somewhat, but when it begins to become concentrated on one end, that becomes a source of concern.”
So, is the solution to this political divide banning all conspiracy theorists from posting online and establishing more content watchdogs to slow the spread of misinformation? Absolutely not.
As problematic as allowing for free speech can be, this right provides an essential backbone to the foundation of American democracy. To take that away, would cause more problems than it would solve, including giving QAnon even more proof regarding government corruption.
While it appears the dissemination of conspiracy theories will continue to be a source of political unrest, it is merely a byproduct of the civil unrest already taken root within the American people. Until both parties can acknowledge their opposing thought process and alleviate the anxieties of the American citizens, the use of conspiracy theories to cause social unrest will continue.
Photo Credit / Rick Loomis | Getty Images
