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The Mental Chains of Conspiratorial Thinking
Chronicles ^ | November 2025 | Pedro Gonzalez

Posted on 11/28/2025 2:53:58 PM PST by Pelham

"This thinking is perhaps best represented by Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, who mix in their shows topics about aliens, the occult, and schemes of ultra-secret agencies

To Owens and Carlson’s conspiratorial minds, what officials tell us is never what actually happened. The absence of competing evidence is a point in favor of conspiracy, as are attempts to disprove it—both are seen as signs of a cover-up to suppress the truth.

The sickness of the mind that has gone mainstream on the right has its roots at least partially in QAnon, which, nearly a decade ago, was a conspiracy relegated to the political fringe. In a nutshell, it held that an invisible war was being waged behind the scenes, not just for the nation, but for the human race. QAnon’s potency stemmed from the fact that it invited believers to participate in a continuing story that unfolded online. “The audience for internet narratives doesn’t want to read, it wants to write,” Walter Kirn wrote in an essay on the genesis and nature of QAnon in Harper’s Magazine. “It doesn’t want answers provided, it wants to search for them.”

In this sense, QAnon resembled a “creepypasta”—horror fiction generated through social networks and created through a collaborative and evolving process with its readers. Participants are rewarded with bits of esoteric knowledge—glimpses of the “story” as it progresses, with their help. They are not passive consumers but active players in a living narrative, making their own contributions. This model is essentially the one that conspiracy theorists with large social media followings have adopted. You are not merely listening to conspiracy theorists rant and rave, you are being enlisted to join their side in a drama playing out within a genuine societal crisis. But it’s a crisis for which they have no real answers.

(Excerpt) Read more at chroniclesmagazine.org ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Conspiracy; History; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: burke; candace; carlson; conspiracy
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"I believe, as Edmund Burke did, “that men of intemperate minds cannot be free” because their “passions forge their fetters.” This is a core precept of conservatism in the truest sense of that abused term, and that is why conspiracism is anathema to it, as it uses passions to fetter minds. It enslaves with untruths and nonsense that ultimately cause more confusion than clarity, like siren songs encouraging people to throw their brains against the rocks. It can have no place within an American right that wishes to stand for order and, yes, that thing that has become almost comical to invoke: virtue. But it matters, even now. "
1 posted on 11/28/2025 2:53:58 PM PST by Pelham
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To: Pelham

“The right often references Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who called on us to “live not by lies.” That also means not turning a blind eye to those who have made a living by telling lies and, in turn, make others live by them.”

He has the gall to quote Solzhenitsy in order to, as it were, clinch his argument, when Sollzhenitsy spent a large part of his life exposing the communist conspiracy that took over the Russian nation and giving warning to the American nation.


2 posted on 11/28/2025 3:10:07 PM PST by odawg
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To: Pelham

In their mind, If you disagree with the hate Israel first crowd, you’re part of the conspiracy. Meanwhile Muslim nations get a preponderance of US Aid


3 posted on 11/28/2025 3:14:05 PM PST by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: Pelham

Government telling the truth vs. Conspiracy Theorists being right, isn’t even a close score.


4 posted on 11/28/2025 3:15:37 PM PST by Chipper
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To: odawg

The scales fell off my eyes with Obama’s blazingly ***fake*** birth certificate. Even the so-called conservative media ignored it.

I’ve never been the same when it comes to media, even conservative media.


5 posted on 11/28/2025 3:16:00 PM PST by wintertime ( )
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To: Pelham

Building 7 didn’t kill itself...


6 posted on 11/28/2025 3:25:12 PM PST by WinstonSmith1984 (Make 1984 fiction again.)
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To: Pelham

Old joke at this point.

Q. “What is the difference between a conspiracy theory and a conspiracy fact?”

A. “Six months.”

Lol.


7 posted on 11/28/2025 3:27:10 PM PST by cgbg (The master is nice only when the dog behaves as expected.)
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To: Pelham

The best way to avoid conspiracy thinking is to believe exactly what The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and CNN tells you.

I have family members who do this—and it works for them!

Lol.


8 posted on 11/28/2025 3:29:58 PM PST by cgbg (The master is nice only when the dog behaves as expected.)
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To: wintertime

A supposed scan of a paper document, presented in the form of a .pdf file ***with separable electronic layers like a stack of transparencies!**”.


