From the “Red Scares” of the Twentieth century up to the conspiracies about 9/11, Americans have always had a penchant for believing in things not supported by fact.
A case in point is that almost a third of Republican voters would support bombing the fictional kingdom of Agrabah – as seen in the classic Disney film Aladdin, according to a report released by Public Policy Polling on Friday.
But what else do Americans believe?
A study by Chicago University last year found that over 55% of US citizens believe in some sort of conspiracy.
The researchers found that the most widely endorsed theory was the Financial Crisis conspiracy, believed by 25% of respondents and denied by only 37%, after collating four nationally representative survey samples collected in 2006, 2010, and 2011.
The conspiracy claims, in the words of the survey, that the crisis was “secretly orchestrated by a small group of Wall Street bankers to extend the power of the Federal Reserve and further their control of the world’s economy”. If extrapolated, that would suggest 79.7 million Americans believe it.
Next in popularity was the Obama Birther conspiracy theory – claiming that the President was not actually born in the US, which 24% of respondents agreed with, followed close behind by the Truther, Iraq War, and Soros conspiracy theories.
Truther conspiracists believe that 9/11 was planned by the US government, Iraq War conspiracists claim it was not part of a campaign to fight terrorism, but was driven by oil companies to raise prices, and Soros conspiracists believe that billionaire George Soros is behind a plot to undermine the American government and take control of the world.
The study suggests that level of education was a key predictor of predisposition for believing in conspiracies. It found that other factors such as gender, political leaning and ethnicity were unreliable, noting: “Less educated respondents routinely score higher on all the predisposition scales, but, beyond this, the predictors vary more according to individual traits and the particular predisposition in question.”
A national poll by Public Policy Polling in 2013, meanwhile, found that 37% of voters believe global warming is a hoax, with an eye-watering 58% of Republicans denying its existence.
A significant 7% of voters think the moon landing was faked, 51% of voters say a larger conspiracy was at work in the JFK assassination, 29% of voters believe aliens exist, and 4% of the voters said that they believe “lizard people” control our societies by gaining political power.
Here are there other key findings:
