The Mysteriousness of Conspiracy
The Mysteriousness of Conspiracy And the need to pretend otherwise BRIAN MOWREY i. Conspiracies are political On the eve of the 20th anniversary of September 11, an NPR/Ipsos poll found skepticism of the official narrative to be the least popular of numerous flagship conspiracy theories of the time: from npr.org (Additional questions in the full Ipsos poll (pdf) are not included in this graph, including “a deep state working to undermine Trump,” etc.) This result is driven by ambivalence among Republican-identifying respondents, who drive the high rate of “false beliefs” in more contemporary topics. A comparison with replies for the moon landings and climate change show that Democrat respondents are just as likely or more to have doubts about the two older topics. This is one of many ways by which belief in conspiracy theories reveals itself to be less a question of what is believed than a symptom of broader tensions and conflicts b...