When an angry, troubled young man, shot and killed Sergey Kirov almost no one believed the truth. Kirov, a high-ranking apparatchik in Stalin’s Soviet Union, was gunned down by a lone assassin with a well-nurtured sense of grievance, but almost no one believed the assassin’s confession. Stalin assumed a conspiracy of some sort had felled his best friend, and just about everyone else assumed Stalin had ordered the deed. The randomness of the act defied explanation. Human imagination and paranoia provided the rest.
The Conspiracy-Seeking Animal
Part of our social sense is an acute awareness of signs of betrayal. That’s how we detect cheating spouses and backstabbing coworkers. But our betrayal detection sense is too acute—consider the many people who suffer from and inflict jealousy. In the language of social science, our minds perceive many false positives, instances where we assume the worst of the innocent and the guilty alike. We are conspiracy-seeking mammals. This is in the nature of our kind.
Consider what happens when an unusual, socially significant event occurs—people’s minds go into overdrive at the same time. In the Soviet Union in 1934, a hundred million people thought and talked about the Kirov assassination at the same time. From that giant cauldron of gossip all sort wild theories emerged. (In that specific instance, it didn’t help matters that Stalin was conspiracy against his old comrades.) After an initial period of wild speculation, a number of theories become established. In some instances—like the Reichstag fire conspiracy, or this very Kirov murder conspiracy—a false conspiracy becomes the accepted truth.
We can’t help ourselves. When a sufficiently large event takes place, conspiracy follows. Whether it’s 9/11 “fire can’t melt steel” or the invasion of Iraq “no war for oil”, somebody, somewhere will see hidden motives. A hidden cabal somewhere must be orchestrating the randomness of life.
