Where Do Conspiracy Theories Come From?

Barack Obama is a (delete as appropriate) communist/assassin/alien. The twin towers at the World Trade Center were not the target of the Sept. 11 attack. The polio vaccination was designed to cause sterility. French gunman and terrorist Mohammed Merah was a puppet of the French intelligence services. Very few events fail to bring about one, ten or even a hundred conspiracy theories; the more important the event, the higher the chance that conspiracy theories about it exist. The Newtown school shooting, which shocked millions worldwide, very quickly led to a vast range of conspiracy theories that tried to explain why a teenager would suddenly decide to murder children.

The origin of those conspiracy theories follow some identifiable patterns, if not unchanging principles. The “conspiracy” as theorized provides a “rational” explanation for events that are beyond our emotional understanding and control. In the case of the Newtown shooting, it offers an explanation for the killing of children, which is not an easily explicable or comprehensible event.

Several of the first conspiracy theories that appeared after the shooting attempted to answer the following question: “Who will benefit from this?” For many, the answer was simple: Barack Obama would politically benefit from this tragedy. Like most theories, this one claims to be based on “factual” evidence and presents causal relationships that do not actually exist. The theory is based specifically on an open letter from the National Rifle Association that was published during the 2012 presidential campaign, in which the association stated that if Barack Obama were to be re-elected he “would take firearms away from the American people” and impose a “prohibition of semi-automatic weapons.”* That theory was widely circulated — until after the Newtown shooting — by the conservative media; Fox News, for example, frequently broadcast several personalities accusing the president of secretly putting together a law to prohibit gun ownership.

According to conspiracy theorists, Barack Obama would benefit immensely from setting up a shooting that would shock the public and consequently give him enough “ammunition” to make his “secret plan” a reality. It is worth noting that such a measure was not part of the president’s re-election program. In reality, the proposals made by Barack Obama after the tragedy could be described as very subdued. The American president merely said that he wanted to renew the ban on assault weapons — a measure that had been enforced under Bill Clinton.

The idea that the federal government is at the heart of a tragic event is classic. Such a theory circulated in the aftermath of another shooting in the U.S., in which 12 people were shot dead in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, right in the middle of the presidential campaign.

One conspiracy theorist pinned a different suspect. Shortly after the shooting, a Libertarian blogger published a video in which he argued that the suspected killer and his father were both supposed to testify before a board of inquiry regarding the Libor financial scandal.

In a few hours, the video went viral, and the suspicious “piece of information” contained in the video was disseminated by both far-left and far-right websites. This information is completely inaccurate, but the video from which the theory originated was viewed 150,000 times on YouTube.

These two very different theories, among dozens of others, follow the same pattern as those that have emerged in the aftermath of Newtown. They start with truths, such as a shooting or a political speech, are associated with fabricated or distorted facts, then suggest, without ever proving, links between people and events.

Is this really a coincidence? We think not.

*Editor’s Note: The original quotations, accurately translated, could not be verified.