If you can get people to believe that John Kennedy Jr. (John John) did not die in a plane crash and will come back to be President Trump's next Vice President—then that means a great many more people will believe improbable ideas that are tossed out for others to chew on.
The Washington Post has an excellent article on the topic, ‘An American Tradition’: Lessons from a year covering conspiracy theories
The tradition that the author speaks of dates back to 1693 and the Salem Witch Trials More recently, "Who Killed President Kennedy?" These events all before our modern communications capabilities. I can refer directly to another one. I recall my father telling me that because Kennedy was Catholic the Pope could tell him what to do. Well dad, I don't think so.
Here's several quotes from the article:
"Look closely and you will see such thinking in the witch hunts of the colonial era. In the anti-monarchical mobilization of the Revolutionary War. Consider the conspiracy theories used to justify white-supremacist terrorism leading to the Civil War, and long after it. Consider the misdirected and racist national security paranoia after Pearl Harbor that was used to justify Japanese American internment. Look at trends in migration, the economy, the size of the federal government, then contemplate the rise of violent anti-Semitic, or anti-Catholic, or anti-communist fantasies that surged in response.
Trace that line straight to the conspiracy theory about the birthplace of
Barack Obama, our first Black president, and through the conspiratorial
moral panic over sharia law that seemingly vanished once there was
another White man in office after him."
Today a persistent conspiracy theory is that President Biden was not legally elected to the office he holds.
Then there is this quote from the article:
"There are clues in the budding interdisciplinary study of disinformation and rumor, which is still fairly new and is often segmented across academic silos. One factor that propels disinformation is confirmation bias, the well-known psychological phenomenon that explains why people easily accept information that aligns with their existing worldviews. We are all subject to that.
But it is also clear from research that certain types of people are simply much more susceptible to disinformation and conspiratorial thinking than
others, and not just those struggling with mental illnesses or lacking
in mental fortitude.
Some researchers have found that there is a connection between “magical
thinking,” devout religious faith and conspiracy worldviews. Others say
deeply ingrained anti-social personality traits are at the heart of
extremist conspiracy theories. Individual predispositions to rational-
vs. intuition-based thinking are a factor as well, as is lower
educational attainment and formal academic training. Advanced age, too,
appears to make people likelier to spread fake news on the Internet."
As to the reference to education levels. In looking at QAnon followers, there are those who are highly educated yet that get hoodwinked into believing outlandish ideas. I do tell young people that one reason to go to college is to learn how to think for yourself. How to measure multiple inputs and discern, to the best of our abilities, what is true, what is rumor, what is disinformation.
All of the above just means that in a disaster, one of our greatest enemies will be misinformation and disinformation. Wishing it would go away will not work. We have to actively combat it, as best we can, with accurate information as we know it.
This task is not for the faint of heart. Deal with it!
