Ask Lemmy

I would say people in countries with poor or non-existent public education are more prone. The USA's public education system was eviscerated in the 70's I think.

No, we just have a larger presence on the internet relative to our share of the global population, meaning our idiocy is noticed a lot more often.

Call it the Florida Man effect, it's not that other states don't also have crazies, it's just that Florida's are more well documented and publicized.

The Simple answer is No. Every country has its fair share of loud and dumb.

Studies have found ( for example ) conspiracy thinking correlates with extremist political beliefs, especially right wing political beliefs, across countries. That linked study found the effect was strengthened by lack of political control.

So countries with more political extremists, especially far right wing in media platforms, leads to more popular conspiracy theories.

No, Americans are just as prone as the other anglo countries, there's just more of them. If we start delving into other languages, then things immediately go downhill. For example, I speak Arabic and I would say that at least 80% believe in at least 1 batshit crazy conspiracy theory. Why? It's because the vast majority of Arabs consume their information from Facebook and a good chunk of that information comes from state owned propaganda outlets. Just a 2 minute scroll on my father's Facebook, I saw the following conspiracies:

Israel is created by the kufar to sin against allah

India is on the brink of becoming majority muslim

Incest, pedophilia, and zoophilia are common in the West because they don't have islamic morals

Russia is fighting NATO and winning

Hamas is beating Israel so bad that Israel is on the brink of collapse

Eating Pork will slowly turn your heart inside out

I really think it's a question of the sheer amount that is aimed at them through propaganda foreign and domestic. There's definitely a huge, deliberate push to destabilize the US.

Low educated people are more prone to being superstitious. End of conversation.

E: Oh, right, it also gets much worse if you hardcore propagandize it.

Yes we are! It’s a result of all the subliminal messaging we receive from our kitchen appliances.

IDK if it's that or just the fact that there's both a lot of us and a great sense of nationalism instilled in us from a very young age. I've been to Mt. Rushmore twice. Only recently did I learn about how it was a sacred site to the native people that we promised to leave alone, before stealing it and blowing it to hell.

What I'm getting at is that we're taught that America is the greatest nation on the planet, and we're encouraged to be loud about that statement. So when a certain group of people in the government who are also very loud about their beliefs start saying some things that might sound completely bonkers to a foreigner, a lot of people find themselves agreeing purely because they like the attitude of the people talking.

You can read "The Paranoid Style In American Politics" from 1964 for some insight: https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/

American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics. In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.

It's written at a higher than 6th grade target, so it might be a challenge for anyone who's not used to that. Please give it a good faith effort to read.

Thinking about it, the low literacy rate in the US might be an aggravating factor. Something like half of US adults cannot read at a 6th grade level. That's going to hurt their ability to deal with complex topics.

I think there may be a factor of sample size; There's something like 40 million Canadians, 40 million Australians, 60 million British, and 340 million Americans. So if you take a random sample of English speech on any topic, it's statistically most likely to be from an American.

I would also add things we consider conspiracy like UFO's have been seen all over the world just other countries usually have a religious or spiritual reason for the sightings and thus they don't become a conspiracy just part of their everyday life. Look up Jacques Vallee he does great research into this.

The anti-vax movement is alot bigger in the US than any other western country, so yeah.

That's basically the answer.

I wouldn't say individuals are more susceptible to it, but the US's history is intertwined with conspiracy theories from the start. The founding "father" Sam Adams had tracts printed claiming the British had a secret plan to enslave white colonists ahead of the American war of independence.

The Spanish American war was stoked by a conspiracy that Spain had sabotaged our warship "Maine". If you've ever wondered why the US Navy has a base in Cuba.

The "corrupt bargain" of 1824 was a supposed deal between JQ Adams and Clay to exclude Jackson from the presidency despite his electoral victory. Jackson too, was the subject of a theory that he and congressmen disgruntled over tariffs would dissolve the union and install Jackson as a military dictator should he loose in 1828.

No. An old colleague of mine is on LinkedIn non-stop posting crazy QAnon shit and RT headlines. Anti-vax more-or-less started in the UK with the Andrew Wakefield affair and it seems to be super-popular in Australia too. Conspiracy Theory kind of helps people rationalise the absolute chaotic mess of the world we live in by reducing it to simple narratives where a defined enemy is out to get us.

There are plenty of crazies believing in conspiracy theories all over the world. Not just US or even the western world.

I think that the distrust of governments and generally those in power is a world-wide phenomenon. But I personally don't think that it is unwarranted. Corruption, abuses of power, and conspiracies are widespread.

We see a lot of efforts to convince suckers of absurdities in the US because there's a lot of economic value in swinging American votes.

In other countries that either don't have voting, or don't have a lot of economic power, there's less to be gained by befuddling morons.

Absolutely not. People might give you reasons Americans are but that’s because they don’t know about the crazy shit people believe elsewhere but there’s nowhere that’s immune to conspiracy theories.

The thing that differentiates America is that it’s a major country (so on TV a lot, in English) and a low-trust society. But Italy and Uganda and Japan all have wild ass conspiracy theories. (Italy has some actual conspiracies like Propaganda Due.)

I have met several people who moved into Usa during the last years, and they all said Yes very much.

I feel like Americans generally "know better". The bottle says to take two, we know better than to follow the label, we take four. The button says to hold until three quarters full, we know better than to fall for that coffee stealing scheme, we crank that baby till it spills over and then try to add 10 creamers with a name we can't pronounce. So when we hear that someone died under a bizarre circumstance, we know better.

American culture, and I'm generalising, there are a million sub cultures obviously... Emphasises the individual. The American dream of you working hard to get some payoff, is an example. As such there is a lot of cultural pressure to not correct people when you are in conversation, it's more polite and acceptable to play along. Their stupid ideas, their problem.

And that's where Americans (again I'm generalising) are weakest here. Because stupid ideas are everybody's problem. Because once people go off-the-deep-end there is no easy way of getting them back. And a large amount of people involved in conspiracy fantasy is legitimising it.

So no Americans are not more prone to conspiracy fantasy, but American culture does permit fast growth of ideas. MLMs are another example of this. You can use cultural taboos and cultural elements to sell bullshit.

Only an agent of the New World Order would post this.

I think they're exposed to more crazy, therefore. Not more susceptible, but wildly more exposed.

No, that’s just what they want you to think.