Conspiratorial belief correlates with lower education and income

Evidence

It is true that while conspiracy theories are equally common in rural and urban areas of the United States, there’s a distinct class element to them: people with only a high school education are more likely to believe at least one, and people who report a higher income are less likely to declare conspiratorial beliefs. The “elites” threatening the people tend to be the same foe by different names: Alex Jones uses the term “globalists” as a catch-all for a vague and threatening global power elite, while others use terms like “New World Order.” Sometimes the enemy is the U.S. government, sometimes it’s the Jews, and sometimes—more rarely than I personally would like—the queen of England, believed by a sadly dwindling number of people to be the head of a brutal global drug cartel. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 67

Categorization

• XREF: The class gradient in conspiracy belief mirrors the status-and-threat mechanism already claimed for prejudice and authoritarian personality in the vault. — connects to: Conspiratorial belief is driven by minority status and anomia, not just white politics — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 144; Economic insecurity and minority status predict higher conspiracy belief regardless of education or income — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 145; Education lowers fake-news belief but not susceptibility to illusory truth — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 72
• SEED: A possible essay angle: ‘globalists’, ‘New World Order’, and ‘elites’ are one interchangeableshared enemy refracted through different class anxieties.

Broader Connections

• Education lowers fake-news belief but not susceptibility to illusory truth #expands (0.70) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 72