Explaining events by attributing them to a conspiracy or to unseen, hidden, and secret forces is an interpretation that comforts many who seek justifications that absolve them of any responsibilities related to themselves, their countries, or their beliefs. Promoters of conspiracy theories have previously spoken about many events, most notably attributing the coronavirus to political forces—either American or Chinese—and fabricating a goal for this, which is to reduce the Earth's population. These people, obsessed with the idea of a hidden conspiracy driving events, may create any reason to be behind the major disasters and calamities that occur in the world.
Why resort to conspiracy theory to explain events? And why do people tend to believe in conspiracy talk, especially regarding major events?
The conspiratorial interpretation of events comforts its proponent because they do not want to believe the truth. They create a party to hold responsible and absolve themselves because they feel, in one way or another, that they might be accused of responsibility or negligence, and they are unable to believe the truth that might affect them in some way. Simply put, they find it easier to rely on metaphysical explanations that give them a sense of reassurance, thus resting from the burden of thinking and the burden of responsibility. This happens either due to extreme ignorance or extreme fear; in this way, the ignorant protects their ignorance, the fearful justifies their fear, and they mask the state of intellectual and civilizational deficiency from which they suffer.
When a devastating earthquake occurs, they attribute the cause to new weapons testing, forgetting that earthquakes can occur anywhere on the globe. However, this large number of victims is the actual catastrophe. Does the conspiracy theory, and the belief in and validation of it, absolve people of their responsibilities as they think? When an official says that the cause of an earthquake might have been fabricated by a hidden weapon, they are, in reality, knowingly or unknowingly absolving those responsible for the construction errors that resulted in such a large number of victims of their responsibility.
Some view conspiracy theory as often being the product of regimes and states. Arab peoples have excelled in using the idea of a hidden conspiracy that drives world events within the framework of psychological warfare, but they are not alone. In 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the American "H.A.A.R.P." program of causing the floods in Pakistan. In the same year, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez accused the same program of being the cause of the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti.
Belief in conspiracy theory is not exclusive to Arabs and Muslims. In the United States, where conspiracy theory has a broad base of supporters in every field and domain, they love to cling to this theory to ward off the specter of accusations from themselves. There are Americans who believe in conspiracy theory out of their affiliation with the far-left or anarchist parties whose only concern is opposing the state.
It can be said that resorting to a conspiratorial explanation for events, disasters, and epidemics is often the result of a prior position related to the cultural level of the proponent, as well as their political or religious thought. Religious belief often leads to belief in conspiracy theory. According to studies in political psychology, there is a direct correlation between these two beliefs, and this phenomenon is prevalent in both the East and the West alike.
Those who resort to this method are mostly people who cannot challenge regimes and governments, or they are those with extreme loyalty to them. In the event of a disease pandemic like COVID-19, which claimed millions of lives, or a devastating earthquake in which tens of thousands of victims fall, they substitute criticizing the authorities' negligence, corruption, and failures to provide the necessary protection for their people by absolving governments and corrupt individuals of responsibility, and they relieve themselves of the duty to combat corruption by promoting the idea of an external conspiracy.
Saying that the coronavirus originated from biological warfare laboratories in China or American intelligence laboratories is much easier than admitting to negligence in protecting public health or admitting to failure in achieving adequate medical care. Failed and negligent peoples adopt the easiest method to absolve themselves of responsibility when such events occur in their countries, and the examples are well-known and numerous.
