Conspirology

Alexander Genis: A rare presidential campaign in the United States takes place without an accompaniment of conspiracy theories. But the current election race, according to many, is fateful in the history of the country - especially affecting dangerous mass delusions. The more put on the card, the higher the social stress, which, as some psychologists believe, is a nutrient medium of conspiracyology. Here are a few examples of such myths.

It turns out that Hillary Clinton has not inflammation of the lungs, according to the medical history, but supposedly Parkinson's disease, which her assistants hide, showing the people the double candidate of the Democratic Party.

Barack Obama, as the Republican candidate Donald Trump claimed until the very recent time, was not born in the USA, so he could not be president by law, which Clinton knew, but was silent, because of which he also had no right to be elected head of state.

These and myriad of other myths are especially actively breed on the mast fields of social networks.

The causes and features of conspiracy theories are told by our listeners by the university professor Miami Joseph Usinsky, co -author of the book “American Conspirology”. Our colleague Evgeny Aronov talks to the scientist.

Evgeny Aronov: Conspirology, especially the political production, is now a fashionable topic in scientific circles. “I grew up in Turkey,” writes on the pages of New York Times, professor at the University of North Carolina Zenep Tufji, “and, honestly, I do not share the ironic and fan of colleagues of my countrymen into various theories of conspiracies. The elites in Turkey and in the Middle East, in general, are very secretive, they have no habit of revealing the decisions made. Foreign powers have long been secretly interfering in the affairs of the region. Independent means of information designed to weed out fiction from the truth, we are rare. The level of confidence in power, and to each other, too, is very low, which generates all kinds of invigorative ideas in society about what is happening in the minds of rulers and their subjects, both domestic and alien. ”

In a word, old aphorism comes to memory: even if a person is paranoid, this does not mean that no one is following him.

“Conspirology is a miserable run on the Kutza plow, which is processed by those who have no chance to change their lives for the better, and therefore they are looking for the meaning of what is happening in the machinations of the higher powers that have not controlled them. From endless questions Cui Bono, to whom it is beneficial, you can go crazy. ” So the New York Times columnist Roger Cohen smoked his many years of experience with Lebanese, Iraqis, Persians. This hypothesis of social, rather than individual psychological, the roots of conspiracyology is close to my interlocutor Joseph Usinsky. So when, I asked him, the assumption that Barack Obama could hide the truth about the place of birth, ceases to be an ordinary speculation and turns into an obsessive conspiratorial fantasy?

Joseph Usinsky: This is a difficult question. Let's turn to the genesis of this hearing. It arose during the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama. And almost immediately overgrown with signs of conspiracy the way I define them.

The first and main symptom: Conspirologists believe that a handful of people weaves intrigues for the sake of their own self -serving interests and to the detriment of public interests.

The second sign: our institutions, obliged to stand guard, are actually selling and playing along with the conspirators, in this case, they refuse to expose the fact of falsification of the Obumov metric, which falsely states that he was born in Hawaii, and therefore is a nee American.

The third sign: the conspiracy therapists direct the tip of their theories against individuals, organizations, groups of the population, whose relative role in society, the degree of influence on it grows quickly and visibly, which we see perfectly with the example of Obama. Before him, there were theories about the fact that the Bush Jr., his vice-president, Cheini and the malicious company of Haliberon, dragged America into the war against Saddam Hussein in order to take away Iraqi oil. But this theory disappeared as soon as Bush left and Barack Obama entered the political arena.

Evgeny Aronov: What, in your opinion, is the average life expectancy of a typical conspiracy theory?

Joseph Usinsky: It is difficult to say for sure, because no one was engaged in such calculations, but, in my opinion, very not big. The history of America knows a great many such theories, but only a few of them have been preserved to this day; The rest evaporated. And the number of adherents of the average conspiracy theory is scanty. It is a mistake to judge the survivability of a typical sample of conspiracyology by the “life terms” of exceptional samples.

Here is an example. About six years ago, there was a fire on the floating drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, and on the Internet after a short time, rumors began to circulate widely, as if Baraku Obama ordered the installation, because the production of shelf oil prevented the progress of “green energy technologies” raised by them. Well, today almost no one remembers this.

Evgeny Aronov: It is incorrect to identify conspiracy theories with mass insanity; They are not considered a form of pathology, our interlocutor states. Their adherents do not imagine themselves Napoleon or Jesus Christ. The masses of people believe in at least one conspiracy theory, many more than in one, but the vast majority of them are absolutely healthy and do not reject a scientific approach to comprehending reality as such.

Professor Usinsky explains the emergence of conspiracy theories in time and space with shifts in the degree of influence on the society of different social groups. Those who have recently gained influence are suspected of inability to resist the temptation of abuse of newly acquired opportunities. And they are endowed with evil intentions. Therefore, for example, the first target of conspiracy therapists in America is intellectuals today.

