Speaker 1: Today, we're going to be speaking with Professor Michael Gambon, who teaches
history at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, specializing in modern America. Also is author
of the forthcoming book Modern Conspiracies in America Separating Fact from Fiction. It's
out in less than two weeks. Really great to have you on. I appreciate your time.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you for having me. I really do. This is a great opportunity and
I appreciate it. Speaker 1: Yeah. So this this is such an important
topic right now in the United States of America, kind of in the era of COVID vaccines. Trump
is flat earth, the 2020 election, we could kind of go on and on and on. We've talked
quite a bit about general techniques and strategies to talk to people about beliefs that may not
be based, in fact. But I think we can all kind of feel that there's a difference between
the belief that tax cuts for the rich are good for the economy, kind of in one bucket.
And on the other side, the belief that, I don't know, there is a secret plot to create
the COVID pandemic in order to create an opportunity to vaccinate people, which will then allow
mind control. And, you know, on and on and on. We can feel that there's sort of some
difference between those two things. Can you first talk a little bit about the difference
between beliefs that might just be wrong and what we would characterize as a conspiracy
theory? Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I mean, when I started
teaching this class, I really wanted it to be a research class. I mean, how do you figure
out how to apply a basic template for logic? So what I always tell the students, I said,
you have a claim. It has to be matched with a proof, it has to be. And then we can talk
about degrees of evidence. So we just finished up Sandy Hook and Cunanan in my class. And
one of the tools that you have is if you have somebody making a claim, simply followed by
more claims with no proof in the following in the wake of that. And that's a that's a
huge flag. So and that's what you tend to always want. I tell me tune your ear to that.
You know, when you hear this kind of hopscotching ish Gallup, you know, moving along the surface
type of approach, if it has no depth and that's a problem. So we can talk about tax cuts and
economics, fine. But if you're going to claim that a microchip was in the, you know, COVID
vaccination. Show me the proof. And the other way I look at it, if you have the big claims,
the giant global conspiracies, big claim requires big proof. It's the same, you know, basically
the same idea. But it's just a bigger threshold. Speaker 1: Is there a shortcut not to changing
people's minds? It will get later to the changing of minds, but to being able to ascertain whether
you're speaking to someone who's open to revising their views?
Speaker 5: I think so. I think you start you know, I think I one of the things I said the
book is you apply the 8020 rule. I mean, you should be starting off by listening more than
talking. And I think that's a skill, unfortunately, we're losing in civil discourse. And that's
something I'm trying to teach in class, you know, to sit back and listen, because teachers
are the worst at this. We're talkers. We have captive audiences. So first thing, listen,
see where they're coming from. One of the key things you need to know is the context.
I mean, what are, you know, where are they? Who where do they live? And so on. You're
basically trying to build a a profile of the person you're talking to and just simply,
you know, you don't want to go right to a quick conclusion and dismiss them. So that's
what you're always doing in any conversation. Speaker 1: There's the other kind of side
to this, and I hesitate to ever say there's another side to things when we're really talking
about kind of one sided circumstances. But sometimes you will hear the claim from some
who assert conspiratorial beliefs that what, you just accept everything everybody tells
you. You always accept the official story. You accept what the government says you do.
I mean, medicine has been wrong, science has been wrong, governments have lied, etc.. What's
the best way to kind of handle that idea and approach that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I tell them and I I've a lot of criminal justice majors, but
I think in general treat this like you would if you're on a jury. So you're have a burden
of proof. But one thing you're never going to have is 100% certainty. So you have to
reach that level to say, is it 51% enough? Do I need more? So that's how you're measuring
this. And also, like we were just talking about this this week, evidence evolves. You
have examples where in some of these conspiracies, you're going to have revelations it might
take decades or technology will change and you'll have better ways to analyze something.
