The redditor from the AskHistorians moderator team suggested that there is a direct correlation between the popularity of a time period and the number of conspiracy theories associated with them. "There are probably dozens of potential conspiracies surrounding Sumerian agriculture, but that topic isn’t in the public eye in the same way that something like the Second World War or the Roman Empire is," the AskHistorians moderator explained.
According to them, the most well-known historical conspiracy theories are weaponized by people who want to "exploit past events to push a political point in the present day." As such, you should always consider the potential motives of anyone trying to push through a conspiracy. The theories themselves can be anything, "whether this is people who want to fly the confederate flag arguing that the US civil war wasn't about slavery, right-wingers claiming that the Nazis were socialists or people with anti-immigration views trying to claim that the Roman Empire fell because of uncontrolled immigration."
The more important and relevant the event and time period, the more likely it is that someone will try to exploit it for their own gain. "Because these events and periods are seen as important for the formation of the modern world, people see it as important that history aligns to their worldview or political leanings—even when it does not—and seek to twist reality in order to achieve this," the AskHistorians moderator shared with Bored Panda.
I was interested to find out whether we should put a greater emphasis on teaching history in schools in the hope of fighting back against fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. In the moderator's opinion, it's not so much that we ought to focus on history itself as on the underlying skills that history teaches us.
"As well as actual historical content, schools are increasingly incorporating skills into the curriculum, teaching children how to evaluate sources for bias and judge their trustworthiness—one good example of this is Stanford's Thinking/Reading Like a Historian project. No historical document is objective, and the skills gained from working out how a document is biased, and most importantly what can still be gained from reading it, are easily transferable to other areas of life," they said. This is true for other subjects as well, not just history.
"English and reading teachers are increasingly incorporating media literacy skills into their lessons, helping students understand how to selectively ignore things they see on the internet, the power of confirmation bias, and how to slow down and consider our emotional responses to things we see and read on the internet."
Joseph, from UCLA, told Bored Panda about the link between mistrust and false beliefs like conspiracy theories.
“Countering misinformation is a huge challenge and is often ineffective when it only amounts to presenting accurate information as an alternative to false beliefs,” he told me via email. “In my opinion, understanding conspiracy theories and other false beliefs is best understood as a byproduct of mistrust and misinformation. If people don’t trust authoritative sources of information, they aren’t going to replace their false beliefs with facts and we’re not going to be able to agree on what facts are. That’s where we often are these days.”
According to Joseph, so-called ‘inoculation strategies’ are some of the best evidence-based interventions that “beat misinformation to the punch.” However, in reality, it’s often misinformation “that’s beating accurate information to the punch.” Especially online.
“If we’re going to talk about education, what’s really needed is a retool from the bottom up, teaching people about analytical thinking, data reasoning, and media literacy starting in grade school. We’re 30 years into the internet now and I’ve never seen any evidence of this being part of education in America. It is in other countries,” he said.
Lee McIntyre from Boston University previously told me that repetition plays a very important role in getting us to believe certain historical facts. "Repetition is important in making us believe things, whether they are true or not. There is a cognitive bias called the 'illusory truth effect' which is when we are repeatedly exposed to false information over and over and, over time, it begins to seem more plausible," he said.
"Social psychologists have known since the 1960s that repetition works, for truth or falsity. In fact, this idea goes back to Plato who said that it didn't hurt to repeat a true thing. And of course, for falsehood, this was one of the main propaganda tactics in Nazi Germany, where Hitler's propaganda minister understood the 'repetition effect,'" Lee from Boston University told Bored Panda. He added that what we should focus on is finding reliable, trustworthy sources, instead of relying on double-checking every single fact we stumble across because of how time-consuming this is.
Zack is an environment and energy reporter at The Hill and is also a novelist in his spare time. His viral thread got more than 100k likes on Twitter in less than a week and so far has been retweeted over 13k times by fans of the topic.
However, Zack’s thread isn’t just entertaining, it also proves that we’re not really aware of how interconnected we all are. History, as we learn about it in school, might not put enough emphasis on how different cultures interacted with one another during the same time periods. A more holistic approach might be key here. I’d argue that ignorance about history makes us more susceptible to conspiracy theories, fake news, and misinformation.
Earlier, I spoke with Joseph from UCLA about conspiracy theories and separating fact from fiction. He said that many conspiracy theories that had cropped up recently “have been fairly inconsequential without any largescale behavioral ramifications.” Theories like what happened to JFK and Princess Diana to 9/11 or the Flat Earth theory.
However, Joseph noted that conspiracies about climate change are having negative real-life consequences. Though that doesn’t mean that all of the debate about the topic is focused just on conspiracy theories themselves.
“In fact, the most conspiratorial claim about climate change may be that ‘big oil’ companies, like ‘big tobacco’ decades before, know that climate change is real and is caused by human CO2 production, but that they’re purposely claiming otherwise and putting out misinformation to the contrary that refutes what the vast majority of climate change scientists have stated in order to protect profits from the industry,” he told Bored Panda earlier.
“Those of us who believe that conspiracy theory (remembering that some conspiracy theories are true!) argue that real-life physical actions—more so on the part of industry than individuals per se—are necessary now.”
