Death by Conspiracy?: 9. The Conspiracist Mindset

0:01Hello. Hi, we're from the BBC.

0:04Marianna Spring:I'm in a park in central London, near where I work at the BBC, and I'm conducting a little experiment with the general public, because there's a question I want to get to the bottom of. We're asking people what words come to mind when they describe someone who believes online conspiracies. And would you guys mind telling us what words come to mind? I'd say isolated, less socialised, perhaps a little bit in a spiral online. They must be a fantasist because you have to be realistic in life. Sad, misinformed. A bit crazy, those people that kind of come up with those sorts of conspiracy theorist views.

0:44Crazy? Yeah, probably like a lunatic.

0:48Marianna Spring:Crazy, isolated, fantasist, lunatic. These are the words I hear time and time again when discussing who believes this stuff. There's only one problem. These stereotypes aren't necessarily all that true. Take Gary Matthews, whose story I've been investigating in this series. He was a thoughtful, sociable man. People who knew him describe him as having a lot of friends and interests, art, photography, salsa dancing. And yet this 46-year-old from Shrewsbury was drawn into online conspiracies about the pandemic before catching COVID-19 and dying in January 2021. So who gets pulled towards these ideas?

1:31Is there a particular pattern or psychological profile? And how can people escape?

1:38Marianna Spring:I'm Marianna Spring from BBC Radio 4. This is Death by Conspiracy.

1:47Marianna Spring:Episode 9. The Conspiracist Mindset. My name's Phil. I'm from Belfast. To understand who believes conspiracy theories, I need to talk to someone who can take us through the psychology. And essentially I'm a former conspiracy theorist. So that's why I'm talking to Phil. His story of how he got into conspiracies and how he got out can help us understand a little more about Gary and why people are drawn to these ideas. I was always a bit of an outsider. I never really used to conform to any fashion traits. I used to kind of just wear pretty much what I'm wearing now in a Vanna t-shirt and that was about it really.

2:28So yeah, I was always like quite anti-establishment. I would probably still consider myself quite anti-establishment, but just not in the conspiracy way. This isn't too far away from the kinds of things I've heard about Gary. Different was the word used by some of his friends. And while we've heard about some of Gary's frustrations with how life was panning out, particularly during the pandemic, the same was also true for Phil in the years after college. I was just sort of working a fairly standard job and there wasn't really much opportunities at play in terms of actually trying to progress. I felt like a lot of my peers who I had gone to school with were doing all these amazing things and, you know, going to university in different countries and things like that.

3:09Whereas I was just sort of stuck in my own hometown, not really doing much. And then in 2009, Phil saw a film that changed the course of his life. The more you begin to investigate what we think we understand, where we came from, what we think we're doing. How I got into conspiracy theories originally was a documentary called Zeitgeist. The more you begin to see we've been lied to. The documentary made some outlandish and false claims. It said the September 11th terrorist attacks were orchestrated by shady government figures.

3:45Marianna Spring:and that there's a secret agreement for all governments to be brought together into one single world government. And although it promoted baseless conspiracies, it managed to entrance a small section of the public, Phil included. Whenever you watched a lot of these documentaries, they connected dots and made a variety of observations that had never really occurred to me before. I guess my train of thought was, well, you know, why isn't this really being reported by the news? and are they trying to withhold information? At the time Phil was watching this documentary, the pervading political backdrop was one of serious distrust of people in power.

4:25This was around about the time the financial crash happened and the whole weapons of mass destruction thing as well. There was a lot of legitimate reasons, I think, to sort of doubt official narratives and official stories.

4:38Marianna Spring:And that helped to fuel his belief that films like Zeitgeist might hold the answers. I guess that they gave me an understanding of the world. They made me feel that, you know, the reason why things are the way they are is because there's some hidden force making it that way, if that makes sense. It gives you an absolute answer. Although this was over a decade ago, the parallels with the pandemic and what happened to Gary Matthews are clear. We've been living through a period of huge uncertainty. There's distrust of government, media and authority. And all these issues have only intensified throughout the pandemic.

5:13Gary Matthews was certainly no stranger to them, even before COVID-19 emerged. And in this atmosphere of distrust, it can be easier for these ideas to take root. Despite the fact that conspiracy theorists do obviously say a lot of bizarre things, in there is kind of a kernel of truth. If you even look at, obviously, what's happened over the past couple of days, this whole thing with Boris Johnson going to the lockdown party in the middle of the pandemic, There's this feeling that there's one rule for the ruling class elite, and then there's another rule for everybody else. Back to Phil's story.

5:48When he was getting into conspiracy theories,

5:51Marianna Spring:social networking giants were just starting to get off the ground. Websites like Facebook and Twitter were very different beasts. He mainly used MySpace and early internet forums. And as he spent more time speaking to fellow zeitgeist enthusiasts online, he found that his views began to seriously diverge from people around him. Because I had such fringe opinions, I felt a bit disenfranchised from the average person. And well, whenever I was going out to social gatherings, I felt that a lot of people just didn't want to talk about politics at all. A lot of people were just talking about reality TV and things like that.

6:30And this is back when X Factor and all that kind of stuff was a big thing. And so I felt that I had some sort of esoteric knowledge that was being hidden from the public. And the people I was sort of interacting with were basically people who were just engaged in things that didn't really matter. That gave me a sense of intellectual arrogance, where I kind of thought that, you know, that they're wasting their time with this stuff. And I'm researching the truth and stuff like that as well, if that makes sense.

