Conspiracy Theories Can Have Dangerous Consequences. Here's Why Experts Say We Can No Longer Ignore
Conspiracy theories, both powerful and enduring, can wreak havoc on society. In recent years, fringe ideas prompted a gunman to storm a Washington, D.C. pizzeria and may have motivated another to fatally shoot 11 worshippers inside a Pittsburgh synagogue. They are also largely to blame for a worldwide surge in measles cases that has sickened more people in the U.S. in the first half of 2019 than in any full year since 1994.
Now, the FBI says conspiracy theories “very likely” inspire domestic terrorists to commit criminal and sometimes violent acts and “very likely will emerge, spread and evolve” on internet platforms, according to an intelligence bulletin obtained by Yahoo News. The May 30 document from the FBI’s Phoenix field office—the first of its kind to examine the threat of conspiracy-driven extremists—also says the 2020 presidential election will likely fuel conspiracy theories, potentially motivating domestic extremists who subscribe to them.
“It’s increasingly becoming clear that lots and lots of people believe in them, and they have negative outcomes,” says Viren Swami, a social psychology professor at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K., who has published several studies on conspiracy theories.
Millions of people all over the world—including, by one estimate, half of the U.S. population—believe in conspiracy theories. Today, that figure may be even higher, according to political scientists and psychologists who study the phenomenon. Since researchers have not tracked these trends over time, it’s difficult to determine whether the number of people who believe in conspiracy theories has risen over the years. But experts, and now the FBI, argue an average person’s exposure to them has certainly increased, in large part because conspiracy theories are now more easily disseminated on social media.
Among the most prominent peddlers of misinformation on social media, experts say, is President Donald Trump. Trump has repeatedly promoted falsehoods, using his personal Twitter account more than 100 times to voice doubts about the negative effects of climate change, contradicting an overwhelming consensus among scientists. Trump, who has more than 63 million Twitter followers, also spent years pushing the false narrative that former President Barack Obama was not born in America.
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