Broken Trust

Part of this is about trust — or, rather, all the ways that trust has been broken. Can we believe the media when the news often feels so biased?

I used to kind of figure that the New York Times was pretty reliable. Sure, they didn’t seem to love Israel or the frum Jewish community, but they did rigorously fact check and wouldn’t publish absolute lies, would they? But when the bombshell anti-yeshivah education pieces came out, there was so much in them that was easily disproven. Their reports one night of a massive hospital bombing in Gaza, two weeks after October 7, wound up being reports of a damaged parking lot when the sun came out. And a recent front-page piece selectively cropped a healthy Gazan toddler from a provocative photo of a woman with a sick baby.

And even if we set aside the unsurprising bias against frum people and Israel, we know now that there was an active attempt to cover up President Biden’s mental decline during the 2024 election. Plenty of readers no longer trust newspapers.

And after Covid, many of them don’t trust their doctors or politicians either. An emerging pandemic meant that the science was ever-shifting, that nothing had really been fully established as fact, and that our marching orders each day changed drastically. Avoid surfaces! Use Purell! No, wear a mask! Stop wearing a mask — doctors need those! Stay inside. Spend time outside. If you’ve tested positive, quarantine. If you’re still testing positive, you’re fine.

I get it. We were all scrambling back then. But something shattered irrevocably there, and it’s part of why conspiracy theories are taking off at a breakneck pace these days.

The Reasoning Behind It

In an Emory University study published by the American Psychological Association, researchers found that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories because of a combination of personality traits and motivations. People prone to trusting their intuition first might believe something because it feels right, regardless of what the research shows.

Others might feel resentment or superiority toward others. Studies show that conspiracy theorists often have a certain level of overconfidence in their intelligence — necessary when you need to flout commonly held beliefs. They know a secret. Only a select few are enlightened enough to believe it. Everyone else? Sheep, lumbering along to their destruction.

Take Rachel and her ex-husband Yanky, whose staunch belief in conspiracy theories ultimately led to the dissolution of their marriage. From their first date, Rachel admired Yanky for his intelligence. He was well-read and seemed to have an answer for everything. He didn’t trust the government, and he was sure that 9/11 was an inside job. “Don’t you ever let anyone put a needle into you,” he’d warn their kids, and didn’t allow them to be vaccinated. He accompanied Rachel to pediatrician appointments (Rachel would make another appointment to secretly vaccinate them). Yanky insisted that they only drink bottled water, because he was sure that the fluoride in tap water was used to make people more compliant. He was sure that mass shootings were generally faked in order to push gun control, and he kept his own gun on a high shelf in a closet.

“He was just… always aware of everything. He had his finger on the pulse of current events,” Rachel says.

“Our Shabbos table was a constant loop of these things. I stopped inviting friends whose husbands didn’t buy into the same theories because things would get too heated, too intense.”

Yanky was a caring father, but as time passed, Rachel found that his paranoia was hurting the family. Her boys would parrot their father’s worldview in school, but they struggled to make friends and would get into trouble. Several of their children had severe anxiety and insomnia, which Rachel blamed on their uncertainty about the world.

“When you’re told all the time that you can’t trust any authorities, it creates this uncertainty about the world around you. You feel like you can’t believe in anyone or anything, even your rebbeim and teachers.” Yanky careened to extremes, too, dismissing rabbanim as tools of askanim and Rachel’s work restrictions as tyrannical.

“There was also this feeling of superiority there,” she tells me. “Like, he knew better than anyone. I could never win an argument. And I didn’t feel like he respected me anymore because I didn’t believe all the same things.”

Eventually, the couple divorced. Rachel now has primary custody of the children, though she worries about the impact that Yanky’s beliefs still hold on them. But she admits that after all those years of living with him, she does share some of his theories. “I just don’t talk about them. People will think I’m crazy, and those theories weren’t good for the kids. But when you think about it, there are some things that just don’t add up.”

