An Assassin in the Hand is not Worth Two in the Bush:
Why conspiracy theories gain more traction than facts. - Michel J Gagne
Michel Jacques Gagné is a historian who teaches critical thinking, conspiracism, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and ethics in the Humanities department of Champlain College Saint-Lambert, a junior college in Montreal, Quebec. He is the author of Thinking Critically About the Kennedy Assassination: Debunking the Myths and Conspiracy Theories (Routledge, 2022), a contributor to several academic and journalistic publications, and the creator, writer, and host of the Paranoid Planet podcast (www.paranoidplanet.ca), an educational variety show about conspiracy beliefs and related topics. He is also a senior fellow of the Aristotle Foundation For Public Policy. FOR MORE
On July 13, 2024, former U.S. President Donald Trump was grazed by an assassin’s bullet during an open-air rally in rural Pennsylvania, leaving three people injured and two others dead, including the slain shooter. The FBI was reasonably quick to identify the gunman as Thomas Matthew Crooks, an intelligent but emotionally strained and friendless young man with an affinity for firearms. Investigators have so far been hesitant to ascribe a clear motive to Crooks’ actions. This has encouraged pundits on each side of the electoral fence to fill the knowledge gap with whatever assumptions best help them demonize their opponents. In a context of politically-charged uncertainty, it was neither astounding nor unprecedented for sensationalist conspiracy theories involving some kind of deceptive false flag attack to proliferate in the media.
The shooter’s profile, however, is reminiscent of umpteen lone-wolf offenders who perpetrated assassination attempts, vehicular attacks, and school, mall, and place of worship shootings over the past few decades. More often than not, these are troubled single young males with emotional, social, and economic anxieties, who feel alienated, powerless and ridiculed, and who choose to transmogrify their feelings of shame and despair into shocking attacks against whatever accessible victims can be blamed for their inner distress. Their targets are often symbolic, not personal, chosen for their representative value, proximity, vulnerability, and the size of media attention the act will likely elicit. Their choice of target need not make any sense to anyone but the attacker himself. Most lone offenders seek to reverse their feelings of meaninglessness by projecting their loveless self-image onto others. Such acts are often imitative of other lone offenders and influenced by cult films, an unhealthy consumption of social media, fringe political ideologies, or conspiracy thinking. Though they lose their lives in the process, such attackers win by becoming a national headline and historical icon. A case in point: sixty years after the death of President Kennedy, is anyone not familiar with the name Lee Harvey Oswald? Though millions continue to debate Oswald’s possible motive (or the existence and variety of a massive conspiracy to set him up), no one seems particularly keen to consider that the man may simply have wanted to have the world talk about him. And yet we have, for over six decades. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Available data suggests that Thomas Matthew Crooks was not unlike Lee Oswald or any one of a hundred other disgruntled lone attackers. Crooks suffered of social isolation, enjoyed gunplay, studied the tactics of at least two other shooters (Ethan Crumbley and Lee Harvey Oswald), planned out his attack in advance, and appeared willing to die in a blaze of gunfire and media attention. Though not particularly politicized, Crooks appears to have had an interest in the movements of several public officials, not just Mr. Trump’s. His choice to attack Mr. Trump appears to have been determined by several factors that included the former President’s widespread popularity, the proximity of the July 13 venue, and the greater accessibility of his target in an open-air environent. Time will tell whether Crooks’ motive differed largely from what his profile tells us, but it is reasonable to conclude that this crime was, at least partly, caused by a widespread sociological phenomenon throughout America and Western society in general—that of young male disaffection—and not the result of a criminal hit-job or a conspiracy of self-serving elites. It may in fact be more appropriate to liken Crooks to Travis Bickle, the misanthropic vigilante from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, than to Raymond Shaw, the mind-controlled assassin of John Frankenheimer’s Manchurian Candidate.
But violence perpetrated by socially alienated loners is hard to prevent, leaving most onlookers confused and feeling powerless. Sociological explanations can also be quite complex, without offering us clear solutions, or specific culprits to blame, leaving everyone partly responsible. They are therefore not the sorts of explanations most people find meaningful and uplifting. Nor will the major media wish to alienate their target audiences with complicated social-scientific analyses by long-winded academics and finger-wagging social critics. Hence, in an inverted reflection of the many leftist “JFK buffs” who continue to claim that Lee Harvey Oswald was not Kennedy’s murderer, pro-Trump conservatives are less likely to accept that a young, employed, and intelligent registered Republican with a commitment to the second amendment could be the wilful author of such a crime. To paraphrase Star Wars’ Obi-Wan Kenobi, “these aren’t the droids they’re looking for”.
