Religion is a Mental Illness

The Beginning of the End for the Squad?

Jamaal Bowman, the Representative for New York’s 16th congressional district, has lost his primary election. Bowman was defeated by Westches

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Jamaal Bowman, the Representative for New York’s 16th congressional district, has lost his primary election. Bowman was defeated by Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a Democrat, to be sure, but one a little more in tune with the policy preferences of his affluent soon-to-be constituents. This makes Bowman the first member of the infamous “Squad,” a cadre of far-left Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to lose his seat. If we are lucky, perhaps this is the beginning of a positive trend. Bowman was a rising star in progressive politics, known for willfully pulling a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C. to delay a budget vote, for which he was formally censured.

More recently, Bowman has been in the spotlight for embodying another time-honored Progressive tradition: deliberately antagonizing his own constituents to score political points online. Specifically, Bowman has been one of the most vocal anti-Israel and anti-Jewish politicians in Congress, in a district with a rich and powerful Jewish community. Roughly 9% of his district is Jewish – a small, but politically engaged demographic. Bowman found that out the hard way.

Bowman’s flop campaign might reasonably lead one to assume he was running in Gaza. To understand why Bowman lost, let’s start from the beginning.

* * *

In the days after the attacks on October 7th, when the world was still reeling from the senseless tragedy, Bowman took time out of his busy schedule to call reports of Hamas terrorists raping Israeli women “propaganda.” Bowman posted a TikTok video in which he said, “There was propaganda used in the beginning of the siege… There’s still no evidence of beheaded babies or raped women. But they still keep using that lie [for] propaganda.” Bowman posted this video in November just days after lawmakers viewed a 45-minute video of the attacks on Israel. Bowman only began to backtrack on these claims once the evidence became unquestionably clear. Nonetheless, Bowman only apologized for the remark last week in a vain attempt to stem any further vote hemorrhaging.

Also in October, the House passed a resolution with near-unanimous support declaring that the United States "stands with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists." Exactly ten members of Congress voted against the resolution, nine of which were Democrats, including Bowman. The resolution condemned Hamas and demanded the terrorist group release all hostages immediately.

Bowman has also called Israel’s actions “genocide.” He’s described Israel as a “settler-colonial project.” And he believes Hamas’ attacks were not unprovoked, claiming “If we’re calling this an unprovoked attack, that means we’re going to ignore 18 human rights organizations calling Israel an apartheid state, and we’re gonna ignore 75 years of military occupation…or several hundred thousand settlers expanding into the West Bank.” He followed that up with, “I am not justifying the killing of civilians by Hamas on Oct. 7, there is no justification. It’s just an explanation of what the circumstances were that led to Oct. 7… If you want to end extremism, then we need a free Palestine.”

So far, this is all par for the course for recent Progressive politics: blame Israel for everything while condoning, equivocating, or covering for terrorists and their sympathizers. Of course, as should be familiar to all of us by now, scratch the contemporary Progressive and you will often find an antisemite. Bowman is no different. Many of his bizarre claims about Israel and his dismissive actions towards his own constituents expose his thinly-veiled antisemitism.

In January, Bowman took the honor of introducing Norman Finkelstein to a panel on the Israel-Hamas war in his home district. Finkelstein is notorious for his book The Holocaust Industry, which claims that Jews are exploiting memory of the Holocaust for their own benefit. “I’m a bit starstruck,” Bowman said, and he thanked the panelists “for being here and coming to Yonkers and delivering the truth to us.”

In April, Bowman called Jews in his district a “segregated” community. He said, “Westchester is segregated. There’s certain places where the Jews live and concentrate. Scarsdale, parts of White Plains, parts of New Rochelle, Riverdale. I’m sure they made a decision to do that for their own reasons… but this is why, in terms of fighting antisemitism, I always push — we’ve been separated and segregated and miseducated for so long. We need to live together, play together, go to school together, learn together, work together.”

Things became nasty when Bowman turned his ire to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. When Jewish activists, organizers, and leaders successfully encouraged Latimer to challenge Bowman in the primary, everything became about AIPAC. On Latimer’s entry into the race, the Bowman campaign released a statement saying, “Congressman Bowman's focus remains first and foremost on delivering for the people of his district and standing up to powerful special interests in Congress. It's not a surprise that a super PAC that routinely targets Black members of Congress with primary challenges, and is funded by the same Republican mega-donors who give millions to election-denying Republicans including Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Ted Cruz, has recruited a candidate for this race.”

