"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies."
That quote is often misappropriated to the late, great comedian Groucho Marx, of Marx Brothers fame, but actually was coined by British publisher and writer Ernest Benn. His best known book is Confessions of a Capitalist, where he extolled the merits of laissez-faire capitalism, an economic system that has lost whatever romantic appeal it once held to hegemonic digital deities of data consolidation. Though Benn and Groucho were contemporaries for a time, it easy to assume the genius of satirical insight lay with Groucho. So, with the exception of the few words changed from Benn's quote, the cigar smoking, bushy eyebrowed, early TV game show (You Bet Your Life) host, Marx carries on the mantle of truth embedded in the statement.
Surprisingly, a conspiracy theory has yet to emerge concerning Benn's quote being wrongly attributed to Groucho. Groucho, during his lifetime, publicly supported the Democrats. Benn, being British, was not involved in America's political mud fights though he did leave the Liberal Party for the Conservatives after World War I. As for Groucho, he himself never fell victim to conspiracy theories (it was pre-talk radio after all) except maybe the whispered speculation that he was a distant relative of Karl.
But in this human era of maniacal conspiracy theories — which can happen in any era of human development — substitute the word "politics" for "conspiracy theories" and Groucho's words are even more meliorative. Also "trouble" — in the fever brains of QAnon adherents — could be the government's inability to protect real or perceived threats against children by pedophiles; the "everywhere" is a government filled with Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton and George Soros, with the entertainment and religious world thrown in through personalities such as Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Pope Francis and the Dalia Lama; and "applying" means the remedies in the name of Donald Trump and the military.
Like most all conspiracy theories, QAnon avoids being static in its elucidations of fantasy. The New York Times calls it a “big tent conspiracy theory because it is constantly evolving and adding new features and claims." Social media platforms are blamed for its contagion but like any conspiracy theory its spread relies primarily on human — or any sentient being — gullibility. The belief seems beyond the instinctive behaviors of eating, drinking and reproducing, the apperceptive functions of the brain on a blank cavass where the conspiracy landscape can be formed void of critical thinking. In other words, physiological irregularities being an exception, we are as dumb as we want to be.
In an organized society where conspiracy theories propagate, the effect of such theories depends upon the power of its believers. If those upholders manage the reins of governing or media, reality distorts and metastasizing throughout established institutions, filtering down to human interactions where the large conspiratorial lie begets other lies that viciously breeds perceived personal or group slights based on class, racial, ethnic or religious differences. Think of the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of women deemed witches, the nihilistic component of white supremacy as demonstrated January 6 at the U.S. Capitol, Nazi death camps, the Ugandan genocide and on and on.
Human progress results from the rational overtaking the irrational. That is the ongoing human battle within our species, a conflict that is never settled by war and seldom by reason.
Western political philosophy came from ancient Greece. Aristotle wrote, "Man is by nature a political animal." Women were excluded in the political thinking of Aristotle even as he believed "society precedes the individual," maintained in "virtue" and for the sake of "practical knowledge" and the "good life" through politics. Perhaps relying on one gender to fulfill his assertions handicapped such idealistic assumptions through the ages.
Yet even Aristotle is not immune to conspiracy theories. A chapter in the book Handbook of Conspiracy Theory and Contemporary Religion (2018) from the Brill publishing house, based in the Netherlands, is titled "Was Aristotle an Anti-Semitic Alien? Conspiracy Theory, Ufology, and the Colonisation of the Past in Contemporary Greece." Given the centuries gone since Aristotle lived it could be the reason the conservative media hasn't amplified the question. Even with a cursory study of the irrational nature of the human brain, likely one could fill a set of encyclopedias on conspiracy theories from the dawn of human language to yesterday.
Writer and Peabody-winning host of public radio's Studio 360 program Kurt Andersen seems to have started the task. His book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire A 500-Year Historydissects the historical record of America's predilection — which Andersen calls "extreme and deep seated" — for "fantasy," everything from the Salem Witch trials to Scientology. In subsequent talks before various groups, including one before the Center for Inquiry, Andersen expounds on themes in his book along with thinly explored examinations of America's cultural development based on a broad psychological determination; I would guess not widely shared by others researching our fall into the Stephen Colbert term of "truthiness" and world of post-truth.