For a conspiracy theorist, the facts are irrelevant, batted aside as easily as you might bat aside your daughter’s increasingly whiny reasons why she needs another sleepover this Shabbos. Once you’ve made a decision, all arguments are just proof. This is similar to the IKEA effect, which speculates that consumers are more likely to overvalue their own creations. Even though it’s my husband who usually takes care of these things, I once ordered a Billy all by myself, drove out to IKEA to pick it up and bring it to my car, and then spent a summer Friday afternoon putting together the bookcase, step by step by step. The pride I feel when I see that bookcase is similar to the pride I feel when I watch my children excel at something. That’s my baby. I made that bookcase. It was just a bunch of pieces of wood before it met me!

Conspiracy theories? You have to work at those. Much like me on that Friday afternoon, armed with only store-supplied dowels, screws, and a pencil, conspiracy theorists dive into rabbit holes that seem to go deeper and deeper as time passes.

A study by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam also showed that conspiracy theorists are better at seeing meaningful shapes in chaotic splatter paintings. They have a certain gift for finding connections and patterns where none exist, and haven’t necessarily developed the critical thinking skills that help counter those connections.

At the same time, they are often anxious and suffer from a sense that they lack control. People just want to make sense of the world, and when official explanations don’t pass muster, they turn to the fantastical world of conspiracy theories.

Mass Panic

While conspiracy theories have amplified in the modern era, the rapid spread of misinformation and false accusations aren’t a new phenomenon. Just think of medieval witch hunts, where hysteria over a woman’s socially awkward behavior could lead to a mass panic that she was dabbling with the devil.

Or a more modern instance: In 1980, Canadian psychologist Lawrence Pazder published a book called Michelle Remembers, in which his patient (and later, wife) recounted alleged suppressed memories of satanic ritual abuse that happened to her when she was five… in the hands of devil worshipers.

The world flew into a panic. The idea that there were evil people targeting children hit all the right notes to set off a conspiracy theory — kids were at risk, this was religious in origin, and it could be happening right under your nose. Over the next decade, up to a hundred daycares were accused in engaging in this ritual abuse.

In the most famous case, a preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, was accused of abusing hundreds of children. The police got involved and began interviewing children, but their questions were leading and suggestive.  — and they were asking them of preschoolers who are not exactly reliable reporters. The allegations were horrifying.

The daycare workers were charged with 321 counts of child abuse. The media reported uncritically, accepting the prosecution’s allegations without any skepticism. The preschool shut down, though not a single worker was ever found guilty of a crime.

Where does this kind of massive, far-reaching panic come from? In every conspiracy theory, there’s a kernel of truth. Real-life concerns that can grow into something entirely fictional. The 1970s were littered with incidents of cults cropping up all across the Western world. Dairy companies were putting images of missing children on milk cartons, which gave the impression of an epidemic in child kidnappings. Where were all these children? Michelle Remembers offered a simple answer: They were being kidnapped by cults.

The Modern Era

Today, in a world where social media algorithms and chats can create bubbles — where you can be surrounded by hundreds of people who all espouse the exact same thing and never see a single dissenting opinion — it’s easier than ever to buy into conspiracy theories.

When I reach out to Ariella*, an outspoken relative who was a strong proponent of the January 6 attack on the United States Capitol, she’s puzzled why I’m asking her. “It isn’t a conspiracy theory that the election was stolen. It’s been proven true.” She sends me an article backing up her claims.

When I send back a few articles that I find poking holes in hers, she tells me that they’re from discredited media that she doesn’t read. “I get most of my news from WhatsApp and Facebook now, where I know and trust the people who are posting it.”

She tells me that I need to start fact-checking if I’m going to write for a magazine. Then again, she says, “Follow the money. Mishpacha isn’t covering an issue unless they’re being paid for it.”

My friend Pessie is strongly against vaccinating her children. And she isn’t plucking these ideas out of nowhere. She’s done exhaustive research, even if much of it contradicts the research that I’ve done. In almost every case, you can find something that will confirm your biases.

