The true danger of conspiracy theories
A few years ago a friend of mine was planning a book about the so-called “Smiley Face Murders.” I tried to discourage her from writing it. I thought her talents could be far better utilised elsewhere, not on a nonsense conspiracy theory that is almost certainly untrue.
The Smiley Face Murders concern a series of deaths in the American midwest attributed by two retired police detectives to one or more serial killers. The theory is that the killer or killers, acting together, slip date rape-type drugs into the drinks of white college students, wait for them to become disoriented or pass out and then push or throw them into a nearby body of water. Not far from the place where each of the crimes is committed the killer(s) tag a nearby wall with a smiley face graffito.
It’s a chilling scenario. The problem with this theory is that there isn’t a shred of evidence to support it. Smiley face graffiti is everywhere. After male genitalia, it’s the second most common form of graffiti.
Young idiots occasionally drink too much and fall into bodies of water and drown. Smiley faces can almost always be found nearby. The idea that these unfortunate deaths are the direct result of a coalition of serial killers travelling the Midwest is silly. The FBI and virtually every legitimate American law enforcement jurisdiction know it’s silly and reject it — and with good reason.
As I say, I implored my friend not to write the book. She had already written a critically-acclaimed book on her fight as a journalist to bring Bill Cosby to justice. I wanted to discourage her from adding to the already burgeoning fund of nonsense about conspiracy theories. Writing it could also come at the expense of her well-deserved and outstanding reputation.
Her retort was as unworthy as the smiley face conspiracy theory itself. She’d been a journalist a lot longer than me and she knew better, she said. Besides, she said, there were a lot of things I didn’t know about the case, which is the refrain of every conspiracy theorist since time immemorial.
It’s no accident that, in the intervening years since we had that conversation, not a single shred of evidence whatsoever has come to light to support her case, of course. Supporting evidence hasn’t come to light because the theory is almost certainly untrue.
The good news is she never did write the book. But, you might reasonably ask, why do I care in the first place, anyway? What’s it to me?
I care because I think that conspiracy theories don’t merely flourish in ignorance, they are the principal cause of much ignorance. They teach their adherents to accept as evidence that which simply doesn’t qualify as evidence, things like coincidences, unexplained phenomena, innuendo, pseudoscience and the question of who benefits.
Let’s take the last one as an example. The question of “who benefits?” If Mark’s Aunt Mary dies and leaves him a million dollars, does that mean Mark murdered her? Of course it doesn’t. But in Conspiracy Theory Land those kinds of constructions are made all the time. I mean after all, Mark benefited from Aunt Mary’s death, right? If you can’t see the connection, the conspiracy theorist proclaims with contempt, then you’re a sheep. Then they’ll smugly tell you to “follow the money.” If they can say it in Latin, so much the better.
Conspiracy theorists are fond of quoting one of the most untrue and outrageous pieces of idiocy of all time, “There’s no such thing as a coincidence.” It’s the woolly guff they learn from movies. “In my experience,” Obi-Wan Kenobi solemnly intones to Luke Skywalker in refutation of Han Solo’s dismissal of the Force, “there’s no such thing as luck.” Sure there is, Ben. It happens all the time. Just because your experience hasn’t revealed that to you doesn’t make it so.
Then consider unexplained phenomena. Conspiracy theorists insist that until every single loose end is neatly tied up, no case can truly be closed no matter how compelling the evidence may be to close it. This is also nonsense, and it stems from thinking of evidence, metaphorically speaking, as a chain instead of a rope. If a single link in a chain is broken then the chain is no good. If, on the other hand, a single strand of a rope is removed it still retains most of its strength. Every case of human affairs has something in it that remains unexplained. In other words, human interactions are ropes, not chains. Conspiracy theorists, in their naivete, don’t tend to understand why this should be so.
This is why conspiracy theorists don’t like courts of law. They hate them the way vampires hate mirrors, crosses and cloves of garlic.They understand perfectly that their brand of bullshit doesn’t work in a court of law. Why doesn’t it? Because courts of law require real evidence, not coincidence, proof, not innuendo, forensics placing Mark at the scene of Aunt Mary’s murder, not merely snide innuendo about an old woman passing away in her sleep and her nephew suddenly and suspiciously being enriched as a result.
The reason Republicans can get away with throwing so much bullshit at us in television interviews and have half of us believe it is because many people don’t understand what real evidence is. Our education system not only doesn’t teach Critical Race Theory to kids, it also doesn’t teach critical thinking.
Many Republicans know this, even the seemingly crazy ones. That’s why Rudy Giuliani would proclaim outrageously on TV that he had solid evidence that the 2020 election was stolen, but when hauled into a courtroom he would admit before the judge that he had no such evidence at all! Republicans will spout their bullshit anywhere except in a courtroom under oath.
If Donald Trump were innocent and his cause just he would welcome his day in court. In fact he’d insist on it. He is terrified of the courtroom and so are the likes of Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz. They know that in a courtroom their brand of bullshit simply doesn’t fly. A courtroom is the one place on earth where evidence — real evidence — actually works, and nothing less will do, nothing less is tolerated.
That’s the real reason that these yo-yos defy congressional subpoenas and try to weasel out of appearances before grand juries. It’s not because they’re taking a courageous stance against the “radical left.” It’s because the twisted and inadequate “logic” of their conspiracy theories can’t stand the light of day, and a courtroom shines the brightest light of all, the light of truth and justice.
Not all conspiracy theorists think this way, of course. Many are sincere believers. Like my friend who contemplated writing the book about the so-called smiley face killers, they are sometimes intelligent professionals. They simply lack education in what constitutes real evidence and why.
I care about things like conspiracy theories because they are dangerous. They are deadly cancers on the body politic. People hypothesise whole new technologies to protect their conspiracy theories, like microchips hidden in Covid vaccines. It’s easily-disprovable nonsense when you look at it carefully, but so many of us are taught not to bother looking at all.
In the end it’s about the ultimate fate of knowing. It’s why so many people genuinely don’t know what to believe. Since they are taught all their lives to believe rubbish, it’s no wonder they’re confused.
How do we combat this? We must start by teaching rational, evidence-based and sceptical reasoning in our schools. We must educate ourselves on what constitutes real evidence: things such as authentic documentation, forensics, reliable eye-witnesses, and solid statistics. Impatience is another enemy of reason. We sometimes jump to conclusions too quickly without sufficient evidence.
We are too much in the habit of believing everything anybody says without checking it out. Think how often you’ve seen a quote from Albert Einstein or Abraham Lincoln on the internet and it turns out to be pure invention. The poster is seldom glad we noticed this and rarely thanks us for pointing out the error. Not only are we in the habit of believing rubbish, we don’t like to admit it when we do.
Conspiracy theories are why people doubt global warming, question the Holocaust, disbelieve that we went to the moon, and believe so many of the lies told by Republicans today. Conspiracy theories are a deadly menace, and if we let them they will strip us of our republic, our planet and our humanity. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.