In a campaign speech earlier this month, Bowman screamed into a microphone that, “because I am fighting against genocide, I am being attacked by the Zionist regime we call AIPAC.” In May, at a campaign event in the sliver of the Bronx in his district, Bowman told volunteers, “They are so afraid of us — those who oppose the working class, multiracial, multieconomic, multicultural democracy that we are trying to build… They’re spending more money in this race than they have ever spent in the history of any race. That’s how afraid AIPAC is.” In his concession speech Tuesday evening, Bowman spared no invective. He said that “We should be outraged. We should be outraged when a Super PAC of dark money can spend $20 million to brainwash people into believing something that isn't true… They spent a record amount of money, the most in US history, to beat this Black man.”

When Jews in his district are the driver of “segregation,” when they are told they are brainwashed by AIPAC, when the contrast is between a Jewish neighborhood and a “multiracial, multieconomic, multicultural democracy,” any sane Jewish voter would be justified in thinking Bowman might have lost his marbles. And lost his marbles, he did. Bowman’s personal social media is a treasure trove of conspiracy theories and deranged technobabble. His recently uncovered YouTube page reveals Bowman’s engagement with 9/11 truthers, flat earthers, and theories of CIA time travel devices, alien technology, and secret elite communication frequencies. In other words, Bowman was already primed to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories well before he ever got to Congress.

Bowman was right about one thing, however: AIPAC was working behind the scenes to tank his campaign, it just wasn’t as important as he thought. In targeting AIPAC, Bowman exposed his two incorrect assumptions: that his opponents were nothing without AIPAC, and that all external money was pouring into his opposition. In reality, neither of these are correct. Yes, AIPAC invested $14 million into the race, but AIPAC funding did not sink Bowman’s campaign. As others have already pointed out, polling indicated that Latimer was up by double-digits well before AIPAC had contributed a single dollar to the race. (I note in passing that AIPAC’s funding is justified given the Antisemitic vitriol spewed by Bowman and his campaign.)

Meanwhile, only 10 percent of Bowman’s own funding came from contributions inside his district. The remaining 90% is from outside sources. Conversely, half of Latimer’s donations came from within the district. If you want to see dark money in action, look no further than the Bowman campaign.

Bowman failed for entirely predictable reasons: he lost touch with the real, specific needs of his constituents. Bowman came to care more about what radical progressives online thought and less about his district. He pandered to a rabid political coalition that was organized only in Gaza, on Twitter, and in the tent encampments scattered across a few dozen elite universities. At the same time, he became obsessed with a shadowy cabal of Jews masterminding his takedown, a theory which slotted neatly into his pre-existing conspiratorial mindset. Latimer, on the other hand, was a seasoned politician who had been working the area for decades before Bowman ever showed up. He could be seen at nearly any local event and he knew the district very well. The irony of Bowman treating the race like a proxy-war for the Israel-Hamas conflict is that Latimer rarely talked about the issue. The campaign ads that AIPAC funded almost never touched the subject. Bowman was playing to an issue that everybody else wanted to go away. It takes two to tango, and Bowman was dancing all alone.

And finally, New Rule: Someone, maybe AI, has to figure out a way to slow down time. Because what everyone has been saying to me lately is, "I can't believe it's May." Oh, Americans, we do nothing but bitch about everything under the sun, but damn it, life goes by too fast. It's Memorial Day in a week? Christ, I might as well start my Christmas shopping.

But it is, it's May. A month I have been anticipating for a long time because my book comes out next week. A book I have waited my whole career to write. One that is based on collecting the creme de la creme of these end of the show editorials and reimagining them, but also cover some virgin territory.

For example, I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of what historians of the future will say about us. Imagine it's the year 3024, and you're living in a colony on the planet Musk, formerly Mars. What will the historian say about the Americans of 2024? Well probably, that we were self-absorbed, algorithmically enslaved, on drugs and worshiped a god named Apple.

But what they won't do is write about the very thing that consumes us: our petty squabbles. In the myopia of the present our partisan differences make each side believe they're nothing like the other side. Libtards and deplorables. Historians will disagree. They won't see red on one side and blue on the other. You're thinking of Jaws 3D.

But historians see the character of a people as a whole. The Scots were clannish, the Spartans stoic, the Mongols expansionist, the Greeks were too into anal. And for us, it will be no different. Historians will say, we're also too into anal.

But also, the other thing. They will see us as a singular people with the same pathologies and unappealing traits on both sides. Traits that simply manifest themselves differently. For example, I believe, they will say, Americans of our era were unscientific. One side thought, climate change was a hoax. One thought, gender was a construct. One warred against Mother Nature. One against motherhood. One doubts Evolution, one wears masks when they're alone in the car. Which is kind of like wearing a condom to jerk off.

In medical schools now, professors are so fearful of being labeled transphobic, they have to apologize for saying words like male, female and pregnant woman.

