Covid-19 as a fake or representative of “dark forces” who drink the blood of children to rejuvenate – conspiracy thinkers believe in such myths and live in a different reality. In her lecture, literary scholar Eva Horn tries to understand the thinking of this group.
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There are conspiracy thinkers everywhere. There are teachers and nurses among them: Eva Horn works out that in many of the fantasies it is not only the uneducated shifts who take part.
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An attempt to enter into a serious dialogue
In the meantime, the number of exponents in this group has grown to a level that needs to be taken seriously. What not everyone does who deals with such an attitude of mind: Eva Horn seriously wants to enter into a dialogue with them. But she also makes it clear that she has problems with it herself.
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“It comes very close to me. I talk to people and think: What do they believe in? And they think the same thing about me.”
Eva Horn, Literaturwissenschaftlerin
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Conspiracy myths as a form of objection
Almost shocked, she describes the fact that a friend from the USA recently wrote to her, whom she has not seen for a few years – and who must also have undergone one of these strange changes. His sentences to her were openly hostile – paired with incoherent attacks on everything and nothing.
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“I’ve never worn a mask and I refuse to go along with this nonsense.”
Letter from a friend to Eva Horn
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But she does not want to dismiss this kind of know-it-all: In her opinion, it expresses a form of objection, an attitude of skepticism, a questioning of reality. At the end of all this, however, there is a shared reality among the population.
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The Literary scholar for modern German history and climate researcher Eva Horn researches and teaches at the University of Vienna. She gave a lecture under the title “The know-it-alls. Science skepticism, conspiracy thinking and the erosion of reality” within the series of events “Mosse Lectures” on April 29, 2021 at the Berlin Humboldt University.
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