6 ms·

>I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism Like any conspiracy site, it's going to attract people who share a view of the world in which e

>I think that the authors have no problem with authoritarianism Like any conspiracy site, it's going to attract people who share a view of the world in which everything must be orchestrated, controlled - a reason for all things. Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. The order provided by conspiracies comfort the conspiracy theorist: paradoxically making the world feel safer, more ordered while simultaneously believing that evil people have devoted their lives to ruining yours. If you think about it, such a psychology is naturally authoritarian-leaning. Such a mind yearns for stability, order and control.

tomp 11y ago
So, all people who were saying that NSA is spying on the whole internet (before Snowden, that was the conspiracy) were secretly authoritarian?!
- tptacek 11y ago
  No, the spying the NSA does on the Internet falls more into the category of "worst kept secrets" than "conspiracy theories".
  - tomp 11y ago
    You could say that about all conspiracy theories, especially those that have since come true.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      So what? That's not analysis, it's numerology. Just because some things are true doesn't mean all theories are equally deserving of dignity. But the notion that the USG was monitoring the Internet was entirely deserving of dignity: * It's their job * The software security industry is full of people who used to hack professionally for them * There'd been a major news story roughly every other year since the 1990s Echelon thing about NSA dragnet surveillance There are still things people say about NSA that have the tenor of conspiracy theories --- some of them being things Snowden actually said! --- and you might be able to make observations about the character of the people who believe those things (I don't know, that was the other commenter's point). But the basic outline of what NSA is doing with the Internet is not a conspiracy theory.
      - saalweachter 11y ago
        Another important point-- once you get into the conspiracy theory mindset, it's not so much that a conspiracy or some conspiracies happen. There's a tendency to believe that all conspiracies are true, even the contradictory ones. Your average conspiracy theorist doesn't just believe the NSA is spying on Americans [they better be spying on non-Americans; we taxpayers are paying them a lot of money to do so] or that Putin has had a few guys killed. Your average conspiracy theorist believes that the Moon landing was faked, JFK was assassinated by a coordinated effort of at least three different groups, there are cures to cancer and all other diseases being kept secret by corporations and/or the gov'ment, Hitler is still alive, aliens have visited the Earth, are living here, and have secret treaties with various states, the UN has real power, various diseases [eg, HIV] are man-made, and various biblical artifacts have been found and kept secret. You rarely find a conspiracy theorist who believes one crazy thing, it's almost all or nothing. It's this weird credulity veiled as skepticism for the establishment
        ConfuciusSay02 11y ago
        You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what people believe. Do you have any evidence to show that people believe all or nothing? Over 80% of Americans think that the official 9/11 story is bunk, are you suggesting that all of those people also believe aliens have visited Earth?
        anon1385 11y ago
        http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-believe-conspiracy-theoies/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-believe... >Such examples, along with others in my years on the conspiracy beat, are emblematic of a trend I have detected that people who believe in one such theory tend to believe in many other equally improbable and often contradictory cabals. This observation has recently been confirmed empirically by University of Kent psychologists Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton in a paper entitled “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,” published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science this past January. The authors begin by defining a conspiracy theory as “a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal” that is “notoriously resistant to falsification … with new layers of conspiracy being added to rationalize each new piece of disconfirming evidence.” Once you believe that “one massive, sinister conspiracy could be successfully executed in near-perfect secrecy, [it] suggests that many such plots are possible.” With this cabalistic paradigm in place, conspiracies can become “the default explanation for any given event—a unitary, closed-off worldview in which beliefs come together in a mutually supportive network known as a monological belief system.” >This monological belief system explains the significant correlations between different conspiracy theories in the study. For example, “a belief that a rogue cell of MI6 was responsible for [Princess] Diana's death was correlated with belief in theories that HIV was created in a laboratory … that the moon landing was a hoax … and that governments are covering up the existence of aliens.” The effect continues even when the conspiracies contradict one another: the more participants believed that Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered.
  - xlm1717 11y ago
    I think you're just splitting hairs there.
- alistproducer2 11y ago
