New conspiracism offers cheap knowingness as an elite status

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

• XREF: connects to: New conspiracists are self-styled cognoscenti, not the intuitive people of populism. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 155; Conspiracists falsely portray themselves as skeptical critical thinkers — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 265; Conspiracy theory is a global phenomenon that state elites themselves deploy — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 60 (+6 more)