Republic of Lies: the rise of conspiratorial thinking and the actual conspiracies that fuel it

Anna Merlan has made a distinguished journalistic career out of covering conspiracy theories, particularly far-right ones, for Gizmodo Media; her book-length account of conspiratorial thinking, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power, is a superb tour not just through the conspiracies that have taken hold in American public discourse, but also in the real, often traumatic conspiracies that give these false beliefs a terrible ring of plausibility.

Merlan's thesis is that the "contagion" model of conspiracy thinking -- the idea that some people are just so danged convincing that merely hearing them will make you a conspiracy theorist -- is at best incomplete, and at worst, totally overblown.

After all, the arguments for the flat Earth, or anti-vax, or eugenics, have not gotten better since they emerged decades or even centuries ago, and to an objective ear, the people who advocate these ideas sound ridiculous.

Some people argue that the rise in conspiratorial thinking is about contagion, but that patient zero is the internet, where Big Tech's almighty algorithms can use machine learning to systematically explore its targets' cognitive defenses, finding and exploiting their weak spots and winning converts, with fully automated proselytizing tools that allow even the most fumbletongued conspiracy peddler to amass a following and found a cult.

This theory is supported by Big Tech's own commercial communications: if you want to find testimonies to the devastating power of Big Tech's persuasion tools, you need look no further than their own sales literature, in which they boast that potential advertisers can expect endless returns from their machine-learning mind control rays. Read the rest