alt Hacker News> They absolutely conform; by what mechanism do you think they all happened to pick the same bundle of labels and beliefs?
Are you conforming/obeying when you believe the Earth is round? That the sky is blue? Perhaps a bunch of people picking "the same bundle of labels and beliefs" is… simply them recognizing/accepting reality?
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I don't think it's the same.
I like to think of these supremacist/racist conspiracy theories as another form of control: in many cases these people are right to be upset, since they see things in the world that are truly unfair, but their anger gets redirected to bizarre beliefs and racism. So it's a way of controlling and channeling their anger to a place where real change becomes impossible, just anger and venting and weird beliefs in secret Jewish/Muslim/Woke/Illuminati cabals running the world.
Real change is hard, and involves compromise and dealing with people with different ideas and goals. Anger against immigrants, or some ethnic or religious group, is easier.
> Are you conforming/obeying when you believe the Earth is round? That the sky is blue?
No, I am incorporating multiple different lines of evidence from multiple sources, including my eyes, into a framework of knowledge that I am constantly challenging and questioning, and "the Earth is round" and "the sky is blue" have survived those challenges as good first approximations to the truth. Whereas "Jews control the world" has extremely flimsy evidence, strong counter-evidence, doesn't fit with my understanding of the world, and can be traced as a myth/meme to known bad-faith actors. Which, by the way, is all also true for "vaccines cause autism" and "the earth is flat".
Not everything is the same.