I like to discuss endlessly; I think because truth is hard to get and when someone claims to have it (including myself) I will question it. Most of the time it stays civilized but I am sure that a lot of people avoid me if they can. These people I helped when I moved to Norway where I discovered another benefit of moving to a country where you can only speak the language like a child who’s 6 years old. Discussing with the vocabulary of a 6-year-old is not easy so besides discussing that I got less candy than the others I stayed away from discussing more difficult subjects.
Though I speak the language quite good now I still stay away from discussions about politics or religion for example. This week it bit me a little because someone I know made it clear that he/she didn’t believes that Covid is worse than influenza. Being skeptical about the safety of the vaccine is one thing, still strange that you suddenly question science, but ok. But questioning the testimonies of nurses and doctors about what Covid does to you is just stupid, specially when you say that it is all made up. I get so mad about this because conspiracies about cover ups done by some secret group have their origin in antisemitic conspiracies. Today I did some research, a fancy word for some searching on the net, and there are a lot of, more and less, serious institutes that did research to the affect of a rather strange believe that for instance 5g antennas cause Covid and how these people ended up denying the holocaust.
I know that the best way to talk to people that believe these conspiracies is to be patience and ask questions. I tried this a little bit but I pretty quickly bumped into the langue’s, and cultural, barrier. I have to except that I can’t change this person’s mind but I hate that. I have to say that I am so happy that I live in Norway where I don’t meet people with these strange ideas. I know that they are here to but Norwegians keep to themselves and that is my savior. If I had lived in the Netherlands my head would have exploded by now.
I am a skeptical person and in normal circumstances I might have question certain things about Covid and everything around it but I don’t think in conspiracies in the sense of secret groups that rule the world. I studied the second world war quite a bit and one big part of why that war started has to do with conspiracies and that’s why there is a lot of research done to find out why people believe in conspiracies. There are many good books you can read about it and I like to write more about it but for now I encourage you to do your own research. If you start your search on the net for books or good articles make sure you trust the source, search for the names of the writers and see what they have written before. If they quote sources make sure they don’t quote a rocket scientist that talks about viruses, that’s like bringing your car to the dentist to get it fixed.
I give an example: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/why-people-latch-on-to-conspiracy-theories-according-to-science
National geographic is a well-known scientific magazine that probably made some mistakes in the past but they have a reputation to hold up so they make sure they only allow well research articles.
If you search for the name of the writer, you will find her personal site, her twitter and a lot of other articles she wrote. With this information you will quickly learn that she is not a Covid denier and that she has written about science in general.
In this article you will also find a lot of links to other researchers and articles and that is also a good sign, it gives you the opportunity to easily check here sources and it makes it easier for you to dive deeper. Most articles written by conspiracy theorist lack references because there is little that support their ideas and they want to hide that fact.
I know, you have to do some work to get closer to the truth; it is easier to click on a link in a post in your favorite social media app and follow the road to holocaust denial.
Underneath are more examples for how to proceed in your own research and what kind of site you can trust reasonable comfortable.
This next article is written for a newspaper so it misses the links to other articles and researches but the writer is well known in his field. Newspaper articles are not the best articles because they keep it short and that can be a problem if you write about difficult subjects, but they can be a good start.
Dr Joe Mulhall is the writer: https://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/about-us/staff-profiles/tutor/dr-joe-mulhall
His twitter account: https://twitter.com/joemulhall_?lang=en
Here you can read book reviews of the books he has written: https://www.amazon.com/Joe-Mulhall/e/B07L83D8G5%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share
https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/01/1082872
https://en.unesco.org/news/qa-new-research-map-holocaust-denial-and-distortion-online
Nochrisis 