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Part 1 is available here and Part 2 here.

To demonstrate the flawed reasoning behind the conspiracist worldview, I’m going to compare two very similar conspiracy theories. The first is one which I believe has a substantial amount of evidence suggesting it is true and the second is one which I consider baseless. I will use the framework which I’ve outlined here to illustrate why I believe one of these theories is likely true and the other is almost certainly false.

The first theory is the conspiracy surrounding Jeffery Epstein. This is the theory that Epstein was running a global child trafficking racket patronized by high-ranking politicians and world-famous celebrities. Jeffery Epstein, who was Jewish and had strong ties to the State of Israel, used the patronage of these influential individuals as a means of blackmail in order to get them to do the bidding of the Zionist lobby and advance the interests of the organized Jewish community around the world. This conspiracy theory is confirmed to have been true. There is overwhelming evidence to verify it.

Now there’s the issue of Jeffery Epstein’s death. Epstein died in prison in August, 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. In the lead up to Epstein’s apparent suicide, he was removed from suicide watch, his cellmate was transferred out of the cell, the guards did not perform their routine check, and the cameras outside his cell allegedly malfunctioned. Following his death, his body was removed from the prison against protocol, and it was not photographed in the cell upon discovery. His death was ruled a suicide via hanging, but some experts stated it was more consistent with a homicide via strangulation.

The likelihood of each of these procedural errors occurring in isolation is not very high, more so considering how high-profile a prisoner Epstein was. The unlikelihood of the official story is greatly compounded by the fact that they all are alleged to have occurred in unison with one another. Furthermore, the nature of the errors not only provided the opportunity for a suicide but also provided the opportunity for a homicide which could be easily staged as a suicide. The fact that huge swaths of the American political class was involved with Epstein and a concerted effort was made to brush the scandal under the rug gave them a strong motive to kill him. The fact that they were the ones entrusted with his imprisonment meant that they had the capability. While I can’t say for certain what happened, on the balance of evidence, it is more likely that Epstein was killed in an attempt to bury the scandal rather than him having killed himself in my estimation.

Now let’s compare the conspiracy theory that Epstein was killed as a coverup to a conspiracy theory surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The official story of Charlie Kirk’s death is that he was shot and killed by Tyler James Robinson, a 22-year-old homosexual with far-Left political views at a campus debate event at Utah Valley University. One of the most popular conspiracy theories which circulated online following Kirk’s assassination was that Israel orchestrated it in order to stop Kirk, as an influential conservative youth leader, from turning against the Zionist lobby. I’ll now compare the evidence behind this theory and the official story.

Robinson was in a homosexual relationship with a transgender individual and had been radicalized to the Left in the years preceding the assassination. He had made statements condemning Charlie Kirk, in particular his opposition to transgenderism, allegedly stating “I had enough of his hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Robinson was captured on CCTV at the campus, the rifle used to kill Kirk had Robinson’s DNA on it and was owned by his grandfather, and the shell casings had Antifa slogans written on them. Robinson later confessed to committing the crime to his lover, users on Discord, and his family. His father turned him in to the police.

The conspiracy theory that Israel was behind Kirk’s assassination is centered on some text messages which he had sent expressing frustration with Jewish doners and hinting that he was reneging on his support for Israel. However, what hard evidence is there linking Israel to the assassination itself? If we can disqualify illusory apparitions which came to Candace Owens in a dream, absolutely nothing. Robinson had a clear motive, he is implicated by overwhelming evidence, neither him nor his family are claiming he was framed, and there is absolutely nothing linking Robinson to Israel. Furthermore, none of the motives alleged by conspiracists have materialized. The trend of conservative youth turning against Israel has steadily continued and Kirk’s death had no impact on that whatsoever.

It’s questionable if Israel ever even had a motive to kill Kirk. He had been an ardent supporter of Israel for his entire career up until a short time before his death. He was extremely late to the widespread trend on the Right of turning against the Zionist lobby. Robinson himself had a much clearer motive for killing Kirk than Israel. It also must be noted that simply being able to imagine a hypothetical motive doesn’t constitute concrete evidence. An ex-girlfriend who Kirk had in high school would also have hypothetically had a motive to kill him. That doesn’t represent undeniable proof that she must have been involved in his death.