Indeed, it may be more uplifting for them not to delve too deeply into the shooter’s personal life, Mr. Trump’s fiery rhetoric, or the rampant availability of firearms, and to focus their blame on mental illness, the speeches of Democrats, the incompetence or malevolence of law enforcement officials, or some nefarious “deep state” plot. Similarly, few on the left will stop to seriously consider whether decades of affirmative action programs, disappearing well-paying technical jobs, risk-averse education programs, helicopter parenting, and the demonization of “toxic” white maleness have so thoroughly alienated a large portion of the country’s young male working-class that violence seem to many of them the only way to express their individuality.
Like all political and religious ideologies, conspiracy theories (CTs) compel us to simplify a very complex reality into an understandable narrative. They serve as a sort of myth factory that churns out empowering stories that can emerge, evolve, and die out quickly to meet the emotional and cognitive needs of powerless, frustrated, and suspicious individuals. They help us explain why troubling and catastrophic events happen without the sloppy complexities of academic accounts. They help us divide the world into clear categories of “good” and “evil”. They give us a sense of purpose and permit us to justify our actions in the pursuit of that purpose. Most importantly, they allow us to claim the moral high ground in our life story. When unexplained or unsavory events cause us to experience confusion, guilt, shame, or cognitive dissonance, conspiracy theories can help us validate our feelings of frustration and victimhood, give us a clear antagonist to blame, and encourage us to stay the course. But because CT’s are by nature speculative, born of a mixture of known evidence (often taken out of context), assumptions, introspection, rumours, and hoaxes, it can be very difficult for their proponents to distinguish fact from fiction. If the theory offers a more satisfying explanation of reality than those offered by dispassionate experts, they will continue to shape the worldview of those whose emotional needs depend on them being true. In short, CTs are empowering and self-affirming narratives, but they are also a dangerous buck-passing device that produces self-delusion and social conflict.
From powerful secret societies to immigrant fifth columns, Satanic pedophiles, mind control programs and false flag operations, conspiracy beliefs have always found fertile ground in American public discourse, and not just on the political fringes. Unjustified fear is the fertilizer in which they take root. Stereotyped enemies and mistrust of epistemic authorities (i.e., of the legal system, government inquiries, the mass media, academic researchers, etc.) are the water and nutriments that make them grow.
Internet trolls, foreign spy networks, and shameless propagandists carry part of the blame for the rapid spread of malicious disinformation whenever lone offenders make headlines. But speculative conspiracy claims would not gain so much traction were it not for a widespread culture of victimhood that currently thrives on both sides of the political fence, one that favours grievance over dialogue, digging up past hurts over building bridges, demonizing opponents over building consensus, and seeing mass deceptions instead of our common humanity. The object of each community’s nightmares may differ (e.g., gun control versus abortion bans), but the rhetoric of both sides follow a similar paranoid blueprint that leaves no room for respectful disagreement or pragmatic compromise.
The July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump, like other recent public shootings, occurred against a background of culture war and political alarmism, prompting a significant section of the right-leaning electorate to perceive it not as the work of a lone, pro-gun sociopath with conservative leanings (as the evidence shows) but as part of a long series of liberal plots to flush them out of power. In this more empowering narrative, Trump’s MAGA followers are the vanguard of civilization holding back the “woke” barbarian hordes, not alarmist scaremongers whose angry rhetoric is prodding unstable young men to lash out. Charlottesville, the 2021 Capitol attacks, the failed violent overthrow of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and other recent outbursts of right-wing violence should give conservative politicians and pundits reason to temper their tone. Likewise, those on the political left who proclaim that a victory for Trump is “the end of democracy” or paint apocalyptic Handmaid’s Tale-like scenarios where LGBT people are ritually lynched and pregnant women are reduced to breeders might want to temper their dreadful portents. Doing so would no doubt make it easier to pursue their mutual desire to improve life and work conditions for the average citizen. Sadly, explanatory power and ideology, not hard evidence and healthy skepticism, hold more sway in shaping public perception, and so I remain cynical of any significant change taking place in the near future, even with fresh leadership.
In a country whose political institutions were designed to foster bipartisan decision-making but is now torn between self-righteous factions who equate compromise with cultural suicide, it is little surprise that the entire political class of the most powerful nation in the world frequently finds itself the target of contempt and ridicule, including among its traditional allies. If the quality of American political rhetoric fails to rise above the paranoid cattiness of middle-school drama queens, where sober and respectful debate keeps giving way to paranoid accusations, Americans of all political stripes should be prepared to perpetually fail to elect leaders they can admire, and instead to suffer the ones they deserve.
Over the summer we identified KEI's most popular newsletters/webinars. The top three reflected your interest in the clash of public and personal interests: homelessness, free expression, and the impact of emerging technologies particularly AI. Next week we embark on the programming for the fall season of webinar interviews, the first featuring an interview of Michel J Gagne.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84258596166?pw..
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84258596166?pw..
Editor@KEInetwork.net
Visit KEInetwork.net