"In 2006, the political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler identified a phenomenon called the 'backfire effect.' They showed that efforts to debunk inaccurate political information can leave people more convinced that false information is true than they would have been otherwise."
True, but the "inaccurate political information" being debunked was not a lunatic conspiracy theory -- it was government disinformation, some of which was the product of conspiracy -- for example, pre-war disinformation that Iraq had WMD, or claims that tax cuts increase federal revenue. Refutation of these false assertions resulted in their reinforcement, the "backfire effect." The authors suspect "Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might 'argue back' against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation."
Koerth-Baker then tries to give Swami's theories a piggyback ride on the work of Nyhan and Reifler:
"Nyhan isn't sure why this happens, but it appears to be more prevalent when the bad information helps bolster a favored worldview or ideology."In that way, Swami says, the Internet and other media have helped perpetuate paranoia. Not only does more exposure to these alternative narratives help engender belief in conspiracies, he says, but the Internet's tendency toward tribalism helps reinforce misguided beliefs.
What worldview or ideology is held by Koerth-Baker and Swami? Is it bolstered by what they read in the New York Times?
Conspiracy Theories Approved By the Establishment
Koerth-Baker then quotes a historian at the University of California saying that conspiracies do exist. Don't get too excited: she quickly supplies examples (Watergate, Iran Contra) where the conspirators were supposedly vanquished by an effective system in which the establishment media and Congress got to the bottom of things. In other words, don't worry, everything is OK.
Except that a growing body of evidence indicates that the real conspiracy in Watergate wasn't Nixon's -- but that of corporate and national security elements seeking to frame and force from office an uncooperative president. (If all you read is The New York Times, you wouldn't know that there are at least three impressive best-sellers out there that make this argument persuasively.)
The point is that the establishment will always be consistent. By definition, if the goal is to prevent the public's waking up to the degraded state of democracy, then the only "real" conspiracies we will be encouraged to worry about will be propagandistic constructions designed to send us off in hopelessly wrong directions. Thus, allowing the Republican establishment to create hysteria around a "socialistic, secretly Muslim president," while the president and almost all other top officials are in the thrall of a real conspiracy by financial interests to dominate our system. Or vilifying an entire religion as bent on destroying our way of life to the point that we must give up our civil liberties for the protection of the state.
We recognize there is a kind of conspiracy fever in America, and that much of the speculation is groundless. But the authorities have brought this on with decades of deception, unnecessary secrecy, endless cover-ups and real crimes against the public interest. No wonder we can't distinguish between plots on every corner and a skeptical attitude toward disturbing behavior from authority.
A Farrago
The beauty of Koerth-Baker's article, published in the Times magazine where supposedly well-educated people get their ideas before going forth to repeat them at dinner parties and on talk shows, is that it is itself inherently irrational -- the stuff of editorial and intellectual fogheadedness.
It takes a very broad group of people who have little in common, and condemns them all, with the message that anyone who asks questions about official narratives should be considered delusional, albeit not necessarily clinically insane. The truth is, some people have been driven a bit, or more than a bit, crazy by repeated exposure to deeply disturbing real events (assassinations, mass murder, false-flag war-mongering), so that they begin to see a plot and a lie behind everything. This unfortunate strain of OTSD (On-going Traumatic Stress Disorder) is abetted by a substantial industry among radio, website and publishing personalities, who profit off the gullibility of their audiences by selling them bomb shelters and home canning equipment and other products of mass delusion.
But there is another group, to which we proudly belong: people who live in the real world and are not blind to nuance, people who don't buy what the kook machines have to sell, but also recognize that the establishment media (compromised by, among other things, its financial dependency on the corporate elites) can't be trusted to get to the real bottom of things.
To lump these different groups together and tar them all with the same brush amounts to a kind of willful journalistic malpractice.
By definition, an analysis involves the separation of a whole into its component parts. Rather than separating this complex subject into its parts, Koerth-Baker, Swami, et al do just the opposite. What they have created is a farrago which is, according to Mr. Webster, a confused mixture, a hodgepodge -- as in, "a [farrago] of half-truths intended to put the party line in the best light."
Along these lines, Koerth-Baker notes that "Americans have always had the sneaking suspicion that somebody was out to get us -- be it Freemasons, Catholics or communists." No mention of the people that most people think are "out to get us" -- members of the American aristocracy, without whom the New York Times would not even exist.
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