  No. I'm speaking about people who spend most of their time online on conspiracy sites. I should know, I used to be one of them. I was 17 when 9/11 happened and spent most of the early 2000's reading about lizard people, the Illuminati and the bilderberg group. I'm ashamed to admit it, but once upon a time I was a daily reader of Alex Jones. There are conspiracies. They exist. But I'm mostly speaking to the mindset of a person who completely immerses themselves in conspiracy theory as a way of life.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    That's the weird thing about conspiracy theorists. There certainly are big historic coverups; here in the UK we're dealing with finally having an inquest that acknowledges the truth about Hillsborough, for example. But they form a tiny part of the conspiracist worldview.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    I also used to be one of them, until I formed the meta-conspiracy-theory. What if conspiracy theory sites and groups are just part of a conspiracy that exists to monitor, marginalize, and distract conspiracy theorists? What if the only thing that gives the conspiracy any power at all is the weight of the conspiracy theories behind it? And that's when I spackled over the cracks in my pot, stopped looking for evidence of malicious intent in everything, and washed my hands of all of it. I still think that there is a massive international conspiracy of rich and powerful individuals, but I also believe that they don't have nearly as much control as anyone thinks they have, including themselves. They have the illusion of control. For instance, they can propel lobbying efforts to pass trade deals which would "normalize" copyright in 20+ different countries, and then everyone just ignores it and torrents the latest episode of Game of Thrones anyway. They can buy up all the newspapers, and then everyone suddenly stops reading them, so they all have to merge or go bankrupt. They lobby for strict environmental controls, to preserve their huge tracts of land. People subtly cheat or blatantly and overtly break the law whenever the cops aren't watching. Or the vendors cheat on behalf of their customers, just to stay in business. They can manipulate currencies and equities and get even richer, but a hired cook will still piss in their morning coffee or feed them a slice of doodoo pie. The conspiracy theorists may actually be supporting them, by ascribing to them powers and abilities that they do not actually possess. When the elites gather in Davos, they aren't plotting the future course of the world economy, like everyone thinks. They're patting themselves on the back, getting drunk, doing drugs, and cheating on their spouses in posh hotel rooms, all the while toasting the fact that the proles hadn't erected the guillotines since the last meeting. They remind themselves how important they are, and then return to the world that will briefly roll its eyes at them before getting back to the work it was already doing.
- krapp 11y ago
  I would say "secretly theist" rather than "secretly authoritarian". I can see a strong parallel between conspiracist and theist beliefs, in that the mundane world is an illusion, lie or trap beyond which a metaphysical world exists full of hidden truths and malevolent beings who conspire to control everything behind the scenes, of which most people are completely unaware. Conspiracy theorists merely replace a supernatural demiurge with a political one. I think one of the compelling aspects of conspiracy theory as an expression of faith, is that it's comforting to realize that even if the world is run by a dark and malevolent agenda, at least it has an agenda, and someone or something is in control. One can see this expression of conspiracy as religion here on Hacker News. Whenever a skeptical statement is made about some conspiracy theory, someone will inevitably state that because Edward Snowden was proven right, conspiracy X should be considered true. Or, because people considered the things Edward Snowden described were once considered "conspiracy theory", one should accept that conspiracy theorists are enlightened about the true nature of the world. Rationally, this argument makes little sense as one conspiracy theory being true doesn't validate the truth of another, but such statements are made in the context of religion all the time, as expressions of faith.
didjdjjdjf 11y ago
What's sad is no matter how often people like you are proven wrong you'll just keep on repeating the same bullshit. I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory, ZH was right HN commenters were wrong. There's a long list but when it comes to finance HN commenters are typically poorly educated.
- sesutton 11y ago
  Throw enough darts at the board and you're bound to hit the bullseye eventually.
- didjdjjdjf 11y ago
  Typical childish behavior, down vote criticism, ignore the facts.
  - sremani 11y ago
    Rule #1 do not complain about down-votes, if you mind too much about them you will get gun-shy or putting filter. I have enough down votes but it still stings a bit, once past the initial sting, you will realize that people are politically and ideologically vested, irrespective of left or right, they will piss on your parade if you shake their world view and honestly, I may be one of them. Say what you want to say respectfully and do not worry about votes.
- maze-le 11y ago