Katie Herzog writes, "Some of the country's top medical students are being taught that humans are not, like other mammals, a species comprising two sexes." "The notion of sex, they are learning, is just a man-made creation."

Okay, but generally, the people with breasts and vaginas who give birth are the women and the ones with the penis, hogging the remote are men.

Historians will say that as a people, Americans lost our rationality. They'll say, we were conspiracy theorists. The right wanted to believe that Obama was born in Kenya. The left wanted to believe in Trump's pee tape. We have January 6th Truthers but the Washington Post reports that there are also now October 7th Truthers who believe Hamas never raped anybody and the hostages all died of natural causes. Now, does the right do conspiracy more? I think they do. QAnon and Jewish space lasers. Hillary's pedophile ring, microchips and the vaccine, Sandy Hook didn't happen, the election was stolen, Jews are trying to replace us. Yeah, but of course, on the left… Jews are the Nazis now. Somehow even enemies always find a way to agree to blame everything on the Jews.

I think, future historians will see us as a sad people, saddled with a genetic predisposition to always break into factions and then be consumed with the hate that engenders. Each side in America right now considers the other an existential threat. To the point where both camps literally collaborate with foreign enemies over fellow Americans.

Republican news channels use Russian talking points. Their voters wear t-shirts that say, "I'd rather be Russian than Democrat" and their leader sides with Putin. When today's Republican watches Rocky IV, they root for Ivan Drago.

Meanwhile, on the left this happened. Americans chanting death to America. College professors and their students exhilarated by aligning with a theocratic murderous terrorist group with values fundamentally opposed to our own.

Finally, I think, the people of the future will ironically be puzzled by our common desire to live in the past. On Fox News they're always pining for 1950, to make America great again. And in The Huffington Post it's always 1619, and nothing has changed.

For people so being into the moment, nobody seems to wanna live in the year we're living in. Trump's entire shtick is to return America to some idyllic time when the traditional family was a husband, a wife, a couple of kids and a porn star on the side. A time when America was the only Superpower and you could drink at work. When a cheeseburger cost a dime and a girl brought it to you on roller skates and she liked it when you complimented her ass. Nikki Haley says, "America was never racist." And then there are voices on the left saying racism has never been worse.

And the normies in the center say, "how hard is it to meet in the middle and just not be stupid about shit?" And that's who my book is for. People who don't wanna be stupid about shit.

Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah."

Fight those who do not believe in Allah or in the Last Day and who do not consider unlawful what Allah and His Messenger have made unlawful and who do not adopt the religion of truth from those who were given the Scripture - [fight] until they give the jizyah willingly while they are humbled.

So whoever deviates from the Book is to be brought back with iron, i.e. by force. Hence the soundness of the religion is based on the Qur’aan and the Sword.

If Islam was only spread by peaceful means, what would the kuffaar have to be afraid of? Of mere words spoken on the tongue?

Yes, it is the religion of peace but in the sense of saving all of mankind from worshipping anything other than Allaah and submitting all of mankind to the rule of Allaah.

Black Intellectuals Are Black America's Conspiracy Theorists

Our black intellectual elite has embraced a white supremacy conspiracy theory

freeblackthought.substack.com

Our black intellectual elite has embraced a white supremacy conspiracy theory

Why are people attracted to conspiracy theories? What makes them so intriguing that usually rational-minded individuals will suspend all disbelief to embrace an embellishment? For myself, it was the absence of information that made the conspiracy plausible. For a brief period of time in my 20s, I embraced 9/11 conspiracy theories. I felt that there were too many coincidences about odd events and that there were too many unanswered questions. I was certain that it was an inside job in order to kick off endless wars in the Middle East to forcibly seize oil for profit.

Today, I don’t believe in these conspiracy theories for multiple reasons. For one, I believe that most negative actions on a grand scale are not necessarily done out of malice but out of incompetence or carelessness. Just because there is a pattern does not mean that it is intentional. Even if I have unresolved questions about the pattern, this does not mean that there aren’t legitimate answers to explain it. 

The pattern aspect of this is extremely important to home in on because the human brain is designed to notice patterns and these patterns are highly salient to the mind in its information processing. However, what happens if someone presents information that is flawed in a pattern format? I believe that most people will choose to believe the pattern instead of questioning the information. This is how conspiracy theories flourish throughout our society, because once you see the pattern, it’s hard to unsee it.

The image of the conspiracy theorist staring at their bedroom wall with strings connecting one document to another is supposed to illustrate that they are using their logical brain, problem-solving by moving from facts to a pattern, but it is just as likely that they are working their way backwards, because they already have their conclusion—they’re just looking for any available links to the conclusion.

