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Seen, Heard, Read...
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Stay informed with our curated collection of noteworthy updates and insights from the world of conspiracy theories. Uncover the latest trends, explore intriguing perspectives, and broaden your understanding. Delve into our recommended content that keeps you in the know.
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DONALD TRUMP. Far-right conspiracies have abounded after a second apparent Trump assassination attempt. The Republican nominee was unharmed, and a suspect was taken into custody after shots were fired on Sunday in what the Federal Bureau of Investigation said “appears to be an attempted assassination” at Trump’s Florida golf course. Baseless theories about suspect Ryan Wesley Routh and his alleged ties to the US military spread online after his arrest. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev speculated that the shooter was a hired gun for Ukraine. “I wonder what would happen if it turned out that the failed new Trump shooter Routh, who recruited mercenaries for the Ukrainian army, was himself hired by the neo-nazi regime in Kiev for this assassination attempt?,” he posted on X. “What are the odds that this shooter, who spent months fighting in Ukraine, has zero links to anyone in US military or intelligence circles?” Charlie Kirk, the extreme right influencer wrote on X. “Find them.” Meanwhile the news took China’s heavily censored social media by storm. Weibo quickly became a breeding ground for a number of conspiracy theories surrounding the authenticity of the incident and the motives of those involved, with users alluding to the act benefiting Trump in the polls. “Again?” many commenters questioned on the platform with over half a billion monthly users, according to CNBC’s translation of the Chinese. Millions viewed the viral hashtag, “Shooter was 457 meters from Trump,” which prompted discussions about how Trump was lucky and had “good fate” (Sources: The Guardian, September 17, 2024; CNBC, September 16, 2024).
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Source: Charlie Kirk/X, 09/16/2024
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J.D. VANCE. Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance has doubled down on his false claims about Haitian immigrants eating the pets of people living in Springfield Ohio. And despite a wave of bomb threats and menaces targeting the Haitian community, he widened his attacks Wednesday, falsely claiming Haitians legally in the US are “illegal aliens”. The Ohio senator continued the hateful rhetoric that has thrust an Ohio town into the national spotlight and made Haitian immigrants right-wing targets. Asked to support the conspiratorial claims in an interview with CNN on Sunday, Vance said he had firsthand accounts from constituents who have told him this is happening. But he did not provide the evidence. “The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance said. The lie that migrants are eating pets in Springfield, Ohio originated from white-supremacist sites online, which relentlessly promote the idea that non-white immigrants are dirty and dangerous. It quickly worked its way from the far right into mainstream conservative channels, with Vance leading the charge. Trump repeated the lie during his debate last week with Kamala Harris, saying “they are eating the dogs, they are eating the cats, they are eating the pets of the people who live there”. However, The Wall Street Journal revealed that on Sept. 9, the same day that Vance first amplified the right-wing rumors, the city manager of Springfield, Ohio, told his office that they were false. This week Vance’s office provided the Journal with a police report in which a resident claimed her pet might have been taken by her Haitian neighbors. But when a reporter went to her house, Anna Kilgore said her cat Miss Sassy which went missing in late August had been found safe in her basement, and she had apologized to her neighbors for accusing them of eating it. Erika Lee, a Springfield resident whose Facebook post about a neighbor's missing cat sparked some of the earliest rumors, told Newsguard that she heard it from "an acquaintance of a friend" who heard it from "a source." Lee deleted the post and expressed regret to NBC News about the national firestorm that had ensued, including threats to the Haitian community. Vance has not apologized for the pet rumors. In recent days, he has lashed out at the media for reporting on the wave of bomb threats that forced Springfield schools to close this week. At a rally on Tuesday, Vance said that "every single one of those bomb threats was a hoax" — and accused the American media of "laundering foreign disinformation," claiming that all of the threats came from overseas (Sources: The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2024; Axios, September 18, 2024; CNN, September 15, 2024).
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LAURA LOOMER. A rift has opened up between Donald Trump and the Republican Party over one of his key allies. Laura Loomer, an online conspiracy theorist with a penchant for bigotry, was seen leaving Trump’s private plane with him before the presidential debate last week. The next day, Loomer, who has said that 9/11 was an “inside job,” tagged along with Trump to a 9/11 memorial event. “Laura Loomer is a crazy conspiracy theorist who regularly utters disgusting garbage intended to divide Republicans,” and stands to “hurt President Trump’s chances of winning re-election. Enough,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis tweeted on Friday. Other Republicans, including Lindsey Graham and even Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has espoused her own racist and conspiratorial ideas, made the rare move of implicitly challenging Trump in public; Greene said that Loomer does not have “the right mentality to advise” the president. Trump’s own staff has even reportedly tried to keep Loomer away from him. She has become a rare thing for the GOP these days: a red line that the party is not willing to cross. Republicans have good reasons for disavowing Loomer. She has described Islam as a “cancer on humanity” and said that she is “pro–white nationalism.” Last week, she posted on X that the “White House will smell like curry” if Kamala Harris wins the election. Loomer’s racism is completely unabashed and unveiled, making her a unique liability even in a party that has spent the past two weeks terrorizing immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, with racist lies (Source: The Atlantic, September 17, 2024).
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. Amid growing threats to democracy, researchers from MIT and Cornell investigated whether dialogs with a generative artificial intelligence (AI) interface could convince people to abandon their conspiratorial beliefs. Human participants described a conspiracy theory that they subscribed to, and the AI then engaged in persuasive arguments with them that refuted their beliefs with evidence. The AI chatbot’s ability to sustain tailored counterarguments and personalized in-depth conversations reduced their beliefs in conspiracies for months, challenging research suggesting that such beliefs are impervious to change. This intervention illustrates how deploying AI may mitigate conflicts and serve society. Many people who strongly believe in seemingly fact-resistant conspiratorial beliefs can change their minds when presented with compelling evidence. From a theoretical perspective, this paints a surprisingly optimistic picture of human reasoning: Conspiratorial rabbit holes may indeed have an exit. Psychological needs and motivations do not inherently blind conspiracists to evidence—it simply takes the right evidence to reach them (Sources: Science, September 13, 2024; David G. Rand on X, September 12, 2024; Tom Costello on X, September 19, 2024).
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MISINFONATION. CNN Senior Correspondent Donie O’Sullivan interviewed former “Bernie Bros,” (supporters of the former Democratic candidate for President Bernie Sanders) including far right antisemitic online figure Jackson Hinkle, whose disillusionment with politics has led them to embrace extremism. Some of them spend most of their waking hours online playing video games, say they feel left behind in the United States, and are now embracing conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, and even Vladimir Putin. “So much of the hate and extremism we see across American politics today is appealing to and being promoted by young men who, rightly or wrongly, feel aggrieved,” said O’Sullivan. “In ‘MisinfoNation: The Lost Left’ O’Sullivan visited a rally of so-called MAGA Communists in Michigan, and spoke with 24-year-old Hinkle, the emerging and charismatic young leader of the movement. He also spoke with protestors outside of the Democratic National Convention and joined up with one of Twitch’s biggest political stars Hasan Piker, who is trying to fight online hate and misinformation (Source: CNN, September 15, 2024).
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