Super spreaders: part four

What can we learn from former cult members and white supremacists (10 minute read)

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On Tuesday of last week, thousands of people marched through Wellington to Parliament. The exact numbers aren’t clear, but The Spinoff suggested that there were 3000-5000. Protests happen regularly in New Zealand, but this one had some unfamiliar undertones. Among the signs protesting vaccine mandates were frequent swastikas and references to Nazism, signs demanding freedom, and a noose. In the middle of all this were flags supporting Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign.

At first glance, it’s not clear why Trump flags would appear at a protest about New Zealand’s vaccine policy. A closer look at the people carrying the Trump flags doesn’t make it any clearer (take a look at the video about halfway through the article I’ve linked here). One has a t-shirt with the words “control, oppress, victimize, isolate, divide”. The words are arranged so their first letters of each spell out COVID. And another has a shirt saying “We are Q”, where the letter Q is coloured like the American flag.

It’s the letter Q that is the giveaway. The group with Trump flags are believers in QAnon – the conspiracy theory that claims, among other things, that Donald Trump is leading a secret campaign to bring down a vast network of satanic paedophiles. The presence of the Q-supporters at an anti-vaccine protest is a sign that New Zealand has not escaped the conspiracy convergence seen overseas, where people who believe that Covid-19 doesn’t exist, or isn’t dangerous, end up believing what the BBC calls “a grand conspiracy mash-up” involving Covid-19, pharmaceutical companies, 5G, Bill Gates, the United Nations and anyone to the left of Donald Trump.

For some, it appears that concern about vaccines or disbelief in official reports about Covid-19 have been a gateway to increasingly improbable beliefs. But alongside the Covid-19 denial and the conviction that Donald Trump is a saviour comes something more worrying – increasingly violent language. Te Pūnaha Matatini, the research group for complex systems, released a report this week that documented the growth in Covid-19 disinformation and violent, extremist language over the last three months in New Zealand. It drew the conclusion that Covid-19 disinformation was a “Trojan Horse” for the ideology of the American far right.

The researchers from Te Pūnaha Matatini are not the only ones to suggest a link between Covid-19 conspiracies, QAnon beliefs and the American far right. David Farrier, a New Zealand journalist working in the USA, has written about the far-right American links of some of New Zealand’s conspiracy theorists. Also on Farrier’s site, Webworm, Byron Clark has written about the New Zealand conspiracy-based talk show hosted on a platform set up by Steve Bannon (yes, Trump’s former strategist) and billionaire Guo Wengui.

New Zealand has always had far right extremists, even if they have been small in number and generally less obvious than in some other countries. But the people who are falling for Covid-19 and QAnon conspiracies, and talking about freedom in ways reminiscent of the American far right, mostly didn’t identify with far-right ideology before. They are being drawn in that direction from across the political and social spectrum, something I observed when I talked with people who had friends and family believing Covid-19 conspiracies. Farmers are being drawn in by a dislike of current government policies. Natural health enthusiasts are drawn in by suspicions about pharmaceutical companies. Libertarians are drawn in by concerns about personal choice.

The most disturbing aspect of conspiracy belief is that it can sometimes change people’s behaviour and undermine their values. In most cases that people discussed with me, there wasn’t any obvious shift in behaviour or values, but in a few cases this did happen. One person I spoke to mentioned a friend sharing material from a far-right Australian politician, something that they would never have done before. Another noted that some friends had become aggressive and threatening in the comments that they made.

When someone’s behaviour shifts in such a worrying direction, it’s understandable that friends and family may step back, out of a need to protect themselves. Sometimes, that is the right thing to do. But others are motivated to try and make a difference, and help those who have been drawn into conspiracy beliefs. So I tried to find evidence for approaches that make a difference.

One person who has researched this area is Dr Lee McIntyre. He’s a science philospher, and recently wrote a book called “How to talk to a science denier”. In the book, he talks about his conversations with people who believe that the earth is flat – and also believe that the scientific community, NASA and airline pilots are part of a vast conspiracy to deny it. So far, McIntyre hasn’t managed to convince any “Flat Earth” believers that the earth is actually round, and he says that there’s no definitive evidence for an effective approach. That’s a depressing conclusion, but he does offer some anecdotal evidence from accounts of people who previously believed conspiracies, then changed their minds.

McIntyre’s most important point from the anecdotal evidence is that, in almost every case, people who changed their minds about conspiracy theories did so through face-to-face conversations. This is quite the opposite of how many people became conspiracy theorists in the first place – there are numerous reports of people becoming conspiracy theorists based on what they read and saw online. Another important point McIntyre made was that people did change their minds on the basis of evidence, but only when that evidence was presented by someone they trusted. Evidence does matter, but it has to come from the right person.

Much of what McIntyre says is common sense – kindness, empathy and listening are important, for example, while ridiculing people doesn’t help. But he makes another point that’s worth noting – in asking someone to give up their belief in a conspiracy theory, we are asking them to give up a part of their identity. No wonder it is hard to change people’s minds.

