Conspiracy believers must burrow deeper as their ideas gain mainstream acceptance
Evidence
As I have indicated, believers in stigmatized knowledge assume that any widely held belief must necessarily be false—the result of indoctrination, suppression of the truth, or some other insidious mind-control technique. As ideas from stigmatized knowledge migrate into popular culture, conspiracy theorists must burrow ever deeper to discover the truths hidden by appearances. One of the chief exemplars of this technique is Milton William Cooper, who became widely known for his 1991 “exposé,” Behold a Pale Horse, of the alien control of the American government. By 1995, however, Cooper had decided that UFOs were a creation of an alltoo-earthly conspiracy and that the revelations of ufologists were “intentional disinformation projects designed to promote the alien threat scenario while allowing for complete deniability on the part of government.” — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 228
Categorization
- XREF: The mechanism that believers abandon once-popularized claims and burrow to rejections of rejections resembles the ‘blocked maroon refuges forced slaves to attack the plantation system directly’ dynamic in the Haitian material—each closure forces escalation. — connects to: Conspiracy believers suspect fellow believers closest to them of being state plants — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 252; Conspiracy belief rates may be stable while their reach has exploded — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 227; Stigma level, not truth, determines which conspiracy beliefs reach mass audiences. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 417 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Conspiracy belief rates may be stable while their reach has exploded
#expands(0.90) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 227 - Conspiracy theorists reinterpret absence of proof and challenges as confirming evidence
#expands(0.85) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 216 - Conspiracy theories become unfalsifiable by dismissing skeptic evidence as planted
#complicates(0.80) - Stigma level, not truth, determines which conspiracy beliefs reach mass audiences.
#expands(0.75) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 417