conspiration

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A conspiracy theory literally made Trump president: It was his relentless advocacy of the “birther” lie about Barack Obama that turned him from a reality show clown into a political figure. He didn’t deliver the goods then, either: He claimed he had sent investigators to Hawaii “and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” but for some reason the revelations from these phantom investigators were never released.

But that didn’t slow him down. As a 2016 candidate and then president, there was no conspiracy theory too ridiculous for Trump to spread, even if he was usually careful not to come out and say definitively that he believed them. Was Ted Cruz’s dad in cahoots with Lee Harvey Oswald to kill JFK? It sure seems like it. Was Antonin Scalia murdered? “They say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to find a pillow,” so gosh, who knows? Do vaccines cause autism? Probably. QAnon? “I heard that these are people that love our country.” Did you read a report that made Trump look bad? Fake news, don’t believe it. That’s not to mention voter fraud conspiracies and the “Great Replacement” theory.

But the harmfulness of conspiracy theory arguably goes much deeper than this. It’s not just that conspiracy belief sometimes causes people to do terrible things. It’s that attachment to the conspiracy worldview violates important norms of trust and forbearance that are central to how we relate to each other and the wider world.

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