  > I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory (...) This is a pretty good example actually. ZH covered the gold/silver/libor market manipulation in pretty good detail. They also explained a lot about the insides of these deals, I frankly had no clue about. They did a pretty good job on thios one. However, this is not a conradiction to what [parent] said. Consipiracy theories do attract an authoritarian leaning mindset, he is right. Also, on a sidenote: There are conspiracy theories that have some credibility, some of them even became true in the past (NSA, P2, at some point even the existence of the Mafia was one). Conspiracy theories become problematic, when they become an ideology. When you explain everyone and everything in the context of a conspiracy, you run in a one-way filter-bubble, because everything supports the theory, especially facts, that contradict them.
giardini 11y ago
Zero Hedge is NOT a conspiracy site. I don't know why you make that claim except that, once you did, many other posts on this forum followed suit. In all honesty your claim (that zerohedge is a conspiracy site) and the ensuing posts looks more like conspiracy (blog-spamming or blog-misdirection) than does zerohedge. zerohedge WAS once a decent current economics site that sometimes featured excellent articles but the responses of members began to decay. Today the responses are mostly noise and I rarely bother to visit zerohedge.
- alistproducer2 11y ago
  I disagree. I don't have an interest in digging through ZH posts to prove my point, but in general the spin of the site is conspiratorial in nature. Whether it's the Fed is in it with the banks to provide free money to prop up the market, or the BLS number are not to be believed or trusted, or any other number of reoccurring themes, ZH is a conspiracy site.
  - jsprogrammer 11y ago
    Are you saying banks are not supported by the Fed and that the Fed does not provide 'free money' to banks?
  - beagle3 11y ago
    BLS numbers are routinely revised in retrospect to be worse a quarter or two later and with a friday release so that no one notices. As in, more than one in two BLS unemployment reports is retroactively revised, and I don't remember a single "it's actually better than we previously reported" revision. tptacek (IIRC quoting someone else) described it well: ZeroHedge is the conspiracy theory site without the conspiracies. Ignore the tone, take the analysis with a lot of salt, but do look at the data - they bring to the front a lot of data that no mainstream publication will show. There are two things wrong with the common view of conspiracies: 1. That it is impossible or at least, extremely unlikely, for a group of people to meet in private and make plans to further their own agenda at the expense of others -- that's all a "conspiracy" is. It happens thousands of times per day at any scale of operations. 2. That you actually need conspirators for a conspiracy-equivalent effect to take hold. Do you remember the option backdating scandal? Turns out tens of companies did the same thing. Hundreds involved was aware, no one talked, until an outsider forced the SEC to respond. This doesn't need to be centrally orchestrated. Whether or not you consider this "a conspiracy" or not, doesn't matter. It was effectively a conspiracy against shareholders. Similarly, there's the still unfolding emission scandal which is (effectively) yet another large scale conspiracy, whether or not Mitsubishi and Volkswagen engineers met in a shady bar to co-ordinate their cheating or not.
sevenless 11y ago
> Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. I agree, and I see chronic conspiracy theorizing as a pathology. One should beware the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory of Everything (antisemitism, capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, 'Cultural Marxism', are common belief attractors on who to blame) But conspiracies do also exist in reality - in fact, conspiracies should be rather common, as giving your opponents perfect information makes you less competitive. As they say, one man's conspiracy is another man's business plan. There have been many occasions when "conspiracy theories" turned out to be true (Iran-Contra, Watergate, George W. Bush's manipulation of intelligence over Iraq's WMD), and it's all too convenient for the perpetrators to dismiss accusations as such. Particularly, present day corporate media that only airs a narrow range of opinions and has zero interest in investigative journalism, tends to call anything that question the motives of those in power a conspiracy theory. Likewise the outsize role of money in US politics means it's easy for politicians to be bought and lobbied. And difficult for the corporate media, subject to the same financial pressures themselves, to point it out. That disconnect between media reporting and reality also leads to a kind of 'conspiracy theory' that isn't a conspiracy theory at all: when politicians or corporations do corrupt things or go against the public interest in plain sight, but nobody in widely circulated news media's willing to report on it and bring it into public conversation. If you're on the right you'd say this is what's happening with immigration. If you're on the left you'd say it's what is happening with financial corruption or the military-industrial complex. Successful democracy depends on information flow between population, media and politicians, and corruption and pressure from special interests can undermine that. Arguably conspiracy theories are a symptom of a decline of trust in a unified democratic society and particularly government and media. Those who subscribe tend to feel marginalized in some way. Plenty of those who point this out aren't authoritarian in the least.