Much the same can be said for the people we hail as our intellectual black elite in academia. The people who show up on television shows and podcasts, giving the impression that they are intellectually sound by flaunting the institution they teach at or graduated from. Why would I, the average simpleton, dare to question their credentials when they’re using theoretical academic jargon? At times, it feels as though they’re intellectually bullying us, but it’s more likely that our own academic insecurity causes us to accept uncritically or to let slide whatever these people say.

Because we tend to feel insecure when someone shows up with an erudite vocabulary, we let them command the room. We stay silent as they speak for everyone else, or worse, we believe them regardless of what theories they’re pushing. Even if, instinctually, we feel that their reasoning sounds wrong, we still give them the benefit of the doubt because of their credentials.

Over the past few years, I’ve soured on being impressed simply by someone’s academic status, and now I care more about the content of their rhetoric. I’ve personally pushed back on black intellectuals’ narratives, ideas, and theoretical presumptions about reality. I’ve realized that there is a possibility of overthinking something to the point of having your theory escape reality. Many of these people have an Empire State Building-sized hubris, so once they adopt a theory, they ignore any challenging counterargument, much like the conspiracy theorists that I mentioned earlier.

The majority of our black intellectual elite has embraced the white supremacy conspiracy theory without challenge and without nuance. They’re sure there is no other explanation and they take any challenge to their conspiracy theories as evidence that you are working on behalf of the conspiracy. If you’re attempting to disprove the 9/11 conspiracy, you’re assumed to be an agent of the state. If you attempt to disprove the white supremacy conspiracy, you’re assumed to be an agent of ‘whiteness.’

The white supremacy conspiracy theory claims that everything in American society was created for the benefit of white people, and as such, any disparity between white people and minorities is due to that racist system. This conspiracy is a catch-all for any social issue, any historical event, and any negative outcome for black Americans.

The black intellectual elite are now officially the conspiracy theorists of the black community. They have the intellect to understand the complexities of social conditioning and human behavior, but they lack the willingness to accept that they might be wrong. When you spend your entire academic career believing in one particular concept, you will fight tooth and nail to ward off common-sense arguments against it. 

The black intellectual elite of the past used to be secluded in lecture halls across the country, but now the American public are their new students to indoctrinate. We are now unwilling auditors of their conspiracy theorizing, and we are aware of the elephant in the room that prevents us from pushing back—their race. If you are white and point out their flawed logic, you will be cast as a racist for challenging a black intellectual. If you are black and point out missteps in their thought process, you are accused of simping for the white man. For these black intellectuals, their race is used as a defense mechanism to protect their ego, fame, and profits.

These black elites don’t like to explain how they were able to make it to such great heights in this allegedly unfair white supremacist society. They never disclose their net worth while preaching about how they are victims. I’ve become very aware of the irony of these buttoned-up, wealthy black intellectuals telling lower class black people that because of white supremacy, they can’t do what they, the intellectuals themselves, did. Many of them wag their finger at white people as a whole as they are literally going to bed with a white person every night. They are walking contradictions because their conspiracy has no teeth—certainly white supremacy isn’t biting them. 

They are able to get away with espousing their conspiracy theory because there is a kernel of truth in it. No one could ever say that racism never existed or that the American government during part of our history didn’t have racist laws. But the trick of any conspiracy is that it is based on a truth, but one that is exaggerated to the point where it becomes untruth. Conspiracy theories overlook all the nuances of a particular situation in favor of apparent patterns. When such patterns rule, facts and nuance die.

Killer LA mom who stabbed partner, pushed kids out of car in murder-suicide was reportedly terrified of world ending with the eclipse

The killer mom was a once-prolific astrologer who was terrified of the impending “apocalypse” she believed the eclipse would incite, accordi

New York Post

pbs.twimg.com

WAKE UP WAKE UP THE APOCALYPSE IS HERE. EVERYONE WHO HAS EARS LISTEN. YOUR TIME TO CHOOSE WHAT YOU BELIEVE IS NOW. IF YOU BELIEVE A NEW WORLD IS POSSIBLE FOR THE PEOPLE RT NOW. THERE IS POWER IN CHOICE. THERE IS POWER IN CHOICE!!!! REPOST TO MAKE THE CHOICE FOR THE COLLECTIVE pic.twitter.com/NMyuLkBj5l— Ayoka (@MysticxLipstick) April 5, 2024

• From 2022 to 2024, the average number of anti-Jewish tropes endorsed by Americans increased from 4.18 to 4.31 out of 14. Using the original 11 statements comprising the ADL Index, agreement with 6 or more anti-Jewish tropes increased from 20% of the U.S. population in 2022 to just under 24% in 2024.
• In a reversal of past trends, younger Americans are more likely to endorse anti-Jewish tropes, with millennials agreeing with the greatest number of anti-Jewish tropes on average, at 5.4. They’re followed by Gen Z at 5, Gen X at 4.2, and Baby Boomers at 3.1.
• In addition to individual attitudes, more than 42% of Americans either have friends/family who dislike Jews (23.2%) or find it socially acceptable for a close family member to support Hamas (27.2%).

