You’ve probably heard or read these words at some point when interacting with conspiracy theorists, or on a youtube video or comment section. If not, it’s a critique of the 9/11 attacks. The idea is that the collapse of the two World Trade Center towers was a controlled demolition because burning jet fuel doesn’t reach a high enough temperature to melt steel, and certainly not reinforced steel beams that would be used to build a skyscraper. And guess what? That’s completely correct. Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams, period. There is no debate on that, the conspiracy theorists are completely right on this one.

But wait, a controlled demolition? We’ve all seen footage of the attack, two planes crashed into those towers. That can’t be great for structural integrity, especially in a building with 20 or more levels above the impact site. Those fires in the buildings are from damaged piping, and uncontrolled fires can’t be great for structural integrity either. The fact is, jet fuel didn’t need to melt through steel for the buildings to come down. A weakened building giving out at any one point might, and gravity just has to do the rest. But you can’t tell a conspiracy theorist that. All they’ll say back is the same one phrase: “Jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams”. It’s kind of asinine, if you think about it. They’re so wrapped around this one point that they can’t fathom the idea of anything else being the cause.

I feel like this is the point in the semester where I should defend conspiracy theorists. It’s a big world out there, and it’s scary to think that something this awful could just… happen. It scares me, it scares you, it scared the entire country in the wake of 9/11, and some people didn’t want to live in a world where something this massive in scale is random. There’s this correlation in people’s minds that the bigger an event, the more coordinated and thought out it is. Knocking something over is random, rolling dice and flipping a coin are random, a car crash is random, but the death of 2,977 people from 4 hijacked planes crashing into buildings cannot be some random event that we have no control over. It had to have been greater than that. There’s more significance to this insanely influencial event than some people half a world away are angry with America.

Back to the conspiracy theory, though. A lot of theorists think that Bush orchestrated 9/11 in order to justify going into Afghanistan, and go into Iraq for oil. Have you ever seen the moment in the elementary school when a Secret Service agent whispers to Bush, allegedly “Mr. President, a second plane has hit the tower.”? It’s a brilliant moment. Bush sits there for a second and you can actually see what’s going through his head. But imagine if that wasn’t real. It might be the greatest moment of acting ever done.

So why would he do this? There are two theories: a new US led global hegemony, or oil. Bush sent troops into Afghanistan and later Iraq and this was seen as a war for oil. Iraq wasn’t involved in 9/11 at all, but the theorists postulate that Bush was determined to finish the job his father started with the Gulf War, failing to topple the Iraqi government. Falling into the bigger conspiracy theory of an overthrown world order, George HW Bush took Saudi money and in return promised to topple one of their neighbors and nearby threats, Saddam Hussein. This is reaffirmed by the fact that George W Bush (the younger one) attacked Iraq based on an assumption of weapons of mass destruction, even though none were found and it was discovered he attacked on faulty information. A family business, one might say.

But that’s all postulation. It’s a tall order to prove that the United States hired the terrorists, or that there were no planes, or that the government purposefully swept critical information under the rug to allow it to happen, or that the towers were a controlled demoliton. (all real theories, of course) As for me, the jury is still out on what really happened. Government incompetence played a real part, and government agencies like the CIA, FBI, and NSA didn’t share information and they all had a piece of the puzzle. But I don’t know if the government had any active role in the attacks. I’m skeptical of conspiracy theories, but I’m not confident either way. The decision is yours to be made whether you believe in these theories or not, but one thing is for sure. Conspiracy thinking plays an active role in our civic lives, whether you like it or not.

Parallel to the presidency of Donald Trump, the political movement known as QAnon began to gain traction among far-right conspiracy theorists. The idea is that the members of the Democratic party are part of this evil network of people who drink the blood of young children to preserve their youth through adrenochrome. QAnon supporters believe that Democrats – and other influential people – torture and rape young children in order to cause epinephrine to oxidate into adrenochrome, which is then drunk to keep the user young. The theory comes from Pizzagate, which is the idea that a pizza restaurant in DC was the place where this all happened.

QAnon supporters believe that Donald Trump is the savior of all of this evil and corruption in the world and that his presidency would involve the destruction, arrest, or execution of all of these prominent politicians and celebrities. The conspiracy theory is heavily anti-semetic, as it focuses on George Soros and the Rothchild family. The theory shifts based on who the most prominent opponent to them is. During the original election, everything was focused around the Clinton family. Conspiracy theorists found any link they could to justify that Hillary Clinton was kidnapping and torturing children, and that anyone around her who found out would be killed.

The danger here is that people who believe in this theory see the government not just as corrupt, but as evil. There has been an attack on the pizza place where this is purported to have happened. An armed gunman actually opened fire while inside of the pizzeria trying to break a lock to let those poor children out of the frozen pizza storage locker in the back.

