Long covid effect? Conspiracy theories are alive and kicking in America

Polling data indeed shows that 41% of Americans believe a deep state exists; more than half—as many as 54%—suspect multiple actors were involved in the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Their scepticism doesn’t come out of nowhere. History has given Americans a lengthy list of reasons to distrust their government. Our leaders lied about the Vietnam War. The rationale for invading Iraq was built on lies. Big pharmaceutical companies have harmed us with their products, from Vioxx to OxyContin.

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Yet, while headlines proclaim that conspiracy theories have gone mainstream, a closer look at the data and US history shows something less pathological. Americans hold a broad spectrum of beliefs, from radical conspiracy theories at one extreme to reasonable concerns about abuses of power in government and big business.

There is no evidence that a deep state has taken control of the world—or is plotting to—but the conspiracy theory’s origin is rooted in history.

In an essay for the publication Scientific American, historian Kathryn Olmsted and intelligence expert Simon Willmetts point to a long trail of government secrecy that fostered that mistrust, including covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) missions during the Cold War that went beyond a defensive stance.

There were covert CIA plots to assassinate foreign leaders, sometimes even conspiring with the mafia to poison people, Olmsted said. Prison inmates were used as unwitting subjects in government experiments with LSD and mind control. The US Public Health Service conducted a study of untreated syphilis on African-American men without their knowledge. The ‘war on terror’ in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks produced a new list of outrages.

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Olmsted and Willmetts cite a famous 1964 essay by historian Richard Hofstadter on ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics.’ It goes back as far as 1790, soon after US independence, when Americans spread conspiracy theories about a secret society known as the Illuminati. 

Hofstadter describes this paranoia as thinking that takes legitimate concerns and blows them out of proportion and context. The targets moved to Catholic immigrants and then communists.

Past exposés of deceptive covert activities often came from celebrated investigative journalists and were embraced by the political left. Recently, fighting the deep state has become a cause on the right and expanded to include ordinary, non-covert government workers at places such as the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration.

The pandemic and its handling made things worse.

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“People tend to be more susceptible to conspiracy theories if they are feeling out of control or fearful or left behind,” said Stephan Lewandowsky, a psychologist at the University of Bristol. People were fearful and uncertain.

Fear became politically polarized with debates over the government’s sudden heavy-handedness. Businesses and schools were ordered to close, mask and vaccine mandates were instituted, and people were told to stay in their homes indefinitely. 

Some Americans feared receiving a relatively new vaccine and were confused over poorly explained and often-conflicting information. Some government and health officials exacerbated those problems by spreading misinformation.

During his Senate confirmation hearings last week, Kennedy, Trump’s nominee to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, leaned into those fears, promising “radical transparency.” He claimed his years-long criticism of vaccines was motivated by his desire for more data on their safety. However, as several American senators pointed out, reams of such data already exist.

Lewandowsky, who has studied conspiracy theories, said more data rarely brings satisfaction. “There’s always going to be more that people think you’re hiding,” he said. That said, greater transparency on covid vaccines and mandates might have prevented the increasing distrust that seems to be driving some parents to forgo well-established childhood immunizations for their kids. ©Bloomberg