Does Debunking Conspiracy Theories Make Them Worse?

January 27, 2020 Mike Rothschild

Does pushing back against disinformation actually amplify disinformation?

It’s a question that journalists and debunkers constantly grapple with – whether their efforts to expose the truth about conspiracy theories merely expose more people to conspiracy theories. And by extension, they give life to a conspiracy theory just at the point where it should be hitting the limit of people open to believing it. Even just the act of taking apart misinformation can be used as proof that the misinformation is the truth, and that the person taking it apart is a paid shill trying to “contain the damage.”

This updates my previously held beliefs very effectively!

I do still think the debunking framework risks making the wrong beliefs seem more valid/widely accepted than they already are. See also: flat earth

— Joe Hanson (@DrJoeHanson) January 25, 2020

There’s a name for this phenomenon, the “backfire effect.” Coined in 2010 to describe proponents of the Iraq War digging in deeper when evidence of the existence of weapons of mass destruction was debunked, the backfire effect essentially states that, as RationalWiki puts it, “in the face of contradictory evidence, established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger.”

The Clinton Murder Machine Breaks Down

January 21, 2020January 22, 2020 Mike Rothschild

Last summer, conspiracy watchers were abuzz over the shooting death of former Arkansas state senator Linda Collins-Smith. And recent updates in the case have made the case even more bizarre and noteworthy.

The 57-year-old Republican was found dead in her home of a single gunshot wound to the chest. Naturally, the death of anyone involved in Arkansas politics, no matter who they were or what they did, instantly points back to the Clintons – a couple long rumored to have a monumental list of people they’ve killed. It didn’t help the conspiracy theories that Collins-Smith had recently appeared on the QAnon YouTube channel Patriots Soapbox, and even though she wasn’t there to talk about Q, just the correlation was enough.

Who is Somerset Belenoff?

January 13, 2020January 14, 2020 Mike Rothschild16 Comments

I’m often introduced to new topics in the fringe world by ways that people find my writing. So I was especially interested when a spike in searches for the name “Somerset Belenoff” brought increased traffic to my piece on the “Rothschild human hunting lodge” hoax. The name wasn’t familiar to me, so the search traffic couldn’t have been because of the content of the piece. Was it embedded in a tweet? A comment?

And most importantly, who is Somerset Belenoff, and why are people searching for him/her?

Well, the answer to the first question is easy. The search traffic comes from a comment on the piece, by “2CrayCray” that goes [sic] “Conspiracy is Truth: And how do we know you arent a plant or paid informant working for somerset belenoff or her stooges the Rothchilds? How will you expose this eveil i ask you? Of course you wont because you are working with THEM. you are probly also a reptellion lizard and a cannable.”

Why Will Nobody Ask the Question?

January 6, 2020January 6, 2020 Mike Rothschild

One of the great contradictions of the QAnon conspiracy theory is that they crave the attention of a mainstream media that they simultaneously believe is the enemy of free people everywhere. QAnon gurus and followers constantly complain about the “hit pieces” run by the “Mockingbird media” that point out the failings and violent ideation of the conspiracy, and at the same time, complain that the media writes them off as a LARP.

The most frequent way that this complaining manifest itself is in QAnon followers whining that the media will not “ask the question” of Donald Trump – ie, getting the president on the record having to confirm or deny whether QAnon exists.

This isn’t new, of course. The Q poster themselves started the whining drumbeat in June 2018 with a drop calling it “the ultimate question.”

The QAnon Guide to the Chaos in Syria: Fake Fake Fake!

October 14, 2019October 14, 2019 Mike Rothschild1 Comment

One of the reasons belief in QAnon has persisted is that constantly renews itself. The conspiracy theory that President Trump and a small military intelligence cadre are on the verge of purging the deep state has a built-in ability to pull items out of the chaos of the daily news, and suck them into its mythology, and spit them back out as “research.”

This is how you keep a conspiracy theory going when the guru behind it has been silenced, as Q has been with the collapse of 8chan. And given that much of the daily news is terrible for Trump, it’s vital that Q followers reinterpret what’s happening not as a cornered presidency careening toward collapse, but as the final stage-setting before the glorious mass arrest and destruction of the deep state. Remember, Q holds Trump up as a God-given savior of America and freedom. Such a person can never look bad, in any capacity.