COVID conspiracists are often decent human beings. That's why it's so hard to talk them down

This is a question many of us will have been facing up to in our day-to-day lives in recent months. Unless our echo chambers are particularly well insulated, most of us will have had awkward, bewildering or infuriating conversations with someone we know, like or love about vaccines, lockdowns and Bill Gates's 5G network.

The easy option is to paint conspiracists as idiots or right-wing nutjobs. When I tweeted last week about my experiences talking to anti-vaxxers, the overwhelming objection from people on the left was that I had called (some) conspiracists "good, decent people". There was to be no sympathy for these devils.

To be clear, I have no sympathy for people who wish violence on our politicians - or their daughters. I also have no doubt that right-wing agitators have weaponised the discontent around health measures for their own political purposes. But none of the people I have spoken to in recent months would identify as being right wing. They are - by and large - highly educated people who support LGBTQI+ rights and want action on climate change. Others consider themselves anti-political.

I suspect this last point is crucial. For many of the Australians wrapped up in conspiracies around COVID-19, the emergency health measures represent the first intrusion of government into their private lives. The impact of other issues such as climate change has been largely distant or invisible. For the first time, they are intimately faced with the functioning of government in a way that seems opposed to their own interests.

One of the most frustrating elements of arguing with a conspiracist is that they often lack a basic understanding of how government functions. The protesters in Melbourne are outraged at a bill they think gives the Victorian government dictatorial powers. It does not. When you've never needed to be interested in politics, the basic functioning of government (mysterious as it appears) looks like oppression. It is, at heart, a failure of civics education.

The mistake many of us make when engaging with a conspiracist is to think that facts matter. COVID conspiracists don't just believe the misinformation they are spreading, they are deeply emotionally invested in it. I have seen people distraught or rendered physically ill by some outrageous fiction - or distorted half-truth - someone has just texted them. Proving the outrage false, which is often a simple matter, does little to ease this distress. Indeed, it seems to heighten the sense that the conspiracy they are fighting is unfathomably pernicious and widespread.

As with any fundamentalist, these beliefs are a core part of their identity. If you define yourself as an anti-vaxxer (a term some COVID conspiracists reject), being mandated to receive a vaccine means suffering a great psychic injury - can you still be an anti-vaxxer if you've been vaccinated (and survived)? To change their mind about vaccines or emergency health measures would be to kill off the most vital, zealous part of themselves.

It is, I think, the fact that these conspiracists are good, decent people that makes it particularly hard to talk sensibly with them. They know they are ordinary and apolitical - this is their superpower. Their ignorance gives a particular kind of insight. They can cut through the flannel those of us more involved have been wrapped up in for too long. Those I speak to are driven by the idea that they are fighting an injustice that nobody else can see. I hear a lot of "Why isn't somebody doing something?" and "Why aren't people angry about this?"

This sense of righteous zeal means, as with almost every other form of online activism, they feel they are at war. The usual rules of liberal democracy are off. You can harass, you can abuse, you can spread half-truths in the name of your holy mission. You are a good person, after all.

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There is no one guiding philosophy that links the conspiracists, other than the conviction they are being lied to. Most conspiracies seem to hinge on a single prism through which obvious - and yet invisible - oppression has been revealed, the most legendary being the "redpill" movement (inspired by a scene in The Matrix) whereby men "discovered" that women secretly rule the world. The prism here is COVID, but the view is fractured. COVID may or may not exist, probably isn't that bad if it does, or really does exist but can be best treated by worming pills and a kale thickshake.

If COVID conspiracists have one thing in common, it's a deep distrust of the mainstream media. It's a badge of pride to never read, hear or watch the news. "But why has nobody heard about this?" they ask, unaware that news stories have been plentiful. As a result, everything looks like a cover-up.

Education is not a panacea. Doctors and lawyers are not immune to the gravity of the COVID rabbit hole. This parallel universe of conspiracies is happening because people are leaving school without very particular media literacy skills. They can't read the media, with its inherent biases and omissions, so they shun it and seek out informal communities of "truth". It doesn't help that the organs of media are shifting quickly in our digital age, with little transparency around how information now seeks us out.

But there is hope, I think, in remembering the humanity of those lost to conspiracy. Our friends, our colleagues, our family. Instead of trying to argue with them, maybe the best thing we can do is to be the life raft. To quietly cling to sanity in the hope they might one day swim back to us.