9 posted on 11/28/2025 3:33:30 PM PST by one guy in new jersey
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To: Pelham

Edmund Burke did not walk into his classroom as an elite university freshman to find out that only ten percent of his classmates were white males.


10 posted on 11/28/2025 3:41:15 PM PST by cgbg (The master is nice only when the dog behaves as expected.)
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Same author called the raid on Mar A Lago a “A Conspiracy Against the People”

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/columns/a-conspiracy-against-the-people/


11 posted on 11/28/2025 3:42:33 PM PST by proust (All posts made under this handle are, for the intents and purposes of the author, considered satire.)
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To: Pelham

True.

But the witch-burning antics and tribalism on the so called “rational” side is equally toxic.

Remember, it was the priestly, law-abiding Pharisees who had Jesus put to death. Not a bunch of rebels or hippies.

The “shut up and put up” Soviet-style, obey the dear leader conformist wing. It’s these types that are responsible for why sexual abuse in Christian churches goes unabated for decades, for example. And victims get castigated into silence. And why Epstein list was able to get as long and far ranging as it did.


12 posted on 11/28/2025 3:43:25 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege ( )
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To: Pelham

When you use the word “conspiracy” as an accusation against a person, it means one of two things:

1. you don’t want the person to think independently about a particular subject

2. you’re afraid yourself to think independently about a particular subject


13 posted on 11/28/2025 4:51:15 PM PST by reasonisfaith (What are the personal implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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To: Pelham

If the anti-conspiracy nuts were confident in their own position, then they wouldn’t have to resort to using the meaningless term “conspiracy.”

They would limit their language to words like “false” or “delusion.”

But false and delusion don’t have the power of intimidation.

The intent to intimidate in a discussion is anathema to true conservative thought.


14 posted on 11/28/2025 4:54:40 PM PST by reasonisfaith (What are the personal implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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To: Pelham

The term “conspiratorial thinking” has no real meaning.

It pretends to mean “you’re crazy,” but again, the anti-conspiracy nuts are aware that “you’re crazy” doesn’t have the same weight as “you’re a conspiracy nut.”


15 posted on 11/28/2025 4:55:58 PM PST by reasonisfaith (What are the personal implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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To: Pelham

Why would the author of this piece, Pedro Gonzalez, want to prevent people from thinking independently?


16 posted on 11/28/2025 4:57:06 PM PST by reasonisfaith (What are the personal implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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To: Pelham

Being afraid to think, and intending to prevent others from thinking, are forms of low IQ.


17 posted on 11/28/2025 4:57:59 PM PST by reasonisfaith (What are the personal implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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To: Pelham

And I should point out for the record, that all CIA-associated and other individuals involved in the scheme to invent the term “conspiracy theory,” in and around 1964, as a weapon for the purpose of protecting their propaganda are low IQ.

That is to say, these individuals acted from low mental ability when they set out to create the term “conspiracy theory.” As does anyone currently perpetuating the ridiculous notion.

I don’t say this as a personal attack, I’m merely stating objective fact for the historical record.


18 posted on 11/28/2025 5:39:36 PM PST by reasonisfaith (What are the personal implications if the Resurrection of Christ is a true event in history?)
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To: Pelham

The Bible emphasizes “truth” a lot. It is easy to see why today.


19 posted on 11/28/2025 5:54:42 PM PST by alternatives?
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

“Remember, it was the priestly, law-abiding Pharisees who had Jesus put to death. Not a bunch of rebels or hippies.”

The push to force Pilate to act came from the Sanhedrin, which Sadducees controlled. Their motivation was political. They saw Jesus’ popularity as a risk to civil order and their privileged position under the Romans.

The Pharisees wanted Jesus executed for blasphemy, which the Roman authority couldn’t have cared less about. And neither did the Sadducees, who weren’t all that interested in Pharisee fundamentalism.

The Sadducees forced Pilate’s hand by threatening to tell Rome that Jesus was fomenting a tax rebellion. That’s something that Rome would take very seriously. If Rome believed that rumor and Pilate had failed to act, Pilate knew that he could end up decorating a cross. Which he didn’t want.

Either way, normative Christian theology required Jesus’ death, witness Jesus’ rebuke of Peter when he tried to intervene with the arrest. Otherwise there is no substitutionary atonement.


20 posted on 11/28/2025 6:43:19 PM PST by Pelham (President Eisenhower. Operation Wetback 1953-54)
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