• Belief in conspiracy theories continues to be one of the main correlates of antisemitic attitudes, with an overall average correlation of .378 with anti-Jewish trope belief. Respondents who fall in the upper quartile of conspiracy theory belief endorsed over twice as many anti-Jewish tropes, on average, as those with the least conspiracy theory belief.
• Anti-Jewish belief also correlates heavily with social dominance orientation – the belief that there should be higher status groups and that they should suppress lower status groups. For example, respondents who at least somewhat agreed with the statement that some groups of people are inferior to other groups were 3.6 times more likely to fall in the top quartile of anti-Jewish trope belief compared to those who did not.
• There was also a strong relationship with the belief that the problems in the world “come down to the oppressor vs the oppressed.” Those who at least somewhat agreed with this belief were 2.6 times more likely to fall in the top quartile of anti-Jewish trope belief compared to those who disagreed with the statement.

• Significant percentages of Americans hold certain anti-Israel positions, such as 20.1% who expressed support for removing Israeli products from a local grocery store and 30.4% who said supporters of Israel control the media. Younger Americans take these positions at significantly higher rates.
• However, support for an independent Jewish state remains high, with 88.8% saying Jews have the right to an independent country. This is true even among those who take other anti-Israel positions. For example, 83.8% of people who believe that Israelis intend to cause as much suffering to Palestinians as possible believe that there should be a Jewish state.
• October 7th and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war has not resulted in major changes in the percentage of Americans who hold anti-Israel positions.
• However, in just about every anti-Israel position assessed, increased polarization appears evident. The proportion of respondents strongly agreeing or strongly disagreeing with Israel-related policies grew from the summer of 2023 to the present, whereas the proportion of those who somewhat agreed or somewhat disagreed shrank.

• Respondents not comfortable buying products from Israel were 3.4 times more likely to be among the top quartile of believers in anti-Jewish tropes.
• Respondents who do not think Jews have the right to an independent country were 3.7 times more likely to be among the top quartile of believers in anti-Jewish tropes.
• Respondents who believe Israelis intend to cause as much suffering to Palestinians as possible were 4.6 times more likely to be among the most antisemitic Americans.
• Respondents who believe Israeli operatives are secretly manipulating US national policy through AIPAC or other influence tools were 7.5 times more likely to be among the top quartile of believers in anti-Jewish tropes.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s New Enemy: Americans Who Accept Biology

A new SPLC propaganda document claims to ‘expose’ a vast ‘Anti-LGBTQ+ Pseudoscience Network’ that’s supposedly targeting trans people.

Quillette

it was revealed that [Colin] Wright is in a relationsihp [sic] with journalist Christina Buttons, who is an advisoary [sic] board member of [the Gender Dysphoria Alliance] with Drs. Lisa Littman and Ray Blanchard, an editoral [sic] board member of Springer’s Archives of Sexual Research [a mistaken reference to the Archives of Sexual Behavior] with J. Michael Bailey. Notably, Buttons and Wright are interviewed by host Jonathan Kay. In addition to hosting Quillette’s podcast, Kay serves on FAIR’s board of advisors.

One in five young Americans think the Holocaust is a myth

Our new poll makes alarming reading

The Economist

On December 5th, for over five hours, lawmakers grilled the presidents of elite universities in a congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses. In one of the testiest exchanges a Republican congresswoman, Elise Stefanik, asked whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violates university rules. It is “context-dependent”, replied Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania. Clips of the exchange went viral on X, formerly Twitter. Yad Vashem, a Holocaust museum and research centre, issued a condemnation and stressed the importance of “raising awareness about the history of antisemitism and the Holocaust”.

A new poll from YouGov/The Economist suggests that Yad Vashem has its work cut out. Young Americans—or at least the subset of them who take part in surveys—appear to be remarkably ignorant about one of modern history’s greatest crimes. Some 20% of respondents aged 18-29 think that the Holocaust is a myth, compared with 8% of those aged 30-44 (see chart). An additional 30% of young Americans said they do not know whether the Holocaust is a myth. Many respondents espouse the canard that Jews wield too much power in America: young people are nearly five times more likely to think this than are those aged 65 and older (28% versus 6%).

Now for the harder part: why do some young Americans embrace such views? Perhaps surprisingly, education levels do not appear to be the culprit. In our poll, the proportion of respondents who believe that the Holocaust is a myth is similar across all levels of education.

