PRESS EDITORIAL: Conspiracy nation

No one knows how next week’s election will turn out. Polls can only provide snapshots of preferences for candidates before votes are counted. Pundits can only guess. Yet one aspect of the election outcome is already certain: It will be influenced to some degree by voters in the thrall of untruths ranging from false information that resembles fact to conspiracy theories that are obviously absurd yet dangerous.

America has become conspiracy nation.

This country has always had snake oil salesmen peddling false information, but they were weak voices trying to be heard from the margins of society. Now they have a microphone that can not only be heard everywhere but, in the minds of the gullible at least, confers instant credibility. That microphone is social media.

Remember when Facebook was that delightful invention that made it easy and fun to stay in touch with friends and family and post heart-warming or funny stories and photos? Many people still use it for that, of course, but others wield it as a tool to mislead and corrupt.

To many followers of Facebook and similar platforms, Covid-19 is not an existential threat to mankind, but a hoax fabricated to advance one political view or another. (Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have been blamed for this on social media.) For those who believe the virus is real, miracle cures and quack remedies abound on Facebook and Twitter, sometimes thwarting the efforts of doctors and nurses trying to help Covid patients who are obsessed by myths they confuse with fact.

The pandemic is just one of many sources of material for conspiracy theorists. Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election with conspiracy theories seeded on Facebook are well documented. Other sources have special appeal for fake information consumers of the extreme right-wing persuasion, such as those who have become adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The currently most popular QAnon theory sounds like something a disturbed comic book author would conjure in his basement and illustrate with graphically obscene drawings. The QAnon theory holds that a cabal of satan-worshipping American liberals is presiding over the torture and rape of children while harvesting and drinking their blood.

Crazy? Not to everyone. There are thousands of QAnon groups and pages on Facebook with millions of members, according to a Facebook corporate document examined by NBC news. It would be a mistake to think that the devotees of this bizarre bunk are hiding in some obscure backwater of American society. An investigative reporter for Time magazine found and interviewed a number of believers in Ozaukee County.

A particularly chilling paragraph in the Time article quotes a Port Washington woman who told the interviewer she spends much of her free time researching the pedophile cabal on the Russian search engine Yandex, is convinced it is true and that President Trump has been fighting the cabal and has even seized children’s blood on the black market. Then, according to the article, she said, “I think if Biden wins, the world is over basically. I would honestly try to leave the country. And if that wasn’t an option, I would probably take my children and sit in the garage and turn my car on and it would be over.”

Several alarmed readers brought the Time article to the attention of Ozaukee Press, one saying she reported the suicide comments to Ozaukee County Human Services.

The blood-drinking cabal may be the weirdest theory in the social media sphere, but there are runnersup. One example: A left wing group claims to have evidence that President Trump conspired with militia members to kidnap and murder Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

This obsession with imagined conspiracies is more than a curiosity of human behavior. It’s a corrosive force that threatens to undermine the foundation of the governing system that serves all Americans. An informed public that makes decisions based on proven facts and rational thinking is a requisite of democracy.

Citizens have a responsibility to endeavor to find the truth. It is not enough to base a belief on the “I saw it on Facebook” rationale. Factual information on just about any subject of conspiracy theories is readily available. The pedophile cabal conspiracy theory has been investigated and found to be utterly false by numerous respected news and law enforcement organizations. Google can find their reports in seconds.

It is not a coincidence that the rise of false information on social media has been accompanied by a decline in daily newspaper readership. Reputable newspapers exist to find the facts about subjects of importance to the public. Trained journalists labor to get to the truth, report it in news stories and have it published in print and internet editions of newspapers that are bound by the ethic to be fair and accurate and take full responsibility for what they report. When they make a mistake, they set it straight. They are accountable to their readers.

Reporters sign their names over their news stories in bylines. Newspapers identify their editors, publishers and owners in mastheads. That some consumers of “news” would rather get their information from anonymous internet trolls is both a mystery and a caution sign at election time.