Conspiracy Theories

Journalist Will Sommer went to road shows and spoke to believers and their families while investigating QAnon. His book, Trust the Plan, makes the case that there are more conspiracy theories to come.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank examines how the GOP got to where it is today, with some elected leaders and candidates still endorsing the lie that Trump won. His book is The Destructionists.

Denying that the Sandy Hook mass shooting had occurred became "a highly symbolic thing," Elizabeth Williamson says, author of the book Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth. "People did this for reasons of ideology. They did it for, in Alex Jones' case, profit. They did it for psychological reasons. There was a tribalistic bonding that happened around this."

Eliot Higgins is the founder of an online collective that picks apart conspiracy theories and investigates war crimes and hate crimes using clues from the Internet. His new book is We Are Bellingcat.

Now that former President Donald Trump has left office, the community of believers in the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory are left wondering what will happen next. Washington Post national technology reporter Craig Timberg has written about QAnon and related subjects in recent months.

Atlantic editor Adrienne LaFrance discusses QAnon, the conspiracy theory that claims President Trump is battling a deep state child sex trafficking ring, run by high-profile democrats and celebrities.

"What you have is a presidential campaign that is pushing lies and distortions and conspiracy theories into the bloodstream at an unprecedented rate," says Atlantic writer McKay Coppins.

Bloomberg Businessweek columnist Joshua Green says Trump fell for a media campaign on Ukraine designed to help him: "The irony is that the target was supposed to be the Bidens, not the president."

Journalist Michael Isikoff hosts a new podcast exploring the motivation and methods of those who promoted wild conspiracy theories about Rich, who was killed in a suspected failed robbery in 2016.

"If there was contact between the Trump campaign, or even Trump himself, and WikiLeaks, it went through [Jerome] Corsi and [Roger] Stone," says New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin.

A new video series by New York Times reporter Adam Ellick explores Russia's role in spreading fake news, dating back to the '80s conspiracy theory that the AIDS virus was created by the U.S. military.

Former Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper remembers a time, not so long ago, when he was barely aware of far-right media outlets like Alex Jones' Infowars and Breitbart News. That changed during the 2016 presidential race.

Area 51 is classified to the point that its very existence is denied by the U.S. government. Journalist Annie Jacobsen says it's not because of aliens or spaceships -- but because the government used the site for nuclear testing and weapons development.

The number of hate groups in the United States continues to rise, says Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Potok discusses how the rhetoric of hate groups has increasingly entered the mainstream in the wake of the nation's changing demographics and the election of President Obama.

Chip Berlet has studied extremism, conspiracy theories and hate groups for more than 25 years. He says that the recent murders of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen T. Johns exemplify the potential for violence that often lurks within extremist groups.

Publisher of The Nation, Victor Navasky. He was one of a group of writers who in 1967 conceived of a literary hoax. The book "Report From Iron Mountain," was penned by Leonard Lewin and was a satire, supposedly written by a commission of eminent scholars about the problems that would arise in the United States if "permanent peace" should arrive. The book has been compared to Swift's "A Modest Proposal" and "Dr. Strangelove" for its social and political commentary. It wasn't until 1972 that Lewin admitted the hoax.