Social media might play a role. According to a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Centre, Americans under 30 are about as likely to trust information on social media as they are to trust national news organisations. More recently Pew found that 32% of those aged 18-29 get their news from TikTok. Social-media sites are rife with conspiracy theories, and research has found strong associations between rates of social-media use and beliefs in such theories. In one recent survey by Generation Lab, a data-intelligence company, young adults who used TikTok were more likely to hold antisemitic beliefs.

Though young Americans’ views are most stark, antisemitism is rearing its head in other demographic groups. The same YouGov/The Economist poll found that 27% of black respondents and 19% of Hispanics believe that Jews have too much power in America, compared with 13% of white respondents who say so. Whatever the reasons, the polling is alarming. 

"You know, monotheists and conspiracy theorists have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views."

The role of conspiracy mentality in denial of science and susceptibility to viral deception about science | Politics and the Life Sciences |

The role of conspiracy mentality in denial of science and susceptibility to viral deception about science - Volume 38 Issue 2

Cambridge Core

Abstract Members of the public can disagree with scientists in at least two ways: people can reject well-established scientific theories and they can believe fabricated, deceptive claims about science to be true. Scholars examining the reasons for these disagreements find that some individuals are more likely than others to diverge from scientists because of individual factors such as their science literacy, political ideology, and religiosity. This study builds on this literature by examining the role of conspiracy mentality in these two phenomena. Participants were recruited from a national online panel (N = 513) and in person from the first annual Flat Earth International Conference (N = 21). We found that conspiracy mentality and science literacy both play important roles in believing viral and deceptive claims about science, but evidence for the importance of conspiracy mentality in the rejection of science is much more mixed.

Science denialism permeates society. Though adamant anti-vaxxers and resolute flat Earthers may be small in numbers, many more people in the United States deny climate change and/or evolution (at least 50% and 33%, respectively). And while scientists face public denial of well-supported theories, popular culture celebrates pseudoscience: Olympic athletes engage in cupping, “gluten-free” is trending (even among those without disorders like celiac disease), and unsubstantiated alternative medicine methods flourish with support from cultural icons like Oprah. Governments face furious opposition to fluoridated water (when it was added to prevent tooth decay5), and popular restaurant chains, like Chipotle, proudly tout their opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) (see https://www.chipotle.com/gmo; scientists stress that the focus should be on the risks and benefits of each specific product and not globally accepted or rejected based on the processes used to make them).

Moreover, the emergence of social media has provided a broad forum for the famous, not famous, and infamous alike to share and crowdsource opinions and even target misinformation to those who are most vulnerable. This allows so-called fake news to go viral. Yet who is most susceptible to denying science and/or believing misinformation? In the current study, we consider the extent to which conspiracy mentality leads people to (a) reject well-supported scientific theories and (b) accept viral and deceptive claims (commonly referred to as fake news) about science, two ways in which publics disagree with scientists.

Conclusion The proliferation of deceptive claims on social media has done a lot to normalize conspiracy, and to some extent conspiratorial worldviews. We can try to dismiss conspiracy theorizing as something undertaken only by a foil-hat-wearing fringe, however when our friends and neighbors (and sometimes ourselves) begin to believe and share conspiracies on social media, we must acknowledge that conspiracy theorizing is much more widespread. And when it becomes commonplace to project conspiratorial motives onto scientific institutions (and not just corporate or governmental ones) merely because information disagrees with our worldviews, we are in danger of entering into a space where knowledge becomes almost completely relative, we cannot engage in rational discussion with those with whom we disagree, and we completely break down the division of cognitive labor on which our society relies. Although we should not be gullible—after all, there are real conspiracies—we must learn how to balance skepticism with trust.

“Nostradamus himself confessed that the vague manner in which he wrote his "prophecies" was so that 'they could not possibly be understood until they were interpreted after the event and by it.’” -- James Randi

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Sage Journals

APA’s refusal to acknowledge white supremacy in current events is a display of white supremacy that advances its centuries-long arc of white supremacy. Positioning itself as the powerful savior, the magnanimous arbiter of scientific healing, while deleting its white supremacist origin story is yet another manifestation of its whiteness. APA’s statements provide a window into the profession’s history of racism and white supremacy, while capturing its active efforts to refuse and deny it. This paper challenges this refusal, redirecting collective attention back to the past to delineate the patterns shaping our unfolding present. Organized psychology is the foundation for implementing antiracist psychological practices. However, these practices—whether they are APA statements, clinical tools, or research protocols—cannot be reimagined as antiracist until the whiteness overpowering them is revealed. This process requires interrogating contemporary practices and situating them in the histories and systems of oppression that gave rise to them.

