The ability to see the dark patterns behind the sham of reality gives believers a sense of power.
It happens so fast now that I’m no longer surprised. Immediately after the terrorist shootings at Brown University and Australia’s Bondi Beach, my social media feed became clotted with conspiracy theories about the attacks. “Biggest False Flag ever in Australia,” one prominent trust-fund Communist posted on X.com. Other accounts claimed the Brown shooting was a “psyop” designed to justify extreme gun-control measures.
It took several years before the John F. Kennedy assassination or 9/11 conspiracy theories migrated from the fringe to the mainstream. Today, the leap is instantaneous. It happened after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, after Charlie Kirk’s killing and after the attack on two National Guard soldiers in Washington. Every time something terrible occurs, conspiracy theorists tell us to reject common sense explanations. They know who really did it.
While we shouldn’t put too much stock in individual posts from random people online, such fact-free counternarratives quickly spread. I was shocked to see an old college friend—someone I perceived to be liberal but not crazy—speculate on Facebook that both the Kirk and National Guard shootings were planned by Trump associates. Leading media figures amplify these sorts of claims. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel briefly got in hot water after claiming the “MAGA gang” was trying to hide the fact that Mr. Kirk’s killer was “one of them.” On the right, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens titillate their huge followings with endless conspiratorial conjectures.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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James B. Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a City Journal contributing editor.
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