tomp 11y ago

So, all people who were saying that NSA is spying on the whole internet (before Snowden, that was the conspiracy) were secretly authoritarian?!

tptacek 11y ago
No, the spying the NSA does on the Internet falls more into the category of "worst kept secrets" than "conspiracy theories".
- tomp 11y ago
  You could say that about all conspiracy theories, especially those that have since come true.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    So what? That's not analysis, it's numerology. Just because some things are true doesn't mean all theories are equally deserving of dignity. But the notion that the USG was monitoring the Internet was entirely deserving of dignity: * It's their job * The software security industry is full of people who used to hack professionally for them * There'd been a major news story roughly every other year since the 1990s Echelon thing about NSA dragnet surveillance There are still things people say about NSA that have the tenor of conspiracy theories --- some of them being things Snowden actually said! --- and you might be able to make observations about the character of the people who believe those things (I don't know, that was the other commenter's point). But the basic outline of what NSA is doing with the Internet is not a conspiracy theory.
    - saalweachter 11y ago
      Another important point-- once you get into the conspiracy theory mindset, it's not so much that a conspiracy or some conspiracies happen. There's a tendency to believe that all conspiracies are true, even the contradictory ones. Your average conspiracy theorist doesn't just believe the NSA is spying on Americans [they better be spying on non-Americans; we taxpayers are paying them a lot of money to do so] or that Putin has had a few guys killed. Your average conspiracy theorist believes that the Moon landing was faked, JFK was assassinated by a coordinated effort of at least three different groups, there are cures to cancer and all other diseases being kept secret by corporations and/or the gov'ment, Hitler is still alive, aliens have visited the Earth, are living here, and have secret treaties with various states, the UN has real power, various diseases [eg, HIV] are man-made, and various biblical artifacts have been found and kept secret. You rarely find a conspiracy theorist who believes one crazy thing, it's almost all or nothing. It's this weird credulity veiled as skepticism for the establishment
      - ConfuciusSay02 11y ago
        You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what people believe. Do you have any evidence to show that people believe all or nothing? Over 80% of Americans think that the official 9/11 story is bunk, are you suggesting that all of those people also believe aliens have visited Earth?
        anon1385 11y ago
        http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-believe-conspiracy-theoies/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-believe... >Such examples, along with others in my years on the conspiracy beat, are emblematic of a trend I have detected that people who believe in one such theory tend to believe in many other equally improbable and often contradictory cabals. This observation has recently been confirmed empirically by University of Kent psychologists Michael J. Wood, Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton in a paper entitled “Dead and Alive: Beliefs in Contradictory Conspiracy Theories,” published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science this past January. The authors begin by defining a conspiracy theory as “a proposed plot by powerful people or organizations working together in secret to accomplish some (usually sinister) goal” that is “notoriously resistant to falsification … with new layers of conspiracy being added to rationalize each new piece of disconfirming evidence.” Once you believe that “one massive, sinister conspiracy could be successfully executed in near-perfect secrecy, [it] suggests that many such plots are possible.” With this cabalistic paradigm in place, conspiracies can become “the default explanation for any given event—a unitary, closed-off worldview in which beliefs come together in a mutually supportive network known as a monological belief system.” >This monological belief system explains the significant correlations between different conspiracy theories in the study. For example, “a belief that a rogue cell of MI6 was responsible for [Princess] Diana's death was correlated with belief in theories that HIV was created in a laboratory … that the moon landing was a hoax … and that governments are covering up the existence of aliens.” The effect continues even when the conspiracies contradict one another: the more participants believed that Diana faked her own death, the more they believed that she was murdered.
- xlm1717 11y ago
  I think you're just splitting hairs there.
alistproducer2 11y ago
No. I'm speaking about people who spend most of their time online on conspiracy sites. I should know, I used to be one of them. I was 17 when 9/11 happened and spent most of the early 2000's reading about lizard people, the Illuminati and the bilderberg group. I'm ashamed to admit it, but once upon a time I was a daily reader of Alex Jones. There are conspiracies. They exist. But I'm mostly speaking to the mindset of a person who completely immerses themselves in conspiracy theory as a way of life.
- pjc50 11y ago
  That's the weird thing about conspiracy theorists. There certainly are big historic coverups; here in the UK we're dealing with finally having an inquest that acknowledges the truth about Hillsborough, for example. But they form a tiny part of the conspiracist worldview.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  I also used to be one of them, until I formed the meta-conspiracy-theory. What if conspiracy theory sites and groups are just part of a conspiracy that exists to monitor, marginalize, and distract conspiracy theorists? What if the only thing that gives the conspiracy any power at all is the weight of the conspiracy theories behind it? And that's when I spackled over the cracks in my pot, stopped looking for evidence of malicious intent in everything, and washed my hands of all of it. I still think that there is a massive international conspiracy of rich and powerful individuals, but I also believe that they don't have nearly as much control as anyone thinks they have, including themselves. They have the illusion of control. For instance, they can propel lobbying efforts to pass trade deals which would "normalize" copyright in 20+ different countries, and then everyone just ignores it and torrents the latest episode of Game of Thrones anyway. They can buy up all the newspapers, and then everyone suddenly stops reading them, so they all have to merge or go bankrupt. They lobby for strict environmental controls, to preserve their huge tracts of land. People subtly cheat or blatantly and overtly break the law whenever the cops aren't watching. Or the vendors cheat on behalf of their customers, just to stay in business. They can manipulate currencies and equities and get even richer, but a hired cook will still piss in their morning coffee or feed them a slice of doodoo pie. The conspiracy theorists may actually be supporting them, by ascribing to them powers and abilities that they do not actually possess. When the elites gather in Davos, they aren't plotting the future course of the world economy, like everyone thinks. They're patting themselves on the back, getting drunk, doing drugs, and cheating on their spouses in posh hotel rooms, all the while toasting the fact that the proles hadn't erected the guillotines since the last meeting. They remind themselves how important they are, and then return to the world that will briefly roll its eyes at them before getting back to the work it was already doing.
krapp 11y ago
I would say "secretly theist" rather than "secretly authoritarian". I can see a strong parallel between conspiracist and theist beliefs, in that the mundane world is an illusion, lie or trap beyond which a metaphysical world exists full of hidden truths and malevolent beings who conspire to control everything behind the scenes, of which most people are completely unaware. Conspiracy theorists merely replace a supernatural demiurge with a political one. I think one of the compelling aspects of conspiracy theory as an expression of faith, is that it's comforting to realize that even if the world is run by a dark and malevolent agenda, at least it has an agenda, and someone or something is in control. One can see this expression of conspiracy as religion here on Hacker News. Whenever a skeptical statement is made about some conspiracy theory, someone will inevitably state that because Edward Snowden was proven right, conspiracy X should be considered true. Or, because people considered the things Edward Snowden described were once considered "conspiracy theory", one should accept that conspiracy theorists are enlightened about the true nature of the world. Rationally, this argument makes little sense as one conspiracy theory being true doesn't validate the truth of another, but such statements are made in the context of religion all the time, as expressions of faith.

