Public assent, not private belief, is what drives conspiracism’s political effects.

Evidence

When it comes to the political effects of the new conspiracism, what matters is not the epistemic basis of people’s beliefs, but rather whether they assent to the conspiracist charge. As Christian theologians have argued, belief is an inward act of mind. Assent, by contrast, is something more public. We might assent to propositions even when we are not sure what we believe, even when our beliefs contradict what we assent to. While belief may have a high evidentiary bar, the basis for assent might be much lower—as it is for the new conspiracists. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 123

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the belief-versus-assent distinction in political theory and to social-identity accounts of political signaling. — connects to: Weak assent fuels emphatic political claims rather than restraining them. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 108; Conspiracist assent functions as tribal identity signaling, not factual assertion. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 126; Performing assent to authority’s claims is a form of submission, not belief. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 165 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 123

Broader Connections

• Conspiracism exerts independent political force once it takes hold. #expands (0.92)
• Public actions can snowball beliefs, overriding stronger private information #corroborates (0.78) — Cailin O’Connor and James Owen Weatherall, The Misinformation Age, 282