His historical and conceptual connections point to the country's earliest settlers from the Puritans (and Protestantism in general) and their beliefs in predestination and biblical prophecy, to the 1960’s counterculture with its "anything goes" deportment, which Andersen contends "super powered the right," to the popularity of the television series the "X Files" and social media platforms. All of which, according to Andersen, "enabled fantasyland" and stopped registering the difference between reality and delusion. All this percolated in America, says Andersen, because the nation was founded by "extreme antagonism to all establishments, giving a person to dream up their own version of reality."
It began early in America's history. In the 1790s, a congregational minister in Massachusetts, Jedidiah Morse, claimed a group called the Bavarian Illuminati was at work “to root out and abolish Christianity, and overturn all civil government.” This hostile credendum remains among some Americans as the anti-establishment vein continues right up to the anti-vaxxers of today that claim government mandates to vaccinate violate basic human rights, a claim so intense that it led some in the movement to join the insurgent "Stop the Steal" movement to advance their beliefs, proving that few conspiracy theories stand alone or ignore the opportunity to fasten onto another fantasy for mutualistic benefit. Nurtured and exploited by an increasingly chaotic political system drifting away from understanding its constitutional moorings and heightened by capitalistic pursuits, one fantastical belief fed other fantastical beliefs, said Andersen.
In the Trump and QAnon era, "irrationality became respectable and reality-based people a minority." What was once deemed silly or an attribute of some "crazy" relative garnered academic research dollars and an avenue for increased ratings on some news shows. Fake news was born and profitable.
How corrosive politics can pollute people's belief systems depends upon the political design and the motives its participants. Truth not respected or practiced in a political system fuels a conspiracy theory's destructive aspects, heightening its nonsensical bearings in explaining things, be it vaccines, an election or the disappearance of children. No specific type of political system, be it democratic or authoritarian, can resist the appearance of conspiracy theories. Some individuals will always feel estranged from the system that operates within their environment.
In “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,” by Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton, members of the psychology department at the University of Kent in England, they wrote that “people are attracted to conspiracy theories when important psychological needs are not being met.” Douglas identified three such needs: “the need for knowledge and certainty”; the “existential need” to “to feel safe and secure” when “powerless and scared”; and, among those high in narcissism, the “need to feel unique compared to others.” No wonder authoritarianism has strong appeal in dysfunctional political systems.
Conjoining a particular political system and conspiracy is a worldwide nonpareil, with the exception of static religious beliefs. Wikipedia has a list where the free encyclopedia admits the current listing is dynamic and "may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness." The list also is a testament to the infirmity of the human species and the fitful way it responds to its own evolutionary advancement. The list runs from the near thought provoking such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the totally absurd that the Denver Airport stands above the underground headquarters of the New World Order.
Unbounded, conspiracy theories stir the minds in other countries. Ongoing is the conspiracy that Adolf Hitler escaped to South America; another that the current Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, is Hitler's daughter. Also, Merkel joins former presidents Barak Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in being labeled a "lizard person" or Reptiloid. Russian President Vladimir Putin, says some of his countrymen, is a doppelganger with proof being his now inability to speak German and displaying a youthful body of a man in his 40s, not 68.
If human nature commands a balance between the rational and irrational as emblematic of progress, then otherworldly factors in the environment take a beating. Climate change, for example, accelerates because of political timidness and conspiratorial-based denials. Collateral damage comes in the sea level rise, ecological collapse and agricultural degradation, leading to forced migration. If politics fails to mitigate the instability and suffering, conspiracy theories fill the vacuum of inaction. As some political elements work to destroy a conspiracy theory, some conspiracy theories seek to eliminate politics. Inertia takes hold, cycles of revanchism repeat themselves.
Still, all the world is not just politics and conspiracy theories. Truth can be found beyond the constructs of a bounded mind. Art, even the art in comedy and satire, has repeatedly shown truth to us. If we all believe in human freedom and with it, responsibility, there's no space for politics. If we prized knowledge and fact, there would be no space for conspiracy theories.
As Groucho once said, "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"