didjdjjdjf 11y ago

What's sad is no matter how often people like you are proven wrong you'll just keep on repeating the same bullshit. I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory, ZH was right HN commenters were wrong. There's a long list but when it comes to finance HN commenters are typically poorly educated.

sesutton 11y ago
Throw enough darts at the board and you're bound to hit the bullseye eventually.
didjdjjdjf 11y ago
Typical childish behavior, down vote criticism, ignore the facts.
- sremani 11y ago
  Rule #1 do not complain about down-votes, if you mind too much about them you will get gun-shy or putting filter. I have enough down votes but it still stings a bit, once past the initial sting, you will realize that people are politically and ideologically vested, irrespective of left or right, they will piss on your parade if you shake their world view and honestly, I may be one of them. Say what you want to say respectfully and do not worry about votes.
maze-le 11y ago
> I recall HN saying gold market manipulation was conspiracy theory (...) This is a pretty good example actually. ZH covered the gold/silver/libor market manipulation in pretty good detail. They also explained a lot about the insides of these deals, I frankly had no clue about. They did a pretty good job on thios one. However, this is not a conradiction to what [parent] said. Consipiracy theories do attract an authoritarian leaning mindset, he is right. Also, on a sidenote: There are conspiracy theories that have some credibility, some of them even became true in the past (NSA, P2, at some point even the existence of the Mafia was one). Conspiracy theories become problematic, when they become an ideology. When you explain everyone and everything in the context of a conspiracy, you run in a one-way filter-bubble, because everything supports the theory, especially facts, that contradict them.

