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Originally Posted by JohnnyB
Have there been any good academic studies or are there any good books anyone would recommend reading to understand how people of varied walks of life end up believing in stuff like this?
To see people actually gathering around a police station and trying to enact a citizen's arrest of the police at the behest of a woman who claims to be queen while handing out vegetable platters and tins of sardines from an RV camper parked at the curb is, well, it requires some kind of explanation for everything that led up to it.
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It's certainly not a study or anything academic, but I always encourage people to watch the documentary
Behind the Curve. The subject concerns a far less insidious (though no less annoying) topic of anti-intellectualism: flat earthers.
While there are certainly many reasons people become absorbed by these movements and theories, the film really punches home the idea that a sense of community plays an enormous role in recruitment and maintenance of these groups. Feeling special and supported when the entire world is telling you you're wrong can't be discounted.
You can kind of witness the same things when you see videos or pictures of the APP (Alberta Prosperity Project) events. Rooms filled with the same carbon-copy type people, mostly blue hairs and grey beards, that have found a space where they can socialize with other like-minded people. This sense of community and belonging has only been magnified by the pandemic. And, of course, the social media algorithms that have coerced and indoctrinated them during the past 2 - 3 years into an unsustainable belief system.