Researchers on conspiracy theories: "Not just the domain of paranoid spinners" | Culture | '
The contrails of passenger aircraft should in fact be chemical substances that sedate us, the CIA should be behind 9/11 and Angela Merkel a daughter of Adolf Hitler – also had Jews, Masons and Illuminati fingers in the game of world domination: propagate conspiracy theories Be fast and persist. The scientist Michael Butter explains in a ‘ interview why conspiracy theories have a strong following and it is difficult to convince their followers of facts.
‘: Mr. Butter, conspiracy theories are wide-ranging: they can be amusing, because they're harmless, like Elvis, who's supposed to live on a lonely island, or ridiculous when they say Angela Merkel is an alien. When does a conspiracy theory become problematic?
Michael Butter: Even a seemingly harmless conspiracy theory can be problematic, such as when someone believes that Angela Merkel is an alien and thinks he has to do something about it. In general, they are not harmless when they are directed against the weaker or minorities, such as refugees or historically against the Jews. At the same time conspiracy theories can of course be dangerous for our democratic coexistence.
Because mistrust of politics gets out of hand?
If someone assumes that our politicians are all in cahoots and it makes no difference whatsoever whether to vote for the CDU or the SPD or the Greens or the Left, because they are all puppets of a conspiracy, then you either strip back to the political scene and no longer participates at all – that would be the famous political disenchantment. Or it is just right for those who present themselves as a true alternative to these old parties, these are in recent years across the Western world and beyond the most right-wing populist parties, but then just to solve the problems not really contribute.
Is conducting an EU project to analyze the conspiracy theory: Michael Butter
Using the example of the gap between rich and poor, enlightened people can also gain the impression that something is going wrong in our political system. Does that give a sense of conspiracy theory a boost?
Most certainly. Conspiracy theories are not just the domain of paranoid spinners, which certainly exist. But there are also many rational people who believe in conspiracy theories because they are looking for explanations for quite real problems. In the vast majority of cases, you have to take them seriously because they are a symptom and point us to things that drive people around. Conspiracy theories about the New World Order are, of course, answers to problems associated with globalization and perceived. And it is quite clear that in recent years the Grand Coalition has involuntarily contributed to broadening the ground for conspiracy theories.
By the politics of the middle?
Yes, by the great contentual and ideological rapprochement of the CDU and SPD, who have wandered to the right and to the left and met in the middle. That can reinforce the impression: Well, they are all under one roof anyway. Think of the coalition negotiations after the last general election, because it says only that the SPD no longer wants a grand coalition, then negotiate the other and fail. In the end we have a grand coalition again. Of course, with people who already have the tendency to think in that direction, this can reinforce the belief that it makes no difference who you choose.
The conspiracy theory has a bad image today. This was historically different, earlier theories were regarded as elite knowledge. Was that because the flow of information was not that widespread back then?
No, it was more a matter of being truly convinced, in the mainstream as well as in the elite and academic discourse, that the world just works that way. Above all, this conspiracy theory has been disqualified by insights from psychology and the modern social sciences, who say that social systems develop their own logics. We can explain why people act as if they had talked without doing that. These concepts did not exist in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, but did not develop until the late 19th century.
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Ironically during the Enlightenment was the conspiracy theory particularly popular?
Especially in the time of the Enlightenment people were looking for non-religious patterns of world explanation. The logic of the Enlightenment says cause and effect must be interrelated, and then one arrives at a world view that strongly limits belief in conspiracy theories, even among the educated and most informed people of this age.
How did the conspiracy theory lose its meaning then?
This is a process that we can identify with the Western world. He is also limited to the Western world, in the Arab world, for example, or in large parts of Eastern Europe, it has not taken place, as can be seen in, for example, in Russia or Turkey or in Saudi Arabia by politicians and media with conspiracy theories becomes. For the US, there is now a very exciting study, which shows that it was really about an infiltration of sociological knowledge into the everyday knowledge of Americans. They are, in a nutshell, two pillars: the sociology of people like Karl Popper, who say that conspiracy theories are bad sociology because they poorly explain how societies function and reduce everything to purpose, but do not take into account that things are simple happen without anyone intending.
And the other pillar?
That's social psychology: Jewish scientists like Adorno or Leo Löwenthal exiled from Germany to the US, they saw the horrible effects conspiracy theories had on them, leading them to the Holocaust, and finally the idea of the Jewish world conspiracy stuck.
Hungary's Prime Minister Orbán has declared Jewish billionaire George Soros (left) a public enemy, whose Open Society Foundation supports freedom of expression. He and the EU should be behind a plot.
Today we have tremendous access to information when we are ready to leave our filter bubbles. Although everyone gets information through the Internet, this approach seems to fuel the spread of the conspiracy theory rather than curb it. What makes supporters of conspiracy theories so resistant to facts?
Studies from the US show that convinced conspiracy theorists believe even more in their conspiracy theories after confronting them with conclusive evidence. Conspiracy theories are extremely important to the identity of those who believe in them. They make an explanation of how the world works. And there everything goes on, there is no coincidence, one cog grabs the other. The belief and propagation of conspiracy theories makes it possible to stand out from the crowd, conspiracy theorists claim, "We understand how the world really works. We've woken up, we've opened our eyes, while others are walking through the world asleep. "And so their identity depends heavily on belief in conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories are also used as a means of disinformation, not by people who themselves believe in and want to inform, but those who consciously want to influence.
Clearly, there are those who use this cynically strategically to achieve certain goals. In individual cases it is very difficult to decide: Does he believe that, does not he believe that? Buzzfeed has well described the role of George Soros in this conspiracy theories in Hungary, especially by Viktor Orbán. It has been traced very closely how two consultants from Orbán, ironically even two Jewish advisers, invented this Soros conspiracy theory without anyone believing it – not even Orbán. From colleagues in our international network, who are very close to the Hungarian government via informants, I know that Orbán now believes himself that George Soros is at the head of this great world conspiracy.
From the disinformation becomes conviction?
Psychologically, we tend to believe the things that use us. This cognitive dissonance, which you have when you're always lying, is a psychological burden, and it is easier to understand when you talk: It's really true.
Even developments that are perceived as achievements and obvious by most people, such as gender equality, are used for conspiracy theories. Is their followers the reality too liberal?
Conspiracy theories often have a strong conservative impetus in the sense of preserving a threatened order or bringing back an order abolished by the alleged conspirators. This is also a parallel to populism: "Make America Great Again". Conspiracy theorists like populists are driving a nostalgia for the past. Let's take the fear of white men in the US who see their social position being undermined more and more. Even when they were poor, they stood for a long time above all who were not white – and they stood above the women. And now they themselves are challenged. This is a defense against a social change that you do not want to accept and that you can explain well as a conspiracy, because then it is perfectly legitimate to act against it, because you resist a plot.
Can the world be explained only by simplifying it and blaming it for supposed aberrations?
For some people, it's easier to accept that any villains in the background pull the strings than to accept that there's no one pulling the strings in the background. Conspiracy theories often simplify by reducing the political field to the conspirators and the others. At the same time, they have to do very complicated operations to show why X and Y are in cahoots and that it's all part of a big plan.
Michael Butter is Professor of American Literature and Cultural History at the University of Tübingen. He researches conspiracy theories, conducts an EU research project on their analysis, and is the author of the book "Nothing Is, It Sees: Conspiracy Theories."
The interview was conducted by Torsten Landsberg.
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