giardini 11y ago

Zero Hedge is NOT a conspiracy site. I don't know why you make that claim except that, once you did, many other posts on this forum followed suit. In all honesty your claim (that zerohedge is a conspiracy site) and the ensuing posts looks more like conspiracy (blog-spamming or blog-misdirection) than does zerohedge. zerohedge WAS once a decent current economics site that sometimes featured excellent articles but the responses of members began to decay. Today the responses are mostly noise and I rarely bother to visit zerohedge.

alistproducer2 11y ago
I disagree. I don't have an interest in digging through ZH posts to prove my point, but in general the spin of the site is conspiratorial in nature. Whether it's the Fed is in it with the banks to provide free money to prop up the market, or the BLS number are not to be believed or trusted, or any other number of reoccurring themes, ZH is a conspiracy site.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Are you saying banks are not supported by the Fed and that the Fed does not provide 'free money' to banks?
- beagle3 11y ago
  BLS numbers are routinely revised in retrospect to be worse a quarter or two later and with a friday release so that no one notices. As in, more than one in two BLS unemployment reports is retroactively revised, and I don't remember a single "it's actually better than we previously reported" revision. tptacek (IIRC quoting someone else) described it well: ZeroHedge is the conspiracy theory site without the conspiracies. Ignore the tone, take the analysis with a lot of salt, but do look at the data - they bring to the front a lot of data that no mainstream publication will show. There are two things wrong with the common view of conspiracies: 1. That it is impossible or at least, extremely unlikely, for a group of people to meet in private and make plans to further their own agenda at the expense of others -- that's all a "conspiracy" is. It happens thousands of times per day at any scale of operations. 2. That you actually need conspirators for a conspiracy-equivalent effect to take hold. Do you remember the option backdating scandal? Turns out tens of companies did the same thing. Hundreds involved was aware, no one talked, until an outsider forced the SEC to respond. This doesn't need to be centrally orchestrated. Whether or not you consider this "a conspiracy" or not, doesn't matter. It was effectively a conspiracy against shareholders. Similarly, there's the still unfolding emission scandal which is (effectively) yet another large scale conspiracy, whether or not Mitsubishi and Volkswagen engineers met in a shady bar to co-ordinate their cheating or not.

sevenless 11y ago

> Randomness has no place in the mind of a conspiracy theorist. I agree, and I see chronic conspiracy theorizing as a pathology. One should beware the Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory of Everything (antisemitism, capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, 'Cultural Marxism', are common belief attractors on who to blame) But conspiracies do also exist in reality - in fact, conspiracies should be rather common, as giving your opponents perfect information makes you less competitive. As they say, one man's conspiracy is another man's business plan. There have been many occasions when "conspiracy theories" turned out to be true (Iran-Contra, Watergate, George W. Bush's manipulation of intelligence over Iraq's WMD), and it's all too convenient for the perpetrators to dismiss accusations as such. Particularly, present day corporate media that only airs a narrow range of opinions and has zero interest in investigative journalism, tends to call anything that question the motives of those in power a conspiracy theory. Likewise the outsize role of money in US politics means it's easy for politicians to be bought and lobbied. And difficult for the corporate media, subject to the same financial pressures themselves, to point it out. That disconnect between media reporting and reality also leads to a kind of 'conspiracy theory' that isn't a conspiracy theory at all: when politicians or corporations do corrupt things or go against the public interest in plain sight, but nobody in widely circulated news media's willing to report on it and bring it into public conversation. If you're on the right you'd say this is what's happening with immigration. If you're on the left you'd say it's what is happening with financial corruption or the military-industrial complex. Successful democracy depends on information flow between population, media and politicians, and corruption and pressure from special interests can undermine that. Arguably conspiracy theories are a symptom of a decline of trust in a unified democratic society and particularly government and media. Those who subscribe tend to feel marginalized in some way. Plenty of those who point this out aren't authoritarian in the least.