Joseph Usinsky: The conspiracy theory is trying to reveal the meaning of a particular circumstance or event, while the scientific theory claims a single, systematic explanation of different circumstances and events. Somewhat exaggerating, I would formulate the difference between them as follows: the task of the scientist is to explain as much as possible with the help of the minimum amount of assumptions, the conspiracy thermalologist attracts the maximum number of assumptions for the sake of explaining the minimum number of phenomena.

Evgeny Aronov: The team of Professor Usinsky in the course of work on the book of American Conspiracy Theories conducted many sociological surveys. Some of their results are very curious. Thus, contrary to considerable opinion, the conspiracygologists are not extremists, they are not concentrated on the poles of the political spectrum. Rather, on the contrary, they are politically passive, due to distrust of the institutions, the authorities rarely vote, avoid political disputes, due to which their views are cooked; They have no incentives to rethink their ideas about the structure of society and the reasons for its changes.

Joseph Usinsky: Is the Marxist theory of the class struggle of the conspiracyological? - If you look at her from a certain angle, then yes. Take the opponent Hillary Clinton on the presidential race of socialist Bernie Sanders or his colleague in the Senate of the Massachusetts Democrat Elizabeth Warren. They argue that people related to the same percentage of the richest Americans have entered into a conspiracy and reinforced the country's economic and political system in such a way as to easily extract maximum benefits from it, simultaneously exploiting the remaining ninety -nine percent of the population. Based on my definition, this is the theory of a conspiracy in its pure form: the minority is supposedly celloin in order to approve its interests that contradict the interests of the majority.

Evgeny Aronov: Here are a few more examples of what the team of Joseph Usinsky found out: contrary to the declarations of conspiracy therapists, what they know, who and how to manipulate the exchange, they do not trade shares, although they could seem to have fabulously get rich, and are less wealthy people than those who play on the exchange, no conspiracy. Believing. There are few conspiracyologists in the state apparatus, in the army and in the financial industry, they are disproportionately in the construction business and among the auxiliary personnel of the healthcare system.

Are they dangerous to society? - In general, no, although they have a tendency in words, if not in fact, to solidarize with those who are ready to resort to violence against state institutions. The number of fictions that walk in the country at any current moment about the intrigues of power is strikingly stable, it has not increased along with the development of modern communications, including the Internet; Social networks are just as favored by the emergence of such theories as they are destructive for them.

Moreover, since the late 1960s, the large-fringed conspiratorial inventions have become less, and only as if in order of restoration of balance have bred thanks to the Internet of fantasy-one-day. It would not be absurd to assume that the spread of rumors about the conspiracy of elites correlates with economic troubles, in particular, with increasing material inequality, but sociological questionnaires do not confirm this.

Sometimes - and this is Usinsky notes especially - the theories of conspiracies act as a protective mechanism that serves socially useful goals: it is enough to recall that the investigation of the Watergate scandal began as a classic conspiracyology, which breaks through the indifference and skepticism of the mainstream press. In principle, following the hypothesis of our guest, the theories of conspiracies are mutually leveled, being a normal satellite of an open, dynamically developing society, in which a social elevator constantly works, raising some groups of the population and letting others down.

Joseph Usinsky: Everything is relevant, topical, everything that is exaggerated in the news inevitably becomes the subject of attention of conspiracyologists. The news is only a trigger that triggers their imagination. Hillary Clinton's health is an excellent illustration. These people have a clear predisposition to see conspiracies everywhere. This predisposition or acquired, we do not know this predisposition, science recently engaged in this problem. I personally are inclined to the second version. I repeat what was said above: conspiracy theories exist so much that if you dig a good thing, it turns out that we all believe in at least one of them; Many believe in almost everything, and the majority - in several. The richer a person is more educated, the less he is a fall for all kinds of compression, therefore, in the scientific and previous environment, such moods are relatively rare. Immediately, however, I will add: rare - only relatively, on average, in the trend.

Evgeny Aronov: What is your research shown: is there a difference in predisposition to conspiracyology in various ethnic groups? If the differences are in what conspiracies various groups believe in? The population of different countries?

Joseph Usinsky: People are suspected of conspiracies those groups of the population that they do not like, which they do not trust and who are considered excessively influential. Therefore, the points of concentration of maliciousness will be different among different groups within the same country, as well as between countries. In America, Republicans do not like democrats and are charged with all kinds of plutian plans. And vice versa. Radical feminists do not like men and consider them conspirators. Along the way, I note that we did not find statistically significant differences in the tendency to the theories of conspiracies between the floors. Conspirological theories of white Americans do not coincide with those among the blacks. The latter historically discriminated against the police and doctors, and it is precisely the people of these professions that are still incorporated by the disproportionate of the African Americans.

I risk assuming that one pattern that we revealed within America is correct in the international context. Among those who believe that their life has been a success, among winners or insiders, conspiracy theological sentiments are found much less often than among those who suffer from low self -esteem and classify themselves to outsiders, losers, and lousers.