There’s also the fact that in the 21st century, we’re inundated by constant, endless news. What used to be a once-a-day news update has been transformed to a 24-hour never-ending news cycle. And happy, heartwarming stories don’t sell subscriptions or earn followers. So the media leans toward alarming stories, exaggerated and dragged out for days and weeks and months. This leaves people terrified, searching for patterns to make sense of all the darkness that seems to lurk around every corner.

In the middle of Covid, my community got one of those popular WhatsApp news accounts. Suddenly, it felt like no one in the entire neighborhood was safe. There were so many accidents! Rachmana litzlan, what would happen next? Why had people gone so off the rails? It must be Covid, we decided, breaking down the social fabric.

No. The accidents had always been happening. Most were minor fender-benders, a major inconvenience for the drivers but nothing headline-worthy. But now, someone was keeping track of them. Now, it felt as though they were a nonstop nightmare.

Breaking the Cycle

How do we break out of this conspiracy theory mindset? It’s not easy. Once you’re already in it — or someone you love is deep in there — getting out is next to impossible. It’s better to prevent anyone from falling into the rabbit hole in the first place.

Scientists have found that beyond prevention, the best way to fight conspiracy theories is to learn critical thinking skills. (Great news for English teachers.) Once theorists understand common human mistakes in perception and logic, they do believe fewer conspiracy beliefs.

We also need to remember that correlation doesn’t mean causation. Two things happening simultaneously doesn’t mean that one caused the other. I like to remind my students that studies show that every single person who ate carrots in 1861 is dead now. (They usually gasp in horror, promise to tell their mothers, then realize. Many of them still promise to tell their mothers.)

Another point, one that always feels most compelling to me: If conspiracy theories are about a lack of faith — in officials, in the government and science and the media — then the best cure for them isn’t to find sinister forces at work. It’s to stop looking for underground tunnels and raise your eyes upward, to put your trust in a Higher Power instead. To understand that the things we can’t explain are unknowable because we aren’t meant to grasp them, that there is strength and security in accepting that Hashem is pulling the strings here.

That real knowledge is contained in multitudes within the Torah, and that its truth is the only one that matters. That we are being reminded, over and over, that we can’t always trust the world around us, but we can count on our rabbanim and talmidei chachamim to make sense of it.

That, and the Jewish space lasers.

How conspiratorial are you?

Do you believe these statements? Give yourself 1 point for every maybe and 2 points for every yes.

• Elections are secretly rigged by hidden powers behind the government.
• Big Pharma suppresses natural cures for cancer and other diseases.
• The JFK assassination was a government job and coverup.
• 5G causes illness and is used for mass surveillance.
• The food industry engineers foods to cause cravings or obesity.
• The moon landing was faked in a NASA studio.
• Smartphones are listening to you even when they’re switched off.
• COVID-19 was engineered for profit or control.
• Vaccines can cause autism.
• Global warming is exaggerated by governments and environmental groups to limit personal freedoms.
• Fluoride in water lowers IQ or is used for mind control.
• The US faked weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to justify the war.
• Condensation trails are actual chemicals released for behavior control.
• The diamond industry artificially creates scarcity and value.
• AI is already controlling major corporations and governments.

SCORE

0-5: Blissful Believer. You are confident and secure in the world as you’re told it is. You’re beatifically unbothered, happy to trust the media, the government, and your doctors, and to take their advice at face value.

6-15: Seasoned Skeptic. You’re not going to jump at every theory, but you might pull out your magnifying glass occasionally and inspect assumptions with a fresh eye. You don’t consider yourself a conspiracy theorist, but you’re not going to dismiss every theory without further examination.

16-22: Thread Tracker. You’re pretty sure that the media is lying to you and you don’t trust the government at all, but you like to think that you’re generally reasonable. You’re just asking questions. A lot of them.

23-30: Pattern Prophet. Trust no one. Believe nothing except what you feel in your heart to be true. You’re living on a different wavelength, deep in an echo chamber where every extreme is a possibility. But hey — isn’t everyone?

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 972)