So patience is also a virtue for both of those things. And again, you're trying to teach
Americans patience. That's an ongoing enterprise. Speaker 1: Do you address the idea of sometimes
one might assert a certain belief not because they actually believe it, but because it signals
that they're part of a team. And I'll give an example of that. You know, after the 2020
election, there was polling done about, do you believe Trump won? And the numbers among
Republicans at the time were quite high. I think in the immediate aftermath it was like
57%. And that number has waned over time. But within that 57%, presumably there were
some what we might call true believers who literally believe Trump actually won. But
then there are others for whom claiming it signals support for Trump or identifies them
with the team, for lack of a better term. Where does that figure in to the studies and
the work that you do? Speaker 5: I think I've used a lot of polling
and a lot of analysis of polling, especially by a lot of named Baranski. You have, you
know, influencers. I mean, that's a new term, but you've always had people who lead opinions
because they're trusted. They have agency, they're public officials. So people tend to
rely on that and they can guide that or they can abuse it. I think Joe McCarthy is a classic
example. But one of the things that came up and going on, you know, of all the reading
I did, Wired magazine had a great story on how coming on is like an alternate reality
game. So what you have is you have a universe. You're basically it's world building, so you've
got certainty and rewards. So within that group, you have that recognition. And I think
what that lends people in very uncertain times, and this is very historical. I mean, you could
have said this in 1919 or today. It gives people an anchor to hang on to in a very difficult,
fearful, uncertain time. So whether I'm a leader or a follower, I mean, there are uses
for these things that, you know, can be manipulated. Speaker 1: Yeah. That you touched on something
which we've we've talked about before, which is if you take something like Sandy Hook as
an example or 911 maybe are good examples of this. Sometimes it seems like one of the
primary motivating factors in getting people to choose one of these assertions rather than
what we might call the official empirically based version of the story, is that the randomness
with which bad things happen in the world is extraordinarily unsettling. And so for
some folks, it's almost more pacifying to believe. It wasn't a random thing that could
have happened at any time it was planned, it was deliberate, and there's more certainty
in the world. Is that an important psychologically motivating factor for more than just a few
of these? Speaker 5: Absolutely. I use a book by Rob
Brotherton called Suspicious Minds, and he talks about the messy desk test where people
instinctively want to impose order on something that simple. But that applies to a lot of
things in life. So rather than be overwhelmed, you can you make this construct and it works
toward intellectual values. But also, you know, you could say instinct. What you might
seem is common sense. So one of the things we suspect is always threats and we tend to
associate these threats with the other. And it could, you know, usually, you know, the
brand new immigrant, I mean, that's a classic nativist go to in a lot of these conspiracies.
You saw that in 16 with the 3 million boats. It's a constant drumbeat, even during COVID.
Who's bringing COVID while these other people them. That's why when I first started the
class, I looked at the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and it's amazing how that keeps coming
back in different forms, but it's basically the same thing. That's about as old a story
as it gets. But I saw updates to this this year. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about anti-Semitism. I, as a Jewish person myself,
you know, I've been aware of anti-Semitism for as long as I can remember, being aware
of anything and a lot of the modern conspiracy theories, sometimes much more subtly than
others, go back to or have their roots in in an anti-Semitic idea. You know, the idea
of the other bringing disease, that's a classic anti-Semitic idea from, you know, 800, 900
years ago, at least globalist now often used as a sort of catchall for wealthy Jewish man.
Right. When we talk about they talk about Soros, they talk about Klaus Schwab as a big,
big one here. Can you talk a little bit about where the origins of so many of these things
stemmed from anti-Semitism and whether even some of the conspiracy theorists realize that?
Speaker 5: I don't think they do, although it's been constantly pointed out. So for Q
and on, you have, you know, the endless stories about blood drinking and child trafficking.
And I the first thing I automatically think of is the blood libel, which goes back for
centuries. So I think at the root of a lot of these conspiracies, and I think Richard
Hofstadter pointed this out really well, you've got a moral judgment that you're making. You're
posing a moral threat, not just a political or social or an economic one. So you've got
this group of identified outcasts that you're posing as a threat to the social order. And
you can go very viscerally, you know, in the case of cure with the children. So that's
a very consistent theme. The threats to children, whether it's the Middle Ages or right now.
And we can always associate that with this, you know, labeled outcast group. It keeps
reoccurring because it works. It's it's odd to see anyone's would argue against protecting
children. I mean, it's very altruistic, but it can be very easily distorted. And it is.
I saw this during the Supreme Court nomination. Speaker 1: What do you make of flat earth
surging? At a time when we have the most advanced technology we've ever had and the most sort
of empirical means of ascertaining the real shape of a planet.
Speaker 5: Well, we do we do chem trails in class, so it's kind of in the same ballpark.
One of the common themes I see in all these conspiracies is there are always complexities.
I don't know too many people who know structural engineering enough to talk about 911 or epidemiology
since 2020. So I think in all these things, what you have is like flat earth is a way
to simplify and take back an idea that experts control. And in the meantime, what you're
doing is making enormous numbers of mistakes. But you have certainty and you don't care
about the complexity. You're just basically bypassing it. I love talking about chem trails
and flat earth because my science majors lose their minds when they look at some of the
basic mistakes. But that goes back to, you know, you know, things you can look up and
assert back to the education system and, you know, competing with the ability to oversimplify.
That's that's that's kind of the tug of war you have going on with that.
Speaker 1: So now let's talk about changing minds. We've had many different conversations
with experts about how do you change minds? You know, the low hanging fruit is beating
people over the head with facts is rarely effective. Showing empathy, listening a lot,
as you point out, is effective. But still, we've not really found any significant shortcut.
