How To Deal With Anti Vaxxers And Conspiracy Theorists (Part Two)
Just as we practice social distancing to prevent the spread of Covid-19, we must distance ourselves from anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists too.
This is the second part of our series on psychedelics, spiritual narcissism, and vaccine resistance. Part one of this series can be read here.
by Ben Cohen
Before the advent of social media, exposure to anti-vaxx disinformation and Q-Anon type conspiracy theories was extremely limited. Traditional media channels have historically adhered to basic rules of journalism — they employ fact checkers, run with verified sources, and have strong editorial oversight. From Macalester:
In the middle of the 20th century, television network leadership believed that providing news was a public service. News wasn’t expected to make money for national broadcasters. During that time CBS, for example, built up a high-quality news division, with distinguished journalists such as Edward R. Murrow opposing McCarthyism and Walter Cronkite, who became “the most trusted man in America,” anchoring a highly respected nightly news broadcast watched by tens of millions. CBS also created foreign news bureaus around the world to inform the American public about international issues. It was referred to as the “Tiffany Network,” alluding to the perceived high quality of CBS programming during the tenure of CEO William S. Paley. Network news was something that great numbers of Americans relied upon and could share; it gave them a common set of facts upon which they could have discussions and debates.
Fast forward to 2021, and we now exist in a media landscape so splintered that most Americans live in completely separate reality bubbles. There are no common set of facts upon which we can have discussions and debates, and news is now consumed according to political preference. Traditional media still exists, but it has been warped by tribalism and a new online extremism. Fox News is now the least dangerous right wing media propaganda outlet on television. NewsMax and OAN outflank them with a constant stream of conspiracy theories and pro-Trump propaganda.
The internet makes things worse
This extremist shift can be directly traced to the emergence of clickbait news designed to game social media algorithms online. As Julia Nee from USCD writes:
Clickbait is used to make fake news go viral. This can lead to misinformation, confusion, and can potentially influence popular perception on a specific issue. New studies also show that fake news not only leads people to believe false accusations but also makes individuals less likely to consume or accept information. This presents a unique issue, as audiences are made increasingly unlikely to believe information whether it be fake or trustworthy, creating an uninformed society.
In this new media environment, disinformation often spreads far faster than actual news. Why? Because most people are completely unaware of how news should be reported, and are thus more vulnerable to fake stories with shocking headlines.
A study from MIT found that:
False news spreads more rapidly on the social network Twitter than real news does — and by a substantial margin.
“We found that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude,” says Sinan Aral, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the findings….
Moreover, the scholars found, the spread of false information is essentially not due to bots that are programmed to disseminate inaccurate stories. Instead, false news speeds faster around Twitter due to people retweeting inaccurate news items.
During the pandemic, conspiracy theories have become almost impossible to contain, and anti vaxx disinformation one of the biggest threats to our ability to stop the spread of Covid-19.
Individuals in New Age and far right communities who once existed in relative obscurity have almost unlimited capacity to spread their propaganda and disinformation. As a terrifying study recent showed: “Just 12 people are responsible for the vast majority of Covid-19 anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories”.
This “disinformation dozen” have a combined following of roughly 59 million people sharing and promoting their conspiracy theories. Predictably, the results have been disastrous. Anti-vaxxers have discovered an immensely lucrative industry peddling disinformation online, and people are dying because of it.
The origins of a conspiracy theorist
I have found through experience that it is almost impossible to change a conspiracy theorist’s mind. Just as Trump supporters are basically unreachable, so too are the anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers. Hospitals are jammed with ardent Covid skeptics, many of whom won’t even accept they have Covid despite being put on oxygen and pumped full of steroids to stop their lungs from collapsing. Some even refuse to believe it right up until death.
New Agers in the spiritual community are particularly difficult to persuade because so many lack critical thinking in the first place. Their psychological vulnerability also means they almost need to have a dark, nefarious force to fight against. Rather than accept the messy reality and uncertainty of a global pandemic, an orchestrated conspiracy of evil technocrats and greedy pharmacists is far easier to comprehend.
In an interview with the American Psychological Association, Karen Douglas, PhD, of the University of Kent in England says people are drawn to conspiracy theories due to three main psychological motives - the epistemic, existential and social. The first is a desire for knowledge and certainty. “When something major happens, when a big event happens, people naturally want to know why that happened,” Douglas told the APA. “They want an explanation and they want to know the truth. But they also want to feel certain of that truth. And some psychological evidence suggests that people are drawn to conspiracy theories when they do feel uncertain either in specific situations or more generally.”
The second are the existential motives, and they refer, as Douglas says, “To people's needs to be or to feel safe and secure in the world that they live in. And also to feel that they have some kind of power or autonomy over the things that happen to them as well.”
The third are the social motives, and “Those refer to people's desire to feel good about themselves as individuals and also feel good about themselves in terms of the groups that they belong to,” says Douglas. “They like to feel good about themselves. And potentially one way of doing that is to feel that you have access to information that other people don't necessarily have.”
I have seen this first hand in the New Age community. During the pandemic, many believe they have found a real purpose in their new role as “light workers” fighting against vaccines and Bill Gates etc. They are certain about their positions and truly believe they are engaged in a spiritual war against evil. Unfortunately this means they can no longer be reasoned with.
What to do?
Tech companies are primarily responsible for combatting disinformation and stopping the spread of conspiracy theories. They are profiting from these cottage industries and must be held accountable for it.
If you come across conspiracy theories on social media, there are also some steps you can take to limit their impact. Imran Ahmed, who runs the Center For Countering Digital Hate advises the following:
When we see anti-vaxx misinformation on social media, we must resist falling into the trap of engaging with it, however tempting it may be to point out obvious flaws and falsehoods. Engaging with misinformation online spreads it further: if we scratch the itch, we spread the disease. It is far more helpful and effective to instead share good information about vaccines from trusted sources. And when we each have our turn to be vaccinated, we should tell our friends and followers. Photos and clips posted on social media of the early recipients of vaccines encourage us all and show there is nothing to fear.
This is advice I continually have to remind myself of. You cannot win an argument against the New Age/anti-vaxx crowd, but you can limit their reach.
While it might sound horrible, it is useful to think of anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists as a sort of virus. This doesn’t mean you dehumanize them or wish them ill, but you do everything in your power to stop them from influencing others. Just as we practice social distancing to prevent the spread of Covid-19, we must also distance ourselves from anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. De-friend them on social media, flag their posts, and refuse to engage with them if they want to argue. I am still friendly with a couple of anti-vaxxers, but I don’t engage with them online and refuse to debate them in real life. You wouldn’t bother debating someone who believes the earth is flat, so why engage with someone who thinks the most scrutinized vaccines in history are part of a plan to microchip us with 5g?
When (and if) the pandemic eventually dies down, hopefully the conspiracy theories will too. But as Covid-19 continues to rage, we must fight disinformation as if our lives depended on it. Because ultimately, they do.
Colin Powell’s death has been the conspiracy theorists’ wet dream. Already, they’re out there claiming his death is proof that either the vaccines don’t work or that he really died of cancer and there’s a vast conspiracy in inflate the number of covid deaths in order to control us.
The fact that his immune system was all but destroyed by blood cancer which made particularly vulnerable to covid with or without the vaccine, doesn’t penetrate their protective shield against facts.
Excellent analysis.