I’ll be honest: my favorite conspiracy theories are the ones that sound anti-establishment, rebellious, and free-thinking — but in practice, they do the establishment’s work for them. The ones that get people so convinced they’re resisting power that they never notice how perfectly they’re serving it.
Take the conspiracy about universal healthcare. The story goes that it’s all a sinister plot to enslave us to government control. But funny thing: believing that keeps us enslaved to the private, for-profit insurance system that bleeds people dry, bankrupts families, and lets corporations decide who lives or dies based on profit margins. What better way to keep people docile and desperate than to convince them freedom means staying trapped in one of the most predatory systems on earth?
Or consider the “climate hoax.” According to this theory, shadowy globalists invented climate change to control the world. The catch is that believing this ensures we stay chained to the fossil fuel industry — the most powerful and destructive cartel in modern history. Convince people it’s all a hoax, and voilà: business as usual rolls on, the oil barons keep cashing in, and the public gets to sit like the frog in boiling water, free to never question the main driver behind all these endless wars.
Here's another gem: the "Great Reset" conspiracy theory that says any attempt to build new economic models, rethink debt, or shift society in more sustainable directions is secretly a communist or socialist plot to create a one world government and… depending on which theory you listen to… depopulate the earth and enslave who remains with vaccines.
The phrase itself came from Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum — the annual Davos gathering of billionaires, CEOs, and political elites — who proposed "stakeholder capitalism" and using the pandemic recovery to build something "more resilient, equitable, and sustainable." Now, yes, it's absolutely worth scrutinizing when billionaires meet in Swiss ski resorts to plan the future of capitalism. The World Economic Forum represents exactly the kind of corporate influence over policy that should make anyone nervous. Critics have pointed out that this "multi-stakeholder" model gives corporations even more influence over global and national governance, and that should absolutely be opposed.
But here's the trick: the “Great Reset” conspiracy has little to do with the problems identified above. In practice, the theory is deployed anytime people suggest solutions that would actually threaten the status quo, whether that's reining in the fossil fuel industry, the private health insurance industry, or capitalism itself. Reflexively and without fail, someone in the comments section can be relied on to yell “socialism!” “communism!” or “you're a puppet of the Globalists!”
The net effect of their misguided activism keeps those around them frozen in place, terrified of any real alternatives to the economic system we currently live under — a system already run by billionaires, global finance and multinational corporations.
By stoking fear of change, these conspiracy-oriented activists defend the status quo they claim to despise. The irony is that Davos elites don't need a secret conspiracy when they already openly shape policy, fund politicians, and write the rules. They believe they are untouchable because they see how the public's attention is too often consumed by phantom enemies and too busy squabbling online over manufactured culture war spectacles to ever bother challenging the very boring and blatant problem staring us in the face: concentrated private power.
That's what's ultimately so tragic about all these theories. They make people feel like they’re resisting tyranny when, in fact, they’re just holding the chains tighter. It’s an incredible uno reverse card: trick the rebels into defending the system.
The real work of resistance isn’t in rejecting phantom plots — it’s in tackling the very visible systems that are already failing us.
We could, instead, fight to abolish the private insurance racket and demand universal, single-payer healthcare, joining the dozens of other countries that already guarantee medical care as a right.
We could fight for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, not because the UN said so, but because we know the same industry driving this crisis is also responsible for oil spills, wars without end, and communities gutted by asthma, birth defects, and shortened lives.
We could push for debt relief, cooperative businesses, publicly-owned banks and local food systems that make our lives less dependent on the whims of distant corporate boardrooms.
We could realize, for once, that unaccountable private power is the worse kind of tyranny, and fight for true democratic control over our governments, cities, workplaces, and lives.
The good news is, none of this requires waiting for permission or decoding secret plans.
It just requires us to stop mistaking the bars of the cage for the key.
Tim Hjersted is the director and co-founder of Films For Action. He lives in Lawrence, Kansas.