I mean, oftentimes you're talking about building a relationship with someone, not even over
a period of hours, but often over days, weeks, months or whatever the case may be. Where
what is your sense of the most effective techniques to change minds?
Speaker 5: You know, well, I'm an educator, obviously, and I've been doing this for a
long time. And one of the devices I had set up was having, you know, a group of students
assert a conspiracy and a group of students debunked a conspiracy. And we're training
them in basic logic facts, but also in civil discourse. So in combination, that's where
I have some hope, because that's the thing you don't have really online. You have, you
know, threads where the insults break out in seconds. And that's not the way that should
work. I mean, the face to face version of this is the better way because, you know,
outside the Internet, that's the way people used to debate. You can look somebody in the
eye. I think it's a very hard thing to do. I think one of the things that struck me about
the recent past shows with a sense of humor, you don't take themselves too seriously, are
very effective. That's what Jon Stewart proved years ago. John Oliver, does that still I
mean, you can you can say that stuff with a smile on your face and not the dark implications
of disagreement. So part of its method, part of its structure, I'm going to keep working
away at it as long as I'm teaching, which is going to be for more years than now. So
we'll see. Speaker 1: When it comes to like assessing
the I mean, to use the word danger, but maybe it's not actually the right word. But when
it comes to assessing the danger of widespread belief of a particular conspiracy theory,
I think many of us can understand how, at least in a direct sense, there are some conspiracy
theories, like, for example, the comet ping pong thing that led to an actual shooting,
whereas for many of us we say flat earth, it's comparatively more benign. Some experts
we've interviewed say that's true, and yet it's rare that someone believes only one of
these things and flat earth links to something else, and it links to anti-Semitism and all
these different things. So where let's try to put together sort of a theory of this.
We can understand the differences between the immediate impacts of some of these conspiracy
theories, but how do we evaluate them on some kind of spectrum?
Speaker 5: I think one of the things I noticed with Q and on was that it was early on dismissed
as lone actors on the fringe. And I think what obviously January 6th proved a lot of
that wrong. The same systems where these beliefs can overlap and combine, you know, with whatever
media platform you have, they're also the same places that these threads can organize
themselves. And that's a huge concern because you can't really shut down social media. It's
like playing electronic Whac-A-Mole. You can ban somebody from a platform. They'll just
moved to another one. So I I'm really concerned after I'm sorry, after January 6th, when it
comes to coordinating, acting, people will move on their convictions. And like you mentioned
in the polling, these aren't small numbers of people. Even if you take the tiniest percentage,
you still have a lot of people willing to act on what they're doing. And that really
concerns me because there's you know, the treatment of this is almost like a crusade.
So in my own classroom or, you know, I'm in I actually am an election worker. I'll be
at the polls in a two weeks. I'm constantly worried about somebody showing up, you know,
to try to make sure that the election's not stolen. I've been asked that question dozens
of times in two years. So I do have concerns. Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about social
media in the book. Tech Napoli Neil Postman wrote that there's a sort of naivete in thinking
that with any platform or technology, you can eliminate any of the bad uses of it and
only be left with the sort of good. And I'm oversimplifying, but the idea that a platform,
a technology comes with good and bad. And the question is finding a balance of sort
of regulation and education that will maximize the good and minimize the bad. We can think
about lots of great things about social media, and also it has made the spread of conspiracy
theories and false beliefs rampant like wildfire. What should be a regulatory framework for
some of these platforms? Speaker 5: Well, that's a big that's a big
question. So best example I have online is a website called Medibank, which has moderated
conversations. They do have standards and it works. But how far that could be extended
and spread throughout the entire Internet. You know, that's that's the problem. And I
think you pointed out, I mean, where these things might appear in places you would have
never suspected. The natural parenting community in Q and I mean, no one saw that, although
you could see the elements after the fact. So it's a it's a very hard thing to talk about
because the more you crackdown on free speech, the more that you're going to have the reaction.
And I think it becomes self-defeating after a point. I'm back to trying to, you know,
the education part before they log on. I mean, that's that's where I'm looking at that.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, for me, the greatest immunize are to people falling for this stuff
is you start teaching critical thinking and media literacy probably at age 11 or something
like that. Speaker 5: Right. Well, and judging by the
that this course has changed since I started, you know, back in 2016, I had 25 students.
Right now I have 145. Wow. So I this think it fills in within a couple of days every
time I run it. And I've run multiple sections now. So it might be like a factory for a reason.
And rational thinking, I hope. Speaker 1: Right. That's the dream. And the
book is forthcoming in less than two weeks. It's modern conspiracies in America separating
fact from fiction. I've preordered it on Amazon already. I encourage the audience to do the
same. We've been speaking with the book's author, Professor Michael Gambon. Really appreciate
your time today. Speaker 5: And this was a treat, I got to
tell you. Thank you.