Crank magnetism

A post at Lawyers, Guns and Money last month discussed the concept of crank magnetism: people who hold one unfounded or irrational belief are likely to hold others as well.

RFK is anti-vax; he also thinks Jews created covid as a bioweapon. A Flat Earther a couple of decades back claimed that the round Earth was made up by Jews to discredit the Bible (because Jews certainly have no stake in it). As Christine Garwood shows in her book Flat Earth, Flat Earthers in general are prone to conspiracy theories: did you know that JFK resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis in return for bringing the Russians in on the “globularist conspiracy.” In extreme cases we get the red pill where everything you know is supposedly a lie.

This is not a new thing. Nazism is pure crackpottery and as Heather Pringle shows in her book The Master Plan, the Nazis believed a lot of nonsense, like recreating the ancient Aryan superweapon remembered in myth as the hammer of Thor (unsurprisingly, they did not succeed). And people have been claiming Proctor and Gamble worships Satan since the 1980s. I can state from experience that people who share one crackpot claim like that one on email (back before posting it on FB or X was an option) will share other unrelated claims.

LGM lists a number of reasons. People who are brilliant or successful in one field think they’re just as good in another. People who gain credit for their off-the-wall insights or contrarian views, then keep being contrarian in hopes of the same addiction. People who start questioning conventional wisdom, then don’t stop. Or they refuse to accept experts or facts because they don’t want to believe them. Antisemites don’t want to believe in the Holocaust. Homophobes don’t want to believe that gays are no more pedophilic than straights. Sexists who can’t stand the possibility women are their equal. Lots of intelligent people embrace lies about Trump’s recent conviction rather than admit they support him even behind bars.

Likewise the right-wing bull that the FBI went to Mar-a-Lago to assassinate Trump is a lie, but Trumpers want to believe he’s a martyr.

There’s also the echo chamber factor: once you get into an online (or offline) community dedicated to Qanon or incel outrage or the flat earth or Sandy Hook conspiracies, you’ll find they have a pat answer for every doubt you have. If they shift to the crazy, you may be dragged along, or at least pretend — and that often ends up transitioning into believing. Especially if someone you trust is there. TikTok tradwives promote far-right bullshit. Some misoygnists slide into Nazism.

I think Jerry Seinfeld reflects another variation on the theme in his sudden pining for the days of dominant masculinity (never mind that his career-making role was to play himself as a whiny, selfish, marginally successful comic). 25 years ago, he was one of the biggest stars on TV; now college kids have no interest in his act (I imagine if you’re a college student in 2024, Seinfeld’s about as cutting edge as Bob Hope or Milton Berle when I was a kid). With the spotlight no longer on him, he’s whining about how political correctness and the lack of “an agreed-on hierarchy” is killing America (news flash, the hierarchy prior to the civil rights and feminist movements was not agreed on).

I think the stuff that simmers in our culture makes some conspiracy theories automatically appealing. Anti-semitism runs so deep in certain parts of society, particularly the conspiracy theorists, that “it’s the Jews” makes sense to way too many people (RFK, Marjorie Taylor Greene). And misogyny runs deep enough that pundits who don’t necessarily agree with the incel worldview will still argue they have a point.

Like the phrase goes, out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever built.