“No More Building Resiliency” takes aim at celebrated psychological frameworks that uphold whiteness, thereby bending the moral arc of the universe towards injustice. Encouraging resilience among the nonwhite, marginalized people assaulted by whiteness and its intersecting systems of oppression, rather than condemning the sources causing harm, is an injustice. American psychology’s narrow view and orientation to individual-level change, which renders itself ineffective at best (e.g., Price et al., 2021), is harmful in more subtle ways (Chen et al., 2021; Fadus et al., 2019). Pathologizing minoritized children for attachment deficiencies theorized by white psychologists while sidestepping the violent family separation forced by the legacies of slavery and colonization is another (Causadias et al., 2021; Coard, 2021).  Detouring away from oppressive legacies is the first, most important step in an antiracist journey. However, this sharp turn cannot transpire until American psychology’s sordid history is exposed and its contemporary threads are unraveled (Legha et al. 2022). This antiracist approach to psychological practice, therefore, offers seven historical themes illuminating the whiteness engulfing commonplace psychological practices. This historically oriented approach rejects seeking reductive answers through natural processes born from colonial social order (APA Div 45 Warrior’s Path Presidential Task Force [Warrior’s Path], 2020). There are no boxes to check or competencies to master, as is often the norm for psychological practice. Anchored by CRT, abolition, and decolonization, it, instead, inspires asking better questions that lack immediate answers. Each historical theme, therefore, begins with a question prompt to implicate clinicians in remaking psychology’s white supremacist history into an antiracist future. This prompt also positions the millions of clients receiving psychological services each year to hold their providers accountable by interrogating their clinicians’ practices. Everyone owns the past, present, and future of American psychology. By transparently exposing the past and present manifestations of oppression, this antiracist future becomes closer to being within reach.

White saviorism is the white supremacist assault, thinly veiled by the language of “strengths-based,” “trauma-informed,” and playful acronyms suggesting “we got you.” Saving people from harm rather than eradicating the harm is the strategy to cover up and sustain the harm.

Thus, objectivity, much like race, reveals itself to be a socially constructed weapon leveraged by (white) people in power to advance their (racist) contentions by claiming they are numerical and, therefore, indisputable.

The lesson is clear: measurement does not imply truth. “[N]umbers are interpretive, [embodying] theoretical assumptions about what should be counted, how one should understand material reality, and how quantification contributes to systematic knowledge about the world” (Poovey, 1998, p. 12). Data–a manifestation of power, not a construct free of it–demands interrogating what is being measured and what for, who is doing the measuring and to whom are they doing it, and what (personal) agenda they are advancing and what truths they are trying to obscure.

Locating health and pathology within individual psyches and bodies represents an active and deliberate erasure of oppressive histories and racist structures.

American psychology needs a complete redo.

There are no boxes to check or competencies to master, as is often the norm for psychological practice.

Resiliency, another rigged discourse, suggests that minoritized people have–or should have–a unique ability to live with and thrive in the face of oppression as a sign of wellbeing, rather than a violence they have no choice but to suffer (Wingo et al., 2010). It harkens back to theories of “racial resistance” contending Black bodies, including children’s, were stronger in order to justify their enslavement.

"Satan doesn’t whisper, 'Believe in me.' He whispers, 'Believe in yourself.'" -- Matt Smethurst

Are Republicans and Conservatives More Likely to Believe Conspiracy Theories? - Political Behavior

A sizable literature tracing back to Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style (1964) argues that Republicans and conservatives are more likel

SpringerLink

Abstract

A sizable literature tracing back to Richard Hofstadter’s The Paranoid Style (1964) argues that Republicans and conservatives are more likely to believe conspiracy theories than Democrats and liberals. However, the evidence for this proposition is mixed. Since conspiracy theory beliefs are associated with dangerous orientations and behaviors, it is imperative that social scientists better understand the connection between conspiracy theories and political orientations. Employing 20 surveys of Americans from 2012 to 2021 (total n = 37,776), as well as surveys of 20 additional countries spanning six continents (total n = 26,416), we undertake an expansive investigation of the asymmetry thesis. First, we examine the relationship between beliefs in 52 conspiracy theories and both partisanship and ideology in the U.S.; this analysis is buttressed by an examination of beliefs in 11 conspiracy theories across 20 more countries. In our second test, we hold constant the content of the conspiracy theories investigated—manipulating only the partisanship of the theorized villains—to decipher whether those on the left or right are more likely to accuse political out-groups of conspiring. Finally, we inspect correlations between political orientations and the general predisposition to believe in conspiracy theories over the span of a decade. In no instance do we observe systematic evidence of a political asymmetry. Instead, the strength and direction of the relationship between political orientations and conspiricism is dependent on the characteristics of the specific conspiracy beliefs employed by researchers and the socio-political context in which those ideas are considered.

