Have you been on X (still better known as Twitter) since Sunday? I wouldn’t. It’s where reason and hope have gone to die.

Here’s a brief taste of the conspiracy theories saturating the site following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. “This was a DEEP STATE BLACK OP!”

And: “Dems and Deep State are real threat to democracy. Just ask JFK!!!”

Or how about this: “If you look real closely, Trump has a KFC ketchup package in his right hand when he brings it up to his ear. But when he brings it down it’s gone!”

Or this: “This country was founded by political violence. The left has declared a civil war and we will answer the call.”

A dangerous moment indeed.

The most predictable rumour is the baseless idea that the US government allowed or sponsored the assassination attempt in a bid to eliminate Trump. A Republican senator was quick groundlessly to claim “Joe Biden sent the orders”.

But the hashtag #StagedAssassinationAttempt has also been trending. This has been called an example of BlueAnon (a Democrat – blue – echo of the hard right QAnon conspiracy theory). It speaks to people’s understandable incredulity that the shooting could have happened. Again it concludes that it was deliberate, again it lacks a shred of evidence, but this time the assertion is that the shooting was staged to boost Trump.

A man holds a Q-Anon sign at a Trump rally in 2018A man holds a Q-Anon sign at a Trump rally in 2018 (Image: Rick Loomis)

The hard right has long been associated with this sort of crankery; indeed, the belief that Donald Trump won the 2020 election – completely discredited by multiple investigations – is still held by around a third of Americans and a majority of Republican voters.

But there appears to be receptiveness to fantasy across the political spectrum. Conspiracy theories are typically sensational and simplistic. Against that backdrop, it’s very hard for the truth to cut through, particularly when the truth is so often prosaic, complicated, messy and boring.

Conspiracy theories may always have existed, but what’s new is the extent of their reach, fuelled by social media. Worries about the risk they pose to democracy are not unfounded, since those who believe them are more easily manipulated. Those who stormed the US Capitol in 2021 believed the 2020 election had been “stolen”.

Much boffiny head scratching has been done in a bid to work out how to meet this threat. Can people who have fallen for conspiracy theories be helped back down to earth? And can children and teenagers be taught to spot them in advance so they don’t fall for them?

The answer to the first question is, with great difficulty. The answer to the second is, much more readily. A renewed emphasis on critical thinking and pre-bunking – spotting disinformation and manipulative lies – could help make children less susceptible.

This stuff is famously having an impact everywhere, not just America. People are less trusting of official sources, partly because expert testimony on everything from climate research to vaccine science has come under cynical attack, and partly because a slew of scandals involving the media (hacking), politicians (expenses and Tory sleaze), police and others has undermined public trust in official sources.

Disillusionment with politics’ capacity to improve people’s lives has also played its part. Many people seem more inclined to rely on their own partial understanding of issues and events even when they are far removed from them. They give greater weight to opinion and circumstantial evidence, and less weight to establishing hard facts or having a deeper understanding of the issues involved.

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The circumstances in this case have been taken as highly suggestive. Why did the secret services not protect Trump better? As always with conspiracy theories, the possibility of boring old human error is instantly discounted and the assumption quickly made that it must have been deliberate. (Elon Musk was among those to float the idea the secret service might deliberately have allowed it to happen.) Who was the shooter? The absurdity of the notion that the secret services would have engaged a 20-year-old loner is swept aside as irrelevant.

Research evidence seems to show, unsurprisingly, that mocking people about their beliefs doesn’t shift people’s thinking, but putting counter arguments and stressing established facts has little effect either.

What works better is so-called inoculation, where people are warned to spot an unfounded conspiracy theory in advance, though unscrupulous politicians will of course try and undermine inoculation.

The best strategy seems to be to teach people to think critically, to try and prevent them falling down rabbit holes in the first place. Research published in Cognitive Psychology in 2021 based on two studies, found that the better someone’s critical thinking skills, the less likely they were to believe in conspiracy theories. Other published studies have had similar findings.

Critical thinking is already taught as part of arts and social science subjects, but arguably it should be emphasised more in schools. Many teenagers get their news from social media and are ripe for manipulation. They need to be forearmed.

Education can help stem the spread of conspiracy theories (Image: Getty Images)

Conspiracy theorists often portray themselves as questioning and free thinking. These are appealing attributes they share with critical thinkers, but where conspiracy theorists part company with critical thinkers is in accepting without question information gleaned from unreliable sources and failing to question the motivations of those who peddle the ideas they are drawn to.

Children need to understand the online world. They need to know that anyone can say anything online but it doesn’t mean it’s true. They need to be helped to understand the difference between fact and assertion. They need to be encouraged to look at who is speaking and ask what might be motivating them. They need to know that sometimes people set out to manipulate others. They need to be encouraged to see that people who seem influential are sometimes in it for themselves, and might be trying to boost their own status and relevance, or to advance a political viewpoint. They need to ask themselves questions. Is this a real expert? What are their qualifications? Who might be funding them?

Children and adults alike need the skills to navigate this stuff, and it’s essential for our democracy and our cohesion as a society that they do.