The conspiracy theory that Israel was behind Charlie Kirk’s death is a result of the rise of both conspiracism on the Right following Covid and the critique of the Zionist lobby following October 7th, 2023. While skepticism of official narratives during Covid and criticism of Israel during the past few years were certainly warranted, this became the lens through which segments of the Right began to interpret every single event in the world, even when it wasn’t appropriate. The theory isn’t a result of an objective analysis of evidence, but of selectively construing minor details to form a narrative to reaffirm their preconceived conspiracist position while ignoring the most significant facts. More to the point, the same people who pushed this conspiracy theory that Israel killed Charlie Kirk would’ve called him an Israel shill the day before he was murdered. They just jumped onto this conspiracy theory as a means of cramming the event into a framing which reaffirmed their preexisting beliefs.

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Conspiracism is not only an inaccurate and irrational worldview, but it also renders its adherents utterly useless in service of whatever political cause they support. I’ll use the conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of Charlie Kirk to illustrate why. As stated earlier, I believe that overwhelming evidence shows that Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk and was motivated by anti-fascism. He is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt and should be convicted of the crime. Now let’s imagine that I didn’t care about the truth and only cared about what was expedient for me politically. As a Right-winger myself, I’ll compare the political implications of the official story with the conspiracy.

Under the official narrative, the murder of Charlie Kirk serves as the greatest moral indictment against the anti-fascist Left in our lifetimes. In the postwar era, the ideology of anti-fascism (which should more accurately be called anti-whiteism) has been used to justify mass third-world immigration, anti-white discrimination, civilizational demoralization, and more. All of this was possible because the postwar narrative established this set of beliefs as morally just. As a single event, the brutal murder of a peaceful political activist by a far-Left extremist at a university caught on camera for the whole world to see constitutes the biggest blow to the moral legitimacy of this ideology since WWII. That narrative grants the Right enormous political capital.

In contrast, not only do I believe the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind it to be factually incorrect, but it’s also much less useful for the Right politically. Sympathy for Israel among Westerners is plummeting on both the Right and the Left and there already exists a mountain of ammunition available to indict Israel. There’s the Epstein scandal, the War in Gaza, the War in Iran, the conflict of interest which the Zionist lobby fosters, the hypocrisy of supporting one set of policies for Israel and the opposite for Western countries, and more. Israel doesn’t need to have assassinated Charlie Kirk to convince one that their influence is hostile. Delegitimizing the anti-fascist Left is a much larger hurdle at this point in time. That job is pretty much done with Israel.

We can also contrast the actions in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination of those who believed the official, and in my view correct, narrative and those who believed the conspiracist narrative. The response of those who saw this as an act of far-Left terrorism was to pressure institutions to terminate those who had openly celebrated Kirk’s murder. They were able to get radical Leftists removed from positions of authority. That was a politically effective move. What did the conspiracists do? They spent months writing fanfictions on social media about why Israel wanted Charlie Kirk dead and poured all their attention into a drawn-out Right-wing podcaster soap opera, letting the guilty enemy faction off the hook. The conspiracists achieved nothing other than lining Candace Owens’ pockets. The way the Right squandered the opportunity which presented itself following Charlie Kirk’s murder perfectly illustrates how toxic conspiracism is for any political movement.

I’ll now go over several general ways in which conspiracism is counterproductive to whatever political cause one supports. The first issue is that conspiracism makes a god out of one’s enemies. Conspiracists interpret their ideologically chosen boogieman as an all-powerful and ever-present force, planning out and bringing about every single development in the world. They assign far too much agency to their political opponents, vastly overstating their power and competence. In doing so, they abdicate any agency on their own part, inculcating a mentality of impotent, black-pilled nihilism in themselves. Afterall, if your enemies have absolute and total control over everything, why put any effort at all into influencing political change?

