Notes on C thinkers.
"I want to argue for something which is controversial, although I believe that it is also intuitive and commonsensical. My claim is this: Oliver believes what he does because that is the kind of thinker he is or, to put it more bluntly, because there is something wrong with how he thinks. The problem with conspiracy theorists is not, as the US legal scholar Cass Sunstein argues, that they have little relevant information. The key to what they end up believing is how they interpret and respond to the vast quantities of relevant information at their disposal. I want to suggest that this is fundamentally a question of the way they are. Oliver isn’t mad (or at least, he needn’t be). Nevertheless, his beliefs about 9/11 are the result of the peculiarities of his intellectual constitution – in a word, of his intellectual character."
The intellectual character of conspiracy theorists | Aeon Essays
Why do some people believe conspiracy theories? It’s not just who or what they know. It’s a matter of intellectual character
aeon.co
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Conspiracy theories are first and foremost forms of political propaganda. They are designed to denigrate specific individuals or groups or advance a political agenda. The theory that the Clintons were somehow involved in the Epstein suicide denigrates the Clintons. The notion that the US government staged the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School helped the pro-gun lobby to deflect arguments for greater gun control. What better way to pre-empt calls for greater gun control in the wake of a school shooting than to claim that it never happened?"
'Such beliefs promote extreme political agendas and allow governments to dismiss their critics as cranks.'
Why conspiracy theories are deeply dangerous
"The president [Trump] is a nationalist, which is not at all the same thing as a patriot. A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best. A nationalist, 'although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge,' wrote Orwell, tends to be 'uninterested in what happens in the real world.' Nationalism is relativist, since the only truth is the resentment we feel when we contemplate others. As the novelist Danilo Kiš put it, nationalism 'has no universal values, aesthetic or ethical.' A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals, which means asking us to be our best selves. A patriot must be concerned with the real world, which is the only place where his country can be loved and sustained. A patriot has universal values, standards by which he judges his nation, always wishing it well—and wishing that it would do better." Timothy Snyder 'On Tyranny'
