Mistaking suspicion for sophistication

Bryan A. Garner agrees that conspiracies do happen, but:

For some people, a bad outcome is never just a bad outcome, and a coincidence is never just a coincidence. There must always be a hidden hand behind it, coordinating events that, on the surface, look random or trivial.

Not long ago, this instinct seemed like harmless eccentricity. Conspiracy theorists lived at the margins, alongside doomsayers and end-time prophets. Most people treated them as curiosities rather than participants in serious argument. Today, though, that boundary has eroded. Conspiracy thinking hasn’t just survived into the present — it has moved into the mainstream of political and cultural life, shaping how large numbers of people interpret ordinary events. ....

Conspiracy thinking didn’t become mainstream because people suddenly became irrational. It became mainstream because habits that once signaled intellectual seriousness — skepticism, independence, distrust of authority — have mutated into forms that are less disciplined and less self-correcting.

Consider skepticism in its healthier forms. A skeptic is supposed to withhold belief until evidence justifies it. But conspiracy thinking often inverts that discipline. Official explanations are treated as suspect by default, while unofficial ones are treated as credible precisely because they’re unofficial. The burden of proof is quietly upended. Instead of asking what would make a claim true, people ask what would disprove it — and the claims are structured to resist disproof.

A healthy mind doesn’t begin with suspicion; it arrives there. It starts with a provisional willingness to accept ordinary explanations, then shifts toward doubt only when specific features of the evidence justify it — persistent anomalies, independent corroboration of misconduct, patterns that resist simpler accounts. Suspicion is an earned response, not a default posture, and it remains tethered to standards that allow it to be revised or abandoned when contrary evidence appears. Conspiracy thinking breaks from this discipline by treating suspicion of traditional sources as the starting point and then insulating that mindset from the kinds of evidence that would ordinarily dispel it.

What makes this especially strange is that conspiracy thinking often presents itself as the most skeptical stance available. Yet it routinely demands greater leaps of faith than the explanations it rejects. ....

Conspiracy thinking isn’t going away. It’s too deeply rooted in how human beings respond to uncertainty, scale, and loss of control. The real question isn’t whether it will persist but what conditions we might normalize around it. A society that mistakes suspicion for sophistication, and disbelief for intelligence, may feel more critical, but it’s actually becoming easier to persuade with less and less evidence. (more)

Bryan A. Garner, "The Heart of Conspiracy," National Review, June 11, 2026.