This might explain why the conspiratorial claims in the Mirror World so often seem to contradict one another. For this new political configuration, convincing people of their unproven theories was never the real point—it was only ever a tool. The point, consciously or not, is to foster denial and avoidance. The point is not to have to do hard and uncomfortable things in the face of hard and uncomfortable realities, whether Covid, or climate change, or the fact that our nations were forged in genocide and have never engaged in a remotely serious process of making repair. Denial is so much easier than looking inward, or backward, or forward; so much easier than change. But denial needs narratives, cover stories, and that is what conspiracy culture is providing.

XREF: Connects to broader literature on motivated reasoning and epistemic closure in political communities. SEED: Could seed an essay on how contradiction tolerance in conspiratorial spaces functions as avoidance machinery rather than failed persuasion.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 871