Letters to the Editor: Should We Ignore Conspiracy Theories?

Welcome back to Letters to the Editor. Today, we bring you readers’ thoughts on whether investigating a conspiracy theory legitimizes it; the relationship between education and activism; and the dangers of glamorizing psychedelics.

As you’ll see below, we are committed to facilitating robust debate in our pages. If you have thoughts on something we’ve published, we want to know. Please write to us at letters@TheFP.com. 

A few days before the election, we published an investigation by Peter Savodnik into the GOP talking point—spread most emphatically by Elon Musk himself—that Democrats are rigging the vote through illegal immigration.

“No one making these claims that I spoke to—and I spoke to five leading voices from conservative think tanks—has produced any smoking guns: an email from the Harris campaign, leaked audio or video, an incriminating text,” wrote Peter, while examining the various Republican claims.

Friend of The Free Press Jesse Singal thought the piece did not adequately guard against the dangers of reporting on this “noxious and incendiary” conspiracy theory. 

Today, we’re printing both Jesse’s letter—a version of which originally appeared on his Substack—and Peter’s response to it. Here’s Jesse:

As a fan of and contributor to The Free Press, I was disappointed in Peter Savodnik’s article “Is There Really a Plot to Use Migrants to Turn America Blue?” As I noted in my newsletter, this claim is a variant of the Great Replacement, an unfortunately widespread conspiracy theory both here and in Europe, which suggests that in certain places elites are plotting to import non-whites to politically disempower the native white population. As an idea, it is exceptionally noxious and incendiary, and it has helped to motivate heinous acts, such as the 2022 mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, perpetrated by a white supremacist. Not everyone who believes in the Great Replacement is a Nazi or white supremacist, but it is a mainstay of Nazi and white supremacist propaganda.

I suppose anything’s possible, but in the absence of new, substantive evidence supporting this theory, an outlet with as large a reach as The Free Press simply should not be humoring and disseminating it. And Savodnik’s article presents no meaningful new evidence to suggest a Democratic plot to import illegal immigrants and turn them into voters. Instead, it’s a mix of, on the one hand, well-known facts about the migration crisis and Democratic gloating about “demographic destiny” (which proved delusional years ago, given Republican gains among non-white voters), and on the other, a great deal of Trumpian “people are saying.” 

The “people” doing the saying, in this case, are inherently untrustworthy. Savodnik cites a film by Nate Hochman, a young right-winger who was fired by the Ron DeSantis campaign for sneaking a sonnenrad—a neo-Nazi symbol also worn by the Buffalo shooter—into one of his videos. He also cites content from Real America’s Voice, which back in 2018 and 2019 aggressively pushed QAnon, a conspiracy theory so deranged it makes the Great Replacement look tame by comparison. 

While Savodnik doesn’t entirely ignore the evidence against the Great Replacement Theory, he devotes far more space to the claims of its believers; in fact, the overall effect of the piece is to legitimize this conspiracy theory as reasonable. Immigration and migration are perfectly reasonable subjects for The Free Press to cover. But given that migrants are human beings, whatever one thinks of the policies that bring them here, this subject needs to be covered with rigor and skepticism.

Even if one isn’t moved by my moral argument, it is tactically foolish to publish slipshod work on this subject, in a world where some progressives treat any discussion of these subjects as inherently racist. Why give them the ammo, in other words?

Here, Peter responds to Jesse’s letter:

I’m a little confused by Jesse’s letter. I’m not sure what he objects to. Was The Free Press supposed to ignore this thing that many of us (Jesse, myself, other readers presumably) find repugnant or specious? The Republican presidential nominee and the wealthiest man in the world, with their massive followings on and offline, were talking about it, as were any number of right-wing writers and pundits, as were any number of voters across America; it was coloring the conversation; it was a fact, a political dynamic, whether we reported on it or not. Should we have pretended otherwise just because we didn’t like it?

I suppose we could also steer clear of the fentanyl crisis—maybe if we didn’t report on it, kids wouldn’t know it was out there? Or gender-affirming care, which Jesse has reported on so diligently? If the rapid rise of the number of young people transitioning is really a “social contagion,” as he’s suggested, perhaps it would be more responsible for all of us not to talk about it. Perhaps, by simply informing readers of this thing, we are actually endorsing it—causing it.

Of course, I don’t believe that. I think it’s the job of an independent media to report on important issues and developments, whether we like them or not, whether we want them aligned with our “brand” or not. So it is with a heavy heart that I suspect Jesse’s letter, unlike so much of Jesse’s reporting, is a kind of virtue signaling; it doesn’t strike me as thought through or clearly argued, but as an assurance to the right-thinking people of where he stands. That he’s not with the crazies. Alas.

On October 31, we ran a piece by Free Press contributing editor Abigail Shrier called “The Kindergarten Intifada.” Having conducted “extensive interviews with parents, teachers, and nonprofit organizations that monitor radicalism and indoctrination in schools,” Abigail found that “demonization of Israel in American primary and secondary schools” is widespread. The piece opened with a scene from a meeting of the second-largest teachers union chapter in the country, United Teachers Los Angeles. Teachers were discussing how to get high school students to anti-Israel rallies.

“A lot of us that have been to those [protest] actions have brought our students. Now I don’t take the students in my personal car,” one teacher told the crowd. Then, referring to the Los Angeles Unified School District, he explained: “I have members of our organization who are not LAUSD employees. They take those students, and I just happen to be at the same place and the same time with them.”

