Conspiracism confers insider status through knowingness achieved at no real cost

Evidence

The new conspiracism also holds out the satisfaction of knowingness: “Accidents are planned, democracy is a sham, all faces are masks, all flags are false.” They are an elite, a “cognoscenti.” Perhaps that is the wrong term, though, because cognoscenti has a prosaic meaning today: being particularly well informed about a particular subject. Conspiracists are more like the inner circle of an esoteric group or sect. But as we show, it is knowingness at low cost. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 95

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the conspiracist’s knowingness from genuine well-informed cognoscenti status.
• XREF: connects to: New conspiracism offers cheap knowingness as an elite status — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 95; Bare-assertion conspiracism demands no errant facts to explain — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 63

Broader Connections

• New conspiracism offers cheap knowingness as an elite status #corroborates (0.95) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 95
• Bare-assertion conspiracism demands no errant facts to explain #corroborates (0.72) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 63