The internet has been a force multiplier in society since it went mainstream around the turn of the century. Just like the printing press exponentially expanded literacy throughout Europe and fueled intellectual explosions including the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation, the internet has allowed citizens to engage in the political process like never before. I call it a force multiplier because it amplifies both the good and the bad—regular citizens have access to enormous amounts of information, as well as the attention of our elected officials, in ways our ancestors could never have imagined, which turns out to be a double-edged sword.
The last few years have seen the growth of what critics call “conspiracy theories” but supporters often call “just asking questions.” The problem with this characterization, of course, is that it doesn’t tell you anything about the truth of any particular matter. Many ideas dismissed as “conspiracy theories” turn out to be true, but many are false as well. Just because an idea is suppressed doesn’t make it wrong, and just because an idea is widely accepted doesn’t make it right.
Many believers in these theories make a logical error by attempting to tie them together, as if the veracity of one proves them all. Just because the government covered up the likely lab leak origin of COVID-19 doesn’t mean the moon landing was faked or the earth is flat.
I used to believe that truth would be easier to discern in an age of ubiquitous smartphone cameras and internet access, but it seems the opposite is the case. A single grainy 8mm film of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy led to dozens of different theories, each having little in common save a rejection of the official story that Lee Harvey Oswald shot the president from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Yet the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which occurred in front of hundreds of cameras and thousands of people, has spawned perhaps even more outlandish claims than JFK’s. It turns out that evidence doesn’t settle disputes when the dispute is over what counts as evidence.
The prime mover for alternative theories about the death of Charlie Kirk has, of course, been right-wing media personality Candace Owens. She not only rejects the story that Tyler Robinson shot Kirk from a rooftop on the Utah Valley University campus, she has promoted theories including involvement by the French government, Israeli and Egyptian agents, TPUSA employees, and even Charlie’s wife, Erika. I want to tread carefully here because I know there are several people in conservative Idaho circles who take these theories seriously. I suggest watching Nick Freitas break down the theories here. He runs each one through the same filters to determine reliability and probability and finds each of them wanting:
It’s worth noting that this is only the latest controversy involving Candace Owens. In 2016, she announced a website called Social Autopsy that was meant to dox people accused of posting racist or offensive things on the internet. Once the Trump phenomenon took off, she pivoted to becoming the face of “Blexit”—the black exit from the Democratic Party—which gained her speaking gigs at Republican events and a job with TPUSA. By 2020, she was working for the Daily Wire and had become one of the most recognizable names in conservative politics. However, her rhetoric became more pointed, including criticism of Israel and Jewish people in general, as well as accusations that the first lady of France was born a man, and she was fired by the Daily Wire in 2024. In addition to her claims about Charlie Kirk, Owens has also accused the French government of planning to assassinate her.
If you’re a true believer, then this story is about a brave woman telling the truth no matter the cost. If you’re not, however, it looks very much like a narcissist who will say anything for clicks. And that’s the whole problem here: the more outlandish the story, the more clicks; and the more clicks, the more we tend to think there must be some truth there.
In the old days, before the internet, social proof was harder to come by. If you developed strange ideas about the world—such as the earth being flat—you would likely face ridicule from your peers. Today, however, you can log on to Facebook, X, or TikTok and find tens of thousands of other people who believe the same things. It becomes easy to believe that this is a radical truth that has been suppressed by an evil global conspiracy rather than a crackpot idea. The more people promote the so-called “official story,” the more true believers dig in their heels.
Political podcasts have become sources of entertainment, weaving storylines that seem more appropriate for soap operas. The “official story” is often much more boring than what podcasters can imagine. Why live in a world where a left-wing activist shot Charlie Kirk for seemingly banal reasons when you can walk through a multifaceted conspiracy involving several foreign governments, TPUSA employees, and Charlie’s own wife? Why accept the belief that the earth is round, that Islamic terrorists attacked the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, or that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK when there are all sorts of much more interesting stories we could tell ourselves?
We must approach every idea through the lens of “Is this true?” rather than “Is this interesting?” or “Do other people believe this?” Life is already full of crazy stories—when Ron Howard screened Apollo 13 for a test audience in 1995, one audience member apparently dismissed the ending as unrealistic. If you wrote a story in which John Adams and Thomas Jefferson—both signers of the Declaration of Independence, our second and third presidents, and two of our most important Founding Fathers—died within hours of each other on the 50th anniversary of independence, readers would call it far-fetched.
Conservatives must exercise discernment now more than ever. The internet has already created an environment in which it’s hard to know what is true or false, and the AI revolution is going to take that situation to unprecedented levels. Generative AI can now create audio and video so convincing that it’s nearly impossible to recognize as fake, so young people are growing up in a world where truth is quickly losing its meaning. We must be even more discerning if we’re to understand what is real, because policy must be based in reality.
This is not merely academic. Charlie Kirk was a real human being, one of the brightest young stars of our nation. Every good American feels his loss immensely, but none more than his wife, his children, his family, and his friends. Using that for clickbait and monetized engagement is despicable, but beyond that, it puts the search for true justice in danger. Imagine if the man who murdered Charlie Kirk walked free because a juror fell down the Candace Owens rabbit hole.
We must also hold accountable those who use such theories for their own ends. It’s a crying shame that Dr. Anthony Fauci has still not been held accountable for his role in developing COVID-19 in the first place, then covering up the lab leak afterward. He, and others such as President Joe Biden who promised disease and death for those refusing to take the COVID vaccine, must be held to account for those words. On the other hand, those who used their medical credentials to predict that anyone taking the vaccine—literally hundreds of millions of people—would all be dead within two years were clearly wrong as well, and anything they say today should be taken with the same amount of skepticism.
I was skeptical of the vaccine and never got it for myself or my family. However, I was concerned at the time that the outlandish rhetoric from some on my side was making it easier for legacy media to denounce us all as cranks. That’s perhaps the biggest problem here: reality is drowned out by the hysteria.
When it comes to the political debates of the day—from vaccines to contrails to data centers to election integrity to what we eat and drink—we have to avoid hysteria and viral panics and stick to what is real and verifiable. I’m not saying there aren’t valid concerns with any of these things—far from it—but the hysteria makes it harder, not easier, to have serious discussions about these important issues. Sen. Tammy Nichols sponsored a bill this year to gather information about weather modification in Idaho, and she was savagely attacked because she wasn’t joining the cult-like chorus demanding that we immediately ban the practice altogether. That kind of behavior makes it harder, not easier, to arrive at one’s desired policy positions.
We live in a brave new world where it’s harder than ever to discern fact from fiction, which means it’s more important than ever to slow down, get the facts, understand the issue, and have a civil and reasoned discussion. At least, that’s what you should do if your goal is lasting policy change. If you’re just in it for the clicks, then I guess you’ll keep saying whatever gets the most attention at any given time.
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About Brian Almon
Brian Almon is the Editor of the Gem State Chronicle. He also serves as Chairman of the District 14 Republican Party and is a trustee of the Eagle Public Library Board. He lives with his wife and five children in Eagle.
