The Illuminati, the Simpsons, platism… The true or false junior answers questions about conspiracy theories

• Then, because belief provides psychological services. We believe what we want to believe. For example, if we have an event which impacts our vision of the world, which tells us that our favorite singer is accused of the worst things, it is easier to think that it is a conspiracy against him rather than to say to ourselves that this of which he accused is true.”

Yes, believing in conspiracy theories sometimes leads to a different worldview

“Is it true that those who believe in conspiracy theories create a different vision of the world?” asks Aymen.

According to Rudy Reichstadt, there are two profiles of conspiracy theorists. On the one hand, there are people who have a “conspiracy mentality”, that is to say, they will gradually adhere to a whole series of conspiracy theories. They end up doubting everything: “We see people falling more and more into extreme beliefs like flatism, the idea that the earth is flat. No one becomes flatist overnight”.

“All the people who become platists all have the same speech. They started with several conspiracy theories. And then finally the last one on the shelf was platism.”

Rudy Reichstadt

director of Conspiracy Watch

But there are also people who will only adhere to a theory, without calling everything into question. They will choose the speech that is useful to them. Rudy Reichstadt gives an example: “There is a conspiracy theory about the death of the Polish president in 2010 in a crash in Smolensk, Russia. Polish nationalists, at least many Polish nationalists, think that it was Russia who did it, that In fact, it’s not an accident, it’s an assassination disguised as a plane crash. To believe that, you really have to already have a support structure for this conspiracy theory. , it is the idea that Poland is threatened by Russia, that Russia wants to destroy Poland And therefore the key idea that the Polish president was assassinated on the orders of the Kremlin on the orders of the Russians, can find a form of credibility there if we subscribe to that.”

This crash actually took place on April 10, 2010, due in particular to the lack of preparation of the crew who had decided to land, despite the bad weather conditions.

The Illuminati theory is a “zombie” idea

“Why do a million people still think the Illuminati rule the world?” asks Mélinee. The myth of the Illuminati refers to a secret society that existed in the 18th century. It was a group of German intellectuals who defended freedom of thought. They called themselves “the enlightened ones of Bavaria”. This organization was dissolved before the French revolution of 1789. But it was accused of being at its origin, which has been refuted by historians. And since then, theories about the enlightened, the Illuminati ruling the world, continue to circulate.

In 2019, an Ifop survey showed that 27% of French people believed that the Illuminati is a secret organization that seeks to manipulate the population. 27% of 67 million, that’s about 18 million people.

Why is this theory so attractive? ? “It’s very reassuring in a way to think that in fact the world is secretly controlled by people who know where they are going and that we are not governed by chaos and chance, explains Rudy Reichstadt. Somehow, this reduces uncertainty. And then, moreover, it is a well-known phenomenon when we are interested in beliefs, there are what we call zombie ideas. It’s like zombies, like the living dead who refuse to die. There are ideas that have been refuted 1,000 times, which have been investigated. It was proven that it was false, that it had no factual basis. And yet it continues to persist. People still believe that.”