6:55Marianna Spring:Those who knew Gary have all described difficult conversations with him. His certainty he was right. Many of them gave up discussing it with him at all. Phil was talking about different things at a different time, but even so, it affected him in a similar sort of way. I don't want to say it completely took over my life necessarily, but definitely when I was going to house parties, there's people who I chewed their ear off about 9-11, and there's conversations I used to have back then where I felt like I really used to just bring up 9-11 all the time. So definitely, yeah, there's definitely an element where it does, I guess, it just becomes part of your identity, I guess, yeah.

7:34he would show documentaries revealing what he believed to be the truth to his friends and family. Some of my families didn't necessarily always disagree with what I said. That's the thing that's important. In fact, some people in my family are still, they still have questions about conspiracy theories as well. In fact, if anything, I feel bad that I actually showed them the 9-11 documentary. So now I actually feel bad that I showed them, if anything. I'm pretty sure my mum actually said, that's propaganda. And I was like, is it? And then, yeah, so she was right about that.

8:05Marianna Spring:Now Phil found himself in a feedback loop. As his belief in elite plots and 9-11 falsehoods became more of a core part of his identity, he found himself increasingly alienated from those around him. And in turn, that drove him further towards people who shared his worldview. In that sense, yes, that made me seek out a community that did believe this stuff, essentially. Yeah, so you would go on to these online groups and just talk to them instead, essentially. When I talk to Phil, I can hear the parallels between his story and Gary's. Both men felt disenfranchised, distressed by world events, let down by the system, and were pulled into an online world that offered community and absolute answers.

8:49Marianna Spring:And, crucially, both were intelligent guys, well-liked, sociable, not the stereotypical conspiracy theorist at all. I don't think you necessarily have to be stupid. I would say in general, if you look at statistics, generally speaking, people who go to higher education tend to be less susceptible to conspiratorial thinking. But being part of a higher education doesn't inherently preclude you from believing in conspiracy theories. In fact, a lot of ways, intelligent people actually give the best arguments for conspiracy theories. They give the most rational answers. So I don't really buy into the trope that you necessarily have to be this kind of bonkers, you know, basement dwelling sort of kind of stereotypes that people say.

9:32Marianna Spring:It's an idea that links into Phil's advice for how to speak to people who believe in this stuff. It's a question that's kept coming up while making this series. Once someone gets into these ideas and becomes a true believer, how do they escape and find a new perspective? I feel like a lot of people, maybe within mainstream culture, don't really treat conspiracy theories with the seriousness that I think a lot of believers think they deserve. So I think one way around that is maybe not to necessarily dismiss what they're saying out of hand, but to try to be open minded about what they're saying and sort of ask questions as to why they have arrived at that belief in the first place.

10:14Marianna Spring:This is actually something that some of Gary's family members tried. Gary's cousin Tristan, for example, tried to speak with him calmly about his beliefs. Unfortunately, Gary didn't manage to get out of the conspiracy mindset until he came down with Covid, shortly before his death. Phil, however, got a chance. It happened later in life, when he went to university. There was a girl in my class who was a young earth creationist. And obviously me being a very big advocate of evolution, I started asking her about why she believed what she believed. And she started basically saying that, oh, you know, evolution is a scam by the scientific community.

10:56And, you know, we have biologists and experts who are challenging the official story. And what about the missing fossils? And it was only really through having that conversation, I started to notice a lot of broad similarities between how she reasoned her position and how I reasoned my position. I remember actually getting the bus home that day and I remember thinking, yeah, like, why do people believe weird things and how do people come to these conclusions? And what if I'm also susceptible to that as well? What if a lot of my beliefs are based on this very similar flawed reasoning? So that was like one conversation I had that really, yeah, that was a really penny drop moment where I was like, maybe that's what I'm doing as well.

11:36Marianna Spring:He started changing his diet of information online. Carl Sagan videos replaced David Icke. And eventually I started to think, well, I'm just some random guy sitting at home watching these documentaries. Why do I get this? But yet all these very credible speakers don't understand this. A few years later, he set up a YouTube channel. So it's Skeptico the North here. Today I'm doing a little something a little different with my channel. Now he works to try to draw people out of the same worldview that once ensnared him. From my reporting throughout the pandemic, I know how hard it is to change someone's mind.

12:14Marianna Spring:But Phil has had some notable success. In many ways, his story has come full circle. Through the videos that he makes, he's helped some of the very people whose worldview he used to share. Back when I was a conspiracy theorist, there was a guy who I actually shared a flat with. Believe it or not, he was actually the one that introduced me to conspiracy theories. but he said the reason he wanted to get the vaccine in the end or the reason that he took COVID seriously was because he had actually watched my videos and he respected my opinion as a person so he actually sent me a message quite recently saying that I had really helped him make a correct decision in getting the vaccine in the end.

12:56Marianna Spring:Phil's story has helped answer something that's been nagging me as I've made this series. I've started to wonder whether, actually, we might all be part of the problem. The misconception that you have to be mad or stupid or both to be drawn into online conspiracies can stop us from being able to understand why people think the way they do and what we can really do to help. When I started this investigation I too had misconceptions about who Gary Matthews was. And while I've learned a lot about Gary himself I think I've also almost got to the bottom of how this happened to him. And why? And now I want to put all of that to Charlie Parker, who still uses Gary's death to push conspiracies about the pandemic.

13:42Who, if anyone, was really responsible for what happened to Gary. There is a war going on. Between who? Between light and dark. That's in our final episode.