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Dr Strangelove and Conspiracy Thinkers
May. 9th, 2026 04:04 pmIn the middle of last week, I went out with my old friend Des to see Dr Strangelove at RMIT's Capitol Theatre. It was inevitably going to be a good night because Des is one of my best friends, Dr Stangelove is one of my favourite films, and the Capitol is one of my favourite theatres. The movie was introducted by a film studies academic who gave a delightfully funny exposition on the broken masculinist themes throughout the gallows-humour farce, and a few pieces of movie trivia I that I had forgotten, such as the fact that the war room table was in green casino felt to emphasise the idea of those assembled were gambling the fate of the planet, even though the film was in black-and-white. As a superb work of satire, and as it should be (albeit terrifyingly so), almost everything about Dr Strangelove was actually based on reality.
One character in the film that particularly stands out is General Jack D. Ripper and his obsessive paranoid delusions of how there was an "international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids" through fluoridation. Ripper, in a position of great power, cunning, and madness, is the driving plot device of the film. It has been several years since I've seen the film, and one thing that struck me is how similar his reasoning is to that of others, more contemporary conspiracy theorists, especially those of the anti-vaccination or AGW denial bodies of opinion. The selective use of facts, the invention of alternative facts, the suppression or deflection of inconvenient facts, and, of course, the suggestion that somehow nefarious communists are responsible, whether it's fluoridation, vaccines, COVID, or their remarkable control of all the world's meteorological stations over the past one hundred and fifty years. Fun fact, ironically, when it was released, Dr Strangelove, some argued that it was a Soviet propaganda plot.
In recent years, there has been some good research into the nature of conspiracy theories. One study indicates that "even if it's bonkers" a substantial section of the population will believe a conspiracy (an important metric for those who benefit). Conspiracy theorists tend to be angry individuals, and believe the perceived conspirators are "evil". And one particularly good study identified that "regression model indicated odd beliefs/magical thinking, trait Machiavellianism, and primary psychopathy were significant, positive predictors of belief in conspiracy theories.. the individual more likely to believe in conspiracy theories may have unusual patterns of thinking and cognitions, be strategic and manipulative, and display interpersonal and affective deficits". I especially like how this one used regression analysis to determine the accuracy of those traits (e.g., corroborating previous research on Machiavellianism) and to remove spurious correlations identified in previous research (e.g., trait narcissism). Recently, we have also discovered that conspiracy theorists are unable to handle complexity; they see the world as fundamentally unfair and want simple, unambiguous explanations.
One character in the film that particularly stands out is General Jack D. Ripper and his obsessive paranoid delusions of how there was an "international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids" through fluoridation. Ripper, in a position of great power, cunning, and madness, is the driving plot device of the film. It has been several years since I've seen the film, and one thing that struck me is how similar his reasoning is to that of others, more contemporary conspiracy theorists, especially those of the anti-vaccination or AGW denial bodies of opinion. The selective use of facts, the invention of alternative facts, the suppression or deflection of inconvenient facts, and, of course, the suggestion that somehow nefarious communists are responsible, whether it's fluoridation, vaccines, COVID, or their remarkable control of all the world's meteorological stations over the past one hundred and fifty years. Fun fact, ironically, when it was released, Dr Strangelove, some argued that it was a Soviet propaganda plot.
In recent years, there has been some good research into the nature of conspiracy theories. One study indicates that "even if it's bonkers" a substantial section of the population will believe a conspiracy (an important metric for those who benefit). Conspiracy theorists tend to be angry individuals, and believe the perceived conspirators are "evil". And one particularly good study identified that "regression model indicated odd beliefs/magical thinking, trait Machiavellianism, and primary psychopathy were significant, positive predictors of belief in conspiracy theories.. the individual more likely to believe in conspiracy theories may have unusual patterns of thinking and cognitions, be strategic and manipulative, and display interpersonal and affective deficits". I especially like how this one used regression analysis to determine the accuracy of those traits (e.g., corroborating previous research on Machiavellianism) and to remove spurious correlations identified in previous research (e.g., trait narcissism). Recently, we have also discovered that conspiracy theorists are unable to handle complexity; they see the world as fundamentally unfair and want simple, unambiguous explanations.