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Discussion and Conclusion

Are those on the political right (Republicans/conservatives) more prone to conspiracy theorizing than those on the left (Democrats/liberals)? The smattering of evidence across the literature provides conflicting answers to this question. We surmise that disagreement in the literature is substantially the product of limitations regarding both the operationalizations of conspiracy theorizing and the context––both temporal and socio-political––in which beliefs are assessed in previous work. Given the imperative of better understanding conspiracy theories and the people who believe them, we compiled a robust body of evidence for testing the asymmetry thesis. Across multiple surveys and measurement strategies, we found more evidence for partisan and ideological symmetry in conspiricism, however operationalized, than for asymmetry.

First, we found that the relationship between political orientations and beliefs in specific conspiracy theories varied considerably across 52 specific conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories containing partisan/ideological content or that have been endorsed by prominent partisan/ideological elites will find more support among those in one political camp or the other, while theories without such content or endorsements tend to be unrelated to partisanship and ideology in the U.S. We also observed considerable variability in the relationship between left–right ideology and 11 conspiracy theory beliefs across 20 additional countries spanning six continents; this variability suggests that the relationship between left–right ideology and conspiracy theory belief is also affected by the political context in which conspiracy theories are polled. To account for the potential impact of idiosyncratic factors associated with specific conspiracy theories, we next examined the relationship between beliefs in “content-controlled” conspiracy theories and political orientations. We found that both Democrats/liberals and Republicans/conservatives engage in motivated conspiracy endorsement at similar rates, with Democrats/liberals occasionally exhibiting stronger motivations than Republicans/conservatives. Finally, we observed only inconsistent evidence for an asymmetric relationship between conspiracy thinking and either partisanship, symbolic ideology, or operational ideology across 18 polls administered between 2012 and 2021. Even though the average correlations across studies were positive, indicating a relationship with conservatism/Republicanism (owing mostly to data collected in 2016), they were negligible in magnitude and individual correlations varied in sign and statistical significance over time.

Equally important as our substantive conclusions is an exploration of why we reached them, which can shed light on existing inconsistencies in the literature. While the core inferences we make from our investigation may deviate from the conclusions of others, empirical patterns are not irreconcilable. Take, for example, the study conducted by van der Linden and colleagues (2021). They infer from a strong, positive correlation between beliefs that “climate change is a hoax” and conservatism that conservatives are inherently more conspiratorial than liberals. However, we demonstrate that such conclusions cannot be made using beliefs in a single conspiracy theory. As can be seen in Fig. 1, climate change conspiracy theories show one of the highest levels of asymmetry; therefore, exclusive examination of almost any other conspiracy theory would lead to a result less supportive of the asymmetry argument.

Van der Linden et al. (2021) also find a positive, albeit weak, correlation between conservatism and generalized conspiracy thinking. While this relationship is statistically significant, liberals still exhibit high levels of conspiracism. Indeed, even strong liberals score above the 50-point midpoint on their 101-point measure (between 60 and 65, on average), whereas strong conservatives typically score about 10 points higher (see Figs. 1b and 3b). In other words, liberals, like conservatives, are more conspiratorial than not. Moreover, van der Linden et al.’s data hail from 2016 and 2018––years in which we also observed relatively elevated levels of conspiracy thinking among conservatives. However, this was not the case in other years and samples we examined. This is exactly what we might expect of a disposition that is not inherently connected to partisanship and ideology, but which may be sporadically activated by political circumstances. We do not question the veracity of van der Linden et al.’s empirical findings or those of any other study with conclusions that disagree with ours; rather, we argue that differences largely stem from the inferences made from empirical relationships, which are frequently more general than the data allows.

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That we find little difference in conspiracy theorizing between the right and left among the mass public does not indicate that there are no differences between partisan elites on this score, nor does it imply that there will not be asymmetries in beliefs in specific conspiracy theories at any given point in time. Specific conspiracy theories can find more support among one partisan/ideological side than the other even though partisan/ideological motivated reasoning and conspiratorial predispositions operate, on balance, in a symmetric fashion. Likewise, the content of those theories and the way they are deployed, particularly by elites, can result in asymmetrical consequences, such as political violence and the undermining of democratic institutions. We encourage future work to integrate the conspiratorial rhetoric of elites with studies of mass beliefs and investigate elite conspiratorial rhetoric from actors including and beyond Donald Trump.

"Watch out...they are going to push it too early...this corrupt administration could give a crap about the safety of the American people"