Glenn Sacks is a member of UTLA. Here, he responds:

Abigail Shrier claims to have uncovered what The Free Press calls a “well-coordinated, national effort between teachers, activist organizations, and administrators to indoctrinate American children against Israel.” Shrier places my union, United Teachers Los Angeles, at the center of it. 

Shrier cites a surreptitious recording from UTLA’s August conference, which shows four UTLA social studies teachers who—agreeing with Israeli and international human rights groups, the United Nations, and countless others—believe Israel is brutalizing Palestinians in Gaza. The teachers are active in protesting against this and are encouraging their students to do the same.

These teachers aren’t hoodwinking students or twisting their arms into demonstrating. Secondary school students are often anxious to have an impact on “the real world.” They see an injustice in Gaza, and they want to do something about it.

In recent years, secondary school students have staged walkouts and protests over immigration, school shootings, and other political issues. After Dobbs in 2022, high school and college students in 29 states demonstrated over reproductive rights.

During the 2019 UTLA strike, thousands of students joined our picket lines and rallies. Several dozen of the high school seniors I was teaching at the time helped us set up and man picket lines. I never coordinated any of this nor offered any incentives. When I saw some members of the class of 2019 at a party last summer, several of them told me they valued the experience and were proud to have been a part of a successful strike.

What the UTLA teachers being condemned are doing is actually very much in the tradition of Jewish American educators—imparting to their students a passion to fight injustice.

Shrier is also unhappy over motions passed by UTLA, explaining that instead of a “focus on how to educate kids, teachers are coming up with ever more ways to attack the existence of Israel.” 

In March, the UTLA House of Representatives passed a resolution in which we joined labor unions nationwide to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the siege in Gaza. The resolution also called on Hamas to release the Israeli hostages immediately and to “adhere to standards of international law.”

In October, it passed a resolution supporting Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ effort to block the sale of over $20 billion in offensive U.S. weapons to Israel. Sanders’ statement on the Joint Resolutions of Disapproval specifically refers to “Hamas’s horrific terrorist attack on October 7th” and states that “Israel clearly had the right to respond” to it. 

UTLA’s resolution explains that “the arms named have been used in violations of U.S. and international law, indiscriminately killing large numbers of civilians, many of them children” and that “Israel has decimated the education system. . . destroying every university in Gaza.” 

These resolutions were introduced by UTLA members and voted on in an open, democratic process in which supporters of Israeli policies fully participated. These educators also have the right to introduce resolutions in support of Israel.

There’s no malignant conspiracy here—UTLA’s resolutions have condemned Israel’s policies because most UTLA chapter representatives and HoR members, all of whom are democratically elected and many of whom are Jewish, oppose these policies.

On October 19, we published a piece about “The Middle-Class Women Who Are Tripping Balls,” by Kat Rosenfield. It focused on the American women who use illegal drugs—ranging from MDMA to magic mushrooms—to improve everything from their mental health to their marriages.

Kevin Sabet is the president of the Foundation for Drug Policy Solutions and a former White House drug policy adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Here, he responds to Kat’s piece:

In her article, Kat Rosenfield regrettably fails to outline the significant harms posed by psychedelic drugs. For many, using psychedelics is a nightmarish experience, not a pleasurable one. According to a 2023 study, 41 percent of psychedelic users reported having challenging experiences. This isn’t surprising: Negative side effects from psychedelics are well-documented. Psilocybin is known to cause psychosis, nausea, vomiting, muscle weakness, and lack of coordination. MDMA use can lead to confusion, anxiety, depression, paranoia, nausea, faintness, chills, sweating, blurred vision, and even death. Past users can also develop Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder, a condition that triggers a non-intoxicated person to reexperience the intoxicating effects of psychedelics.

Glorifying these dangerous drugs inevitably results in their normalization and increased overall use. This is an outcome we should strive to avoid.

Psychedelics have been sold to the public on the promise that users can “microdose” them in small enough quantities to limit intoxication and negative effects while maximizing the supposed benefits. Predictably, this approach is being overtaken by a push to increase the amount taken. Rosenfield describes one of the women as taking “a generous dose” of psychedelics that leads to her spending “the next several hours tripping balls.”

This dynamic is particularly concerning given increased psychedelic use is not aligned with evidence-based treatment and clinical advice. In August 2024, the FDA rejected the bid of a psychedelic drug for the treatment of PTSD because it failed to meet the criteria of safe and effective medication. In a July 2022 statement, the American Psychiatric Association said, “There is currently inadequate scientific evidence for endorsing the use of psychedelics to treat any psychiatric disorder.” Even Michael Pollan, the psychedelics advocate Rosenfield cites in her article, acknowledges the dearth of knowledge about these drugs. When asked what psychedelics do to the human mind, Pollan responded, “The honest answer: Nobody quite understands.”

The normalization of psychedelic drugs should concern us all. Not only do these substances pose harm to nonusers (last year, an off-duty pilot tried to crash an Alaska Airlines flight while high on magic mushrooms), but the psychedelic craze is reminiscent of other addiction-for-profit industries. Our country is still reeling from the public health disaster resulting from Big Tobacco’s flashy marketing, celebrity endorsements, deceptive health claims, and ignorance of scientific evidence. Tobacco companies even marketed to women, specifically, by promoting the false message that cigarettes are empowering. We should learn from our past and endorse a platform of psychedelic use prevention, not run headfirst into another public health disaster.

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