Conspiracism not only fosters laziness and ineptitude in those who adopt it as a worldview, but it also turns them into anti-social, paranoid, schizophrenics who actively hinder any kind of political sphere they’re associated with. According to conspiracists, if something happens, it must be part of the grand conspiracy. Therefore, if anyone ostensibly on their side ever has an ounce of success, they’ll denounce said individual as a “fed” or “controlled opposition,” or accuse them of unconsciously doing the bidding of the conspirators. It happened, so it must have been allowed to happen to serve the purpose of the grand conspiracy. Such paranoia makes any tangible political action such as running for office, fundraising, or starting an organization impossible because it is always either preemptively attacked as a “psy-op” or resigned to inevitable failure.

The passive manner in which conspiracists engage with politics further highlights the uselessness of such a lazy, paranoid, and delusional mentality. The output of conspiracist voices like Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Candace Owens amounts to nothing more than an endless tide of podcasts on how amorphous malignant forces are steering the world toward some vague nefarious agenda. Believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory had the mantra “trust the plan,” claiming that Donald Trump had some ingenious scheme in place to overthrow the satanic pedo elites and all they had to do was grab their popcorn and watch it unfold on BitChute. Conspiracism doesn’t lend itself to anything actionable. It turns politics into nothing more than an entertainment product for followers to passively consume while never having to leave their couches.

Conspiracism also warps one’s priorities from tangible political goals to the belief in conspiracies as the end goal in and of itself. This mindset reorients one’s efforts from attaining certain political ends towards forming and disseminating conspiracy theories for their own sake. I guarantee there are people reading this who, while agreeing with me on the vast majority of political issues, are fuming at the fact that I don’t believe in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion or that the Covid vaccine implanted microchips into one’s body. For conspiracists, not subscribing to their centuries-long, pre-planned, grand conspiratorial narrative to explain the world is a much greater point of contention and cause for a greater degree of ire than whatever one’s fundamental political beliefs are.

Let’s take 9/11 for example, an event surrounded by countless conspiracy theories. I am inclined to believe the official narrative on 9/11, but admittedly, I haven’t spent an enormous amount of time looking into the conspiracy theories. I won’t dismiss the possibility of a conspiracy or claim that I know for certain what happened. I’m not one to simply choose to believe whatever affirms my preconceived political beliefs, so in order to imbibe one of the conspiracies, I’d need to be convinced on balance of evidence that it was true. However, I know that I’d need to delve into an ocean of conspiratorial material surrounding 9/11 and likewise give the other ocean of material refuting the conspiracies an equal shake in order to do that. I question whether doing so is even worth it.

Rather than asking if 9/11 was a conspiracy or not, let’s look at the tangible impact it had as an event. There were three major effects in my estimation. Firstly, 9/11 justified the vast expansion of the surveillance state with legislation like the Patriot Act in the US and similar legislation elsewhere. Secondly, it served as a casus belli for neoconservative wars in the Middle East such as the Afghanistan War and Iraq War which Israel was the primary beneficiary of. Thirdly, despite them being the perpetrators, it established Muslims as “victims” of our supposed xenophobia, popularizing the term “Islamophobia” which was later used to quash arguments against Islamic immigration.

My position on these issues is that I’m opposed to increased state surveillance, pro-Zionist wars, and Islamic immigration to the West. As an individual with a finite amount of time and energy, what would be a more productive use of my efforts? Should I spend years vigorously analyzing and scrutinizing every aspect of 9/11 or should I spend that effort opposing these three agendas in the present day? Even if I were convinced of a conspiracy theory, it wouldn’t change my position on these three concrete issues, so I don’t believe it is worth the opportunity cost. I’m content with just saying that I don’t know for certain what really happened on 9/11, and that regardless of what happened, I feel it was used to advance harmful agendas. The same approach should be applied to any conspiracy theory.

While conspiracies exist in our world, if one makes the belief in conspiracies the end goal of their intellectual pursuits, they have lost the plot. Conspiracism does not make one more “based,” conscious of the world around them, or enlightened to the truth. Taken to its conclusion, it turns them into an anti-social basket case screaming about how the WEF is controlling their toaster. Despite its adherents proclaiming skepticism and a desire for truth, in reality, they hold a deeply flawed worldview. It’s one which is predicated on an incorrect understanding of how power works, littered with logical errors and biases, and antithetical to whatever it is they hope to achieve in the real world.