In Washington Pizzeria Attack, Fake News Brought Real Guns – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

This theory has done real damage. There are people who think elected officials run child sex trafficking rings and that prominent Democrats are doing all of these horrid things. If that was you, how would you feel if your neighbor put out a vote blue 2022 sign in their frontyard? There is real danger to propogating these ideas and while almost everyone can see that these claims are bogus, those who believe in it get sucked deeper and deeper into it.

It’s the same way that indoctrination into a cult works. There is evidence that leads you to an earth-shattering truth, and that truth leads you to a community of people that think the same as you do. You’ve finally found a family. Obviously everything makes sense, it’s all connected through the high-ranking secret leader known as ‘Q’. Q releases information that Trump faked the Russian interference in the 2016 election to get Robert Mueller to fight the cabal; of course that makes sense. Now, not only are you dissuaded from the idea of real Russian interference, you see Trump as even more resourceful. The problem with this is that you are now indoctrinated. Anyone that disagrees with the community either gets shunned or forced out of it. It’s a hivemind.

While in office, President Trump did very little do play down his role in QAnon, and while never outright stating that he believed in the theory, his actions – or lack thereof – led theorists to speculate that they were right and that he was communicating to them that he believes in it too.

What I think is that Donald Trump does not actually believe in the theories, but it is beneficial to have people that think you are a hero continue to do so. How he went about QAnon was the way he went about white nationalists and the KKK supporting him: he took in their support without agreeing with them. He likely didn’t want to discredit them for fear that they either stop supporting him or implicate him into the theory as well. But having people think you can do no wrong is perfect for a presidential campaign. All you need to do is occasionally make a thinly veiled reference to the theory and you’ve just guarenteed that these people are voting for you. It’s so much more simple than campaigning on a platform, since beliefs vary from person to person. Cults, though, do not.

To finish up my thoughts, the theory is wack. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are not torturing children to death for their precious adrenochrome. I promise you that if the Clintons wanted adrenochrome, they would invest or create a biotech company to synthesize it quicker and easier.  But as seen time and time again, humans are very quick to see patterns and that can lead us to the wrong conclusions. And sometimes, those conclusions can make just a little too much sense.

I wanted to start off my civic blog with an issue that impacts me the most, which is the myth that vaccines, specifically the MMR vaccine, can increase the likelihood of a child developing autism. The person who can be blamed for all of this is Andrew Wakefield. Notice that I didn’t say Dr. Andrew Wakefield; he lost his license to practice medicine because of how much damage he has done to the medical community as a whole. I’m immunocompromised, which means that I rely on everyone else to get vaccinated for me, everything from the flu to COVID. His work has directly impacted me and made my life harder. Anti-vaxxers as a whole have sprung up as one of the most bizarre movements I can think of. The anti-vax movement has grown a lot since Wakefield first published his article, but there’s one belief that they all hold: Vaccines cause autism.

Wakefield published his article in 1998 in the Lancet that linked the 12 participants who developed behavioral disorders to the MMR vaccine. This was an international upset and was followed up with dozens of studies involving hundreds of thousands of children and found no correlation. Everyone from Penn & Teller to John Oliver has debunked the claim in an easy to digest format, but that hasn’t stopped the original claim from spreading.   This found its way into parent Facebook groups and led to some parents taking their kids to ‘alternative’ doctors, who advised against getting the vaccine.  Because of that, measles has made a comeback in the United States.

Andrew Wakefield has been active in pushing his beliefs to anyone who would listen. Between 2010-2011, Wakefield visited a Tigray Ethiopan community in Minnesota 3 times to tell them about the dangers of the MMR vaccine and the risk of having their children become autistic. The community saw a sharp drop in vaccine rates up until 2017, when there was a measles outbreak. There were 86 measles cases in the US in 2016; the Ethiopian community saw 65 cases between April and May.

Measles Cases and Outbreaks | CDC

Measles Outbreak — Minnesota April–May 2017 | MMWR (cdc.gov)

The biggest issue of anti-vaxxers -as well as conspiracy theorists in general- is making connections when there’s none there. Correlation vs causation.

There’s definitely right and wrong ways to interpret facts. Yes, kids getting the MMR vaccine would start to develop signs of autisms in the weeks following, but why is that? It’s because when the CDC recommends kids to get the second dose of the MMR vaccine is right around when signs for autism naturally start showing. It’s definitely a jarring thing to see a baby who is constantly crying and whose smile will light up a room over jiggling a key chain turn into a quiet toddler that’s not producing baby talk anymore, and people go looking for answers. All of a sudden, they find this group of other women who have had the same thing happen and the thing they all share in common was getting the MMR vaccine a few days or weeks before these symptoms of autism are showing.

I just want to talk in the theoretical for a second and act as if this claim is true. Let’s just say that the uptick in autism diagnoses is truly because of vaccines. The amount of lives saved from these vaccines is truly astounding. The likelihoood of survival for young children in first world has increased by leaps and bounds, and it’s now a tragedy if an infant dies instead of being commonplace. Vaccines do overwhelming good for us all and they’re needed to keep herd immunity for those of us who can’t get vaccinated.

RETRACTED: Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children – The Lancet