Add-on conspiracies reveal tribalism, not sense-making, as the motive

Evidence

Even after that, Trump tweeted that “an extremely credible source” called him to tell him the long-form certificate was a fraud. Trump doubled down on the birther conspiracy in 2013, when the health director of Hawaii was killed in a plane accident: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.” It was only when he came under severe questioning in September 2016, after receiving the Republican presidential nomination, that Trump grudgingly conceded that Obama was born in the United States. Even then, he did something astonishing—he attributed the origin of the birther claim to Hillary Clinton. This impulsive add-on conspiracy reveals that the new conspiracism is not about making sense of a confusing world but rather about tribal identity and tribal enmity. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 241

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Conspiracist assent functions as tribal identity signaling, not factual assertion. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 126; People resist randomness and prefer intentional explanations for important events. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 115; Conspiracy theories primarily assign blame rather than explain events — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 972 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Conspiracy theories usually aim to name an enemy, not to build a coherent story. #corroborates (0.85) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 64
• Conspiracy theories primarily assign blame rather than explain events #corroborates (0.80) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 972
• Conspiracy belief stems from universal human meaning-making rather than outsider pathology #qualifies (0.75) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 32
• Conspiracy functions as an alternative epistemology when interpretation has no ground truth #qualifies (0.72) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 105