I’ve read online accounts of people who have given up conspiracy beliefs (although not as many as McIntyre) and I can see the themes that he talks about. In one such account, a woman who previously supported Bernie Sanders for US president watched a series of videos online and started believing in QAnon. She talks about how her beliefs nearly destroyed her relationship, but how it was that relationship that eventually brought her out. It’s clear from her account that it must have been hard on her partner – he was getting advice from a therapist on how to handle the situation. But the advice worked. He was able to approach her conspiracy theory views with curiosity rather than judgement, and set boundaries so that QAnon didn’t take over the relationship. He told her that he was open to changing his mind, and asked that she give him the same. The woman said that those words were the first crack in her beliefs about QAnon. Then, as Q’s predictions failed to come true, she gradually became more sceptical. Eventually, she found her way out.

The woman’s growing scepticism as she saw reality diverging from the QAnon narrative is an example of somethiing called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort we feel when two things we know contradict each other, or when we behave in ways that are contrary to what we know – for example someone smoking when they know it is harmful. Conspiracy theories are full of contradictions, so they should provoke cognitive dissonance, but, as I talked about last week, our brains’ mental shortcuts are a powerful defence. Once we believe something, our brain notices things that support that belief and tunes out evidence that would contradict it.

The importance of cognitive dissonance in escaping conspiracy thinking is backed up by a study from researchers in the USA and Germany. They used online discussion groups devoted to QAnon to track expressions of cognitive dissonance among members of the groups. They found that those who posted messages expressing cognitive dissonance regarding QAnon afterwards showed a decrease in participation in the groups, while those who expressed belief did not. While not definitive evidence, this pattern is a useful insight into the process that people follow in realising that the vast conspiracy imagined under QAnon is not in fact true. What it doesn’t do is show how the group members reached that point of cognitive dissonance in the first place.

When I started looking into how people escaped from belief in conspiracy theories, one topic that began to appear was people escaping from cults. At first glance, belief in conspiracies and belonging to a cult seem quite different. The core of what makes a destructive cult is a pyramid-shaped authority structure, where a leader has undue influence over cult members. Conspiracy theories lack that centralised authority structure.

Nonetheless, cult experts like Dr Steven Hassan, himself a former cult member, have pointed out important similarities. Cults manipulate the thoughts and emotions of their members, and control the information that they receive. Techniques that Hassan describes as used by cults include discouraging access to non-cult media, compartmentalising information into “insider” and “outsider” knowledge, encouraging “good versus evil” and “us and them” thinking, rejection of critical analysis, and instilling fear. Hassan points out that the cult tactic of “phobia indoctrination”, where people are taught to fear things that are not harmful, is used by people promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

If believing conspiracy theories is like being in a cult, then ways of helping people to escape cults may help those who believe conspiracy theories. That is good news, because there’s more research about helping people escape cults than there is conspiracy theories. For example, in one study, former cult members cited family support as important in helping them escape. Conversations with friends and family often helped put them on the path to leaving the cult. But it’s how we have those conversations that is important. The most important thing, Hassan suggests, can be asking questions that prompt a person to remember themselves before the cult.

But if close friends and family are crucial in helping people find their way out of believing conspiracy theories, is there anything that the rest of us can do? I found the answer to that question in an unexpected place, while reading about those who had once belonged to white supremacist organisations, but had changed their minds. I was reading about white supremacists because I was thinking about the evidence connecting Covid-19 conspiracies, QAnon beliefs and the American far right. Perhaps understanding how people escape from that ideology could help those caught up in conspiracist thinking.

In some cases, for example this story from a former Klu Klux Klan member, white supremacists and neo-Nazis changed their beliefs and attitudes through family support – the same kind of process seen with former cult members. But that wasn’t always the case, especially as some came from deeply racist families, such as Derek Black, the son of a Klu Klux Klan leader. When Black attended university, one of the things that changed his mind was a group of Jewish students who befriended him. These students knew exactly who he was, but became his friend in the hope that he would come to see their humanity. Christian Picciolini, a neo-Nazi from the age of 14, had his mind changed by customers at his record store – customers who went there to talk to him for the same reason that the Jewish students befriended Black.

In the cases of Black and Picciolini, I’m struck by the immense courage of the people who befriended them. I’m not suggesting we have to do the same – that would be asking a lot. But the empathy and kindness shown by those who befriended Black and Picciolini reminded me that the way we talk and behave matters. It matters when we talk to those who believe conspiracy theories, and it matters when we talk about them. It’s understandable if we get frustrated and angry, especially at those who are taking actions likely to make a public health crisis worse than it already is, and especially when they use hate-filled rhetoric such that politicians and public health officials. But to draw people away from conspiracy beliefs, and the ideology of hate that lurks in the background, we need to resist the polarising language of the extremists ourselves.

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