Conspiracism’s core effect on bystanders is radical disorientation over who owns reality

Evidence

Yet conspiracism’s destructive drive is not reducible to the delegitimation of political parties and of facts, experts, and knowledge-producing institutions, grave as this is. Something else is going on when the new conspiracists are at the helm and have free rein in politics. This “something else” is disorientation, and here we explain the radical disorientation most people feel when confronted with a steady stream of ungrounded conspiracist claims. Closed to the world of shared understanding, conspiracism distorts what it means to know something. At a deeper level, the new conspiracists claim to own reality, and in doing so, they assault our common sense of reality. We experience a special form of anxiety and disorientation. We have been unwillingly drafted into a contest over who owns reality. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 277

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the chapter’s central concept: that conspiracism’s mode of harm is ‘owning reality’ and inducing disorientation, distinct from mere delegitimation.
• XREF: connects to: Lie-telling presupposes a shared reality that conspiracism rejects — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 162; Conspiracism aims to own and impose reality on everyone — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 232; New conspiracism dissolves shared perceptions of political reality — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 373 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• New conspiracism dissolves shared perceptions of political reality #corroborates (0.95) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 373
• Conspiracism’s core political danger is its claim to own reality #expands (0.85) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 392