Why People Believe Candace Owens

Candace Owens is a grifter who has stumbled onto a great way to take advantage of human psychology. The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a shock to a lot of people, especially people on the right. Owens, who once worked for Kirk, has responded by demonize Kirk’s widow and TPUSA, the organization he left behind. 

Unfortunately, this approach has become very popular, which is why she talks about it constantly and why several other popular podcasters have started following her lead.

What’s most disturbing about Owens is not that she can say whatever she wants, it’s that so many people seem to be believe whatever she says, despite the fact that she’s never turned up any evidence for any of her conspiracy theories. I’ve written before about why this happens, but today I came across this piece by Michael Shermer talking about the psychology of conspiracies in more detail.

The proceedings, which began Monday in Utah and are expected to conclude on Friday, have surfaced overwhelming evidence against accused killer Tyler Robinson. For example: He confessed the crime by text to his transgender roommate Lance Twiggs (“you werent the one who did it right???” “I am, I’m sorry.”); his own parents recognized him from released images, and said that the rifle he used matched that of his grandfather; Robinson’s DNA was found on the rifle’s trigger, a spent cartridge casing, two unspent cartridges, and the towel used to wrap the rifle; surveillance footage showed Robinson jumping down from the rooftop where the fatal shot appeared to be taken; and bullet cartridges recovered at the scene featured engravings (“Hey fascist! Catch!” and “OwO what’s this?”) made with a tool found in Robinson’s bedroom, alongside a shell casing engraved “test shot.”…

You might assume, given all this, that the vicious conspiracy theories sparked by Kirk’s assassination, which have infected our society ever since, would have faded.

You would be wrong.

Shermer then walks through some of the many conspiracy theories surrounding the case, from Erika Kirk’s alleged involvement, to the claim that the CIA programmed Robinson to kill, to the idea that this was some kind of inside job carried out by Israel or some other state for political reasons. On an on it goes. And it’s not hard to understand why so many people believe this nonsense. It’s all about proportionality between cause and effect.

The answer has to do with “proportionality bias,” a well-documented concept in the study of conspiracy theories. Proportionality bias kicks in when there is an imbalance or mismatch between the size or importance of an event and that of its purported cause. The Holocaust is an example of proportionality: It was one of the worst genocides in history, perpetrated by one of the most evil regimes in history. This creates a sense of “cognitive harmony”: balance between the cause and effect. Which means that, while there are conspiracy theories attempting to minimize or deny the Holocaust, few suggest it was perpetrated by someone other than the Nazis.

By contrast, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by a lone assassin is out of proportion. The handsome and articulate leader of the free world, the most powerful person on the planet, taken out by a nut like Lee Harvey Oswald? Impossible! So, to create cognitive harmony, conspiracists convince themselves that there were actually additional operatives to balance the scale: the FBI, the CIA, the KGB, the Cubans, the mafia, the military industrial complex, and even Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

He brings up another popular conspiracy theory, this one about 9/11, which is also taken as some sort of inside job or false flag attack. For many of the people who believe these conspriracies, the default always seems to come back to the involvement of Israel.

Why do people fall for this stuff when the mechanism is well known? Shermer tells the story of a UFO cult in the 1950s who believed a mothership was coming to rescue them on a specific date, just before a flood destroyed the world. Psychologist Leon Festinger and some of his colleagues joined the group so they could see how they reacted when the mothership didn’t show up.

…when that happened, the doomsayers did not recant their beliefs; rather, they doubled down and re-upped their evangelizing, rationalizing their apocalyptic error with familiar excuses: They had miscalculated the doomsday date; the date was a warning, not a prophecy; predictions were a test of members’ faith; the prophecy was fulfilled physically, but not as expected; the prophecy was fulfilled spiritually, not physically. The result of Festinger’s research was an aptly titled book, When Prophecy Fails, that has become a classic in psychology literature.

This sort of rationalization also explains why every act of political violence is reflexively blamed on the right before any evidence. It’s why so many people on the left (including, famously, Jimmy Kimmel) bought into the idea that Tyler Robinson was a Groyper, i.e. someone on the far right. Significant events must have significant causes and also they must fit with one’s view of the world. Since nearly everyone in the media is on the left, that means blaming the right is the easy assumption that won’t be checked for accuracy, at least not initially. On the other hand, blaming the left will result in a series of tenuous fact-checks from the same news outlets.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Candace Owens, Baron Coleman, Ian Carroll and the rest of the conspiracy podcasters won’t let this go. There is no point now or in the future where they will see the error of their ways and publicly correct the record. How could a nobody like Tyler Robinson have taken out someone that so many people admired (or greatly disliked). The point is that Charlie Kirk’s life mattered to a lot of people and Tyler Robinson’s just did not. That’s what the conspiracy nuts are struggling with and it’s why so many people find it easier to believe it was all a vast plot.

Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.

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