The tragedy of conspiracy theorists and deniers

 Conspiracy theorists and deniers have probably existed since at least the very beginning of human’s presence in planet Earth. During the last decades we have co-existed with perhaps one of the most harmful generation of deniers, climate change deniers, which are in great part responsible for the lack of ineffective climate action that has brought us to the brink of climate breakdown. More recently, during the COVID pandemic, we are assisting to an extreme proliferation of conspiracy theories. Conspiranoics (conspiracy theorists) are all around us. You will probably find them even in your inner family and friends circles. If you have still not heard about the explanation of COVID PCR tests being done so close to the brain because they are a covered way to implant into the brain a microchip that will later be activated through 5G cellular towers, just give time to time and be ready to get surprised by who tells you about this.    

The denial and disregard of evidences, the refusal to undertake or even listen to any consistency check, and the strategy to bring the discussion in a difficult-to-contrast terrain (‘many medicine doctors support this point of view’), are common treats of conspiranoics.

In many cases, what moves conspiranoics is the deep believe that the rest of humanity (except them and those that profess their same creed) is being deeply manipulated by negative forces or interests (which depending on the specific conspiracy theory can have its origin in our dimension or in other dimensions of existence or even other planets).

But the tragedy of it all is that conspiranoics are being effectively manipulated by those establishment forces that are in the origin of the deepest real challenges our society faces: climate breakdown, ecosystem breakdown (and associated spread of  zoonotic pandemics), inequality in all its forms, lack of governance, extractivism from people and ecosystems … and in short a socio-economic-political setup serving the corporate profit-making goal instead of people’s needs. Conspiracy theories act as a smokescreen distracting individuals from the real bottom-line challenges. It is a primitive strategy that unfortunately still works within our societies: Those currently and historically benefiting from all the social wrongs and evils still deeply embedded into our societies manage to distract the attention from real problems so they can keep on benefiting from the many. And conspiranoics, unknowingly, act as their more loyal servers by supporting and spreading their distraction mechanisms, even coming to the point of idolatrize and blindly follow the mandates from the very responsible of the real bottom-line challenges. This sounds like the ultimate expression of manipulation applied upon those that claim the others are being manipulated.

But beyond the tragedy for conspiracy theorists themselves, this constitutes a huge handicap for society as a whole, demanding a society-wide effort (governance, trustable institutions, proper education, family, social circles…) to overcome such a state of social immaturity.