just saw someone saying we need better mental health “testing” and intervention, bc clearly at least half of the people involved in Q-n-n have “a reality testing” mental illness like schizophrenia, psychosis, severe bipolar

y’all pls do not do this, it is unhelpful all around

Acting like the only people involved in dangerous cults/conspiracy theories are those with severe mental illnesses:

1 - Is nothing but a self-soothing mechanism to convince yourself that you and the rational, sane people you know could never fall for something like this

Rational, sane people join cults all the time. Cults, conspiracy theories, and propaganda work specifically because they prey on really basic human emotions and instincts, and turn those instincts towards the worst ends possible

2 - Downplays the seriousness of needing to address and fight disinfo/propaganda/etc, because only the super crazy people are going to fall for it, right? So clearly we just need more mental health testing, instead of addressing the dangerous lies being spread

3 - further stigmatizes serious mental illness, which is already stigmatized enough. We’ve got to a point where a lot of people will accept anxiety/depression, but schizophrenia, bipolar, OCD, psychosis are all still mocked and people with those illnesses are treated REAL badly

There’s definitely also something in here about how it’s really dangerous to go down this line of reasoning because mental illness as a concept (ESPECIALLY mental illness that involves delusions) is historically and still regularly weaponized against marginalized people

I can’t find her name or story at the moment but I’m thinking of the Black woman who was institutionalized against her will because she told (the police? A doctor?) that she worked for Obama when...she actually did...and they just assumed she was insane and delusional

This (horrifying!!) story from a Black writer who worked on Cards Against Humanity is another example: https://medium.com/@nicolas.j.carter/how-to-know-youre-not-insane-and-how-a-cards-against-humanity-staff-writer-was-fired-40fe07fbbfe4

It seems to be an especially common weapon of racism and antiBlackness but we see it other places too, conversion therapy is arguably another overlap

Anyways if you want to read more about why people ACTUALLY buy into this stuff and not just use the lazy reasoning of “they’re crazy”: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2021/01/why-people-latch-on-to-conspiracy-theories-according-to-science/