When the video-sharing app TikTok blocked hashtags associated with QAnon in July 2020, it removed one of the most straightforward means for Q supporters to discover and network with their peers. Anti-fascist activists often work to get neo-Nazis banned from popular websites, because disrupting their online activities and kicking them off these sites makes it harder for fascist types to recruit. Infowars suffered a massive blow when it lost its social media profiles and, subsequently, nearly three-quarters of its traffic. A University of Cambridge study found that Trump and Brexit voters were much more likely than their opponents’ supporters to believe conspiracy theories about immigration, with nearly half of Trump and Brexit voters believing the government was hiding “the truth” about immigration.īans and moderation work-up to a point. Trump and other Western right-wing populists who won elections in the mid-2010s did so in a time of surging income inequality, accompanied by growing fears, on the right, of immigration.Īcross the pond, following a sustained disinformation campaign that maligned Muslims and immigrants, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. He rose to political prominence while pushing a conspiracy theory that falsely claimed Barack Obama, the first Black president, was not born in the United States. Trump, whose chaotic presidency was guided by some of the United States’ darkest tendences, might be seen as both a product and an accelerator of those paranoid conditions. “Specifically, the more strongly people experience such aversive emotions, the more likely it is that they assign blame for distressing events to different groups.” “Conspiracy theories are a natural reaction to social situations that elicit fear and uncertainty,” psychologist Jan-Willem van Prooijen writes. People turn to conspiracy theories in moments of instability.
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