Reflections on Conspiracy Theories

I am being exposed to a lot of conspiracy theories these days via a Facebook friend.  Many of them I had heard of at least in very broad outline; others belong to a general type of conspiracism I had heard before without hearing the particular theory.  My friend is a conspiracy omnivore and posts all types of conspiracy theories, left and right.  What is striking is how arbitrary the distinction between a left wing conspiracy theory and a right wing conspiracy theory can be, and how easily one side can pick up ideas from the other.

Consider the following:

Chemtrails are an issue mostly on the left.
Gold buggery is generally property of the right.
9-11 trutherism originated on the left, but the right wing has picked it up.
Belief in the Illuminati is right wing.
But David Icke's belief in shape shifting underground lizards (no, seriously!) is left wing.
And both side have anti-vaccination movements.

As I struggle to make some sense of the whole thing, I can identify certain patterns that can predict how a certain conspiracy will originate on one side or the other.

Both side distrust government.  The number of followers in distrust ebbs and flows with which party holds the White House, but some hard liners will distrust regardless.  The right wing is more likely to distrust government exercising "mommy" functions.  Both distrust "daddy" functions.

Both sides distrust large corporations.  Left wingers focus particularly on extraction and other things that damage the environment.  Right wingers focus especially on banking, although both sides distrust banks.  Distrust of banks is apparently a right wing tradition dating back at least to the 19th Century.  Gold bugs are people trying to end the power of banks.

Concern for the environment is left wing.  Right wingers treat almost any concern over the environment as sinister.  Maybe the accounts for gold buggery being mostly property of the right -- gold mining does terrible things to the environment.  It certainly explains why fear of chemtrails is lefty.

Lefties are much more likely to be back-to-nature and distrustful of technology, and more likely to believe that going back to nature will fix everything.  Presumably that explains the left wing anti-vax movement -- vaccines are unnatural after all, and made by pharmaceutical corporations.  I can only assume the right wing anti-vax movement is mostly because government seeks to mandate vaccines.

Righties are much more likely to distrust any sort of international cooperation and see it as a threat to national sovereignty.  Anything that involves the UN is automatically evil in hard right eyes.  (To be fair, right wingers, in addition to being fierce in defense of our own sovereignty, support the right of other countries to defend their sovereignty as well).

Righties are more likely to be survivalists and reach for their guns than lefties.  Right wing conspiracism has a way of assuming Mad Max.  It is often hard to tell whether they fear Mad Max but believe that it is inevitable, or whether they really want a Mad Max world.

Righties are much, much more traditional in their religion than lefties.  That somewhat explains the Illuminati.  The Illuminati really did exist in 18th Century Bavaria as an offshoot of the Masons and really did challenge traditional religion.  18th Century conservatives sometimes blamed them for the French Revolution.  Today's John Birch Society types just haven't let go.  David Icke, by contrast, is the founder of a sort-of religion that is, to put it mildly, non-traditional and therefore inherently left wing.

Both sides have strong off-the-grid movements.  On the left, it is usually an environmentalist, back-to-nature, anti-technology movement.  On the right, it is preparation for Mad Max.  One saw the difference is Y2K approached in 1999.  Hard core Y2K activists were people who expected the whole modern technology to crash and claimed to fear it, but seemed strangely enthusiastic.  On the left, people hoped for back-to-nature communitarianism.  On the right, people prepared for Mad Max.

Oh, yes.  And although conspiracy theories exist on both sides of the divide, the right wing conspiracy community is larger.  The overall pull is to the right.  That, too, can be seen on Facebook.