Conspiratorial Thinking Is Getting Worse Because of the Internet.

Conspiracists think big. In fact, thinking big is a requirement for something to be a conspiracy theory in the first place. It's the belief in shadowy entities more powerful than oneself that turns political and cultural observations into conspiracy; it means that you are always punching up, never down, because the enemy is always more powerful than you. The internet is an agonistic medium driven by conflict and also one that creates powerful distortions of scale and in both of those respects, amplifies the conspiratorial tendency.

These were the historical and social forces, presumably, informing a comment I received on my blog last year: "Jews: your time is coming. The goyim are awakening once again." Thanks to the internet, the commenter is able to find Jews and Jewish proxies everywhere and propose his own counter-conspiracy, that of the awakened goyim, to battle the old warhorse of Evil Globalist International Jewry. Likewise, the embattled adherents of QAnon, the overelaborate Deep State conspiracy theory based on cryptic 4chan posts from a supposed insider, are empowered by their conviction that they have joined forces with a righteous counter-conspiracy that is fighting against anti-Trump forces from inside the belly of government.

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