The Grand Conspiracy
16th June 2023
ZMan’s weekly podcast. Highly recommended.
The funny thing about conspiracy theories is they are a fairly good measure of both social trust and trust in civic institutions. In societies with low trust and corrupt government, people tend to assume things are not as they seem. In high trust societies, people tend to accept things at face value. They also tend to accept what is told to them by the authorities, rather than assume they are lying.
Before the Russian revolution, conspiracy theories were common. Of course, lots of people were conspiring to topple the system, but people assumed that the system itself was not as it was presented. Of course, the Great Fear was a period in the French Revolution where rumors and conspiracy theories about the aristocracy ran wild, ultimately leading the storming of the Bastille.
We seem to be entering a similar phase. People are more likely to believe a rumor about Biden taking bribes than to believe anything he says. For a growing portion of the public, it is assumed that everything that comes from the regime is a lie. The use of the word “regime” is a huge change. It is a word that implies rule by men rather than rule by a system of laws, customs, and institutions.