Political Conspiracy Theories

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Right now, we have a very temcentric view of politics. It doesn't really allow for new ants. And so i do thinkat that is why a these conspiracy theories like cuan on are so inherently political right now. You knowit it's you can't parody it, because it just blows all all joking out the window. I mean, john hannady's going to hammer you if you're a politician and you dare to talk to democrats,. Even go out to lunch with them, and maybe make a compromise. That’s now considered, you know, kind of being traitorous to your partyums.

Since 2015, there has been a spectacular boom in a nearly 200-year-old delusion — the idea that we all live on a flat plane, under a solid dome, ringed by an impossible wall of ice. It is the ultimate in conspiracy theories, a wholesale rejection of everything we know to be true about the world in which we live. Where did this idea come from

Michael Shermer speaks with journalist Kelly Weill whose work covers extremism, disinformation, and online conspiracy theories in current affairs. The conversation is based on her book Off the Edgewhich tells a powerful story about belief, polarized realities, and what needs to happen so that we might all return to the same spinning globe.

Shermer and Weill discuss: the binary/black-and-white thinking of conspiracy theorists; how Flat-Earthism is ultimately a conspiracy theory about how NASA and the government are covering up the biggest secret in history; how Flat-Earthism is a proxy for other conspiracy theories (i.e., 9/11 truth, QAnon, and anti-Semitic beliefs about nefarious Jewish organizations conspiring to achieve world domination); and the role of social media in propagating conspiracy theories.