From ‘Great Awakening’ to sending death threats: A study of police-recorded crimes driven by conspiracy theories in the Netherlands

Abstract

Criminal offences associated with conspiracy theories have caused media headlines in recent years. Previous research has mainly investigated the relationship between conspiracy beliefs and intentions to, or support for, committing crimes, often relying on self-report data. We used police report data to investigate actual criminal behaviour committed in the Netherlands between January 2019 and December 2022 associated with conspiracy theories. In these unique empirical data, we found 194 crimes that show a clear relationship between the crime and belief in conspiracy theories. Most of these were related to the sovereign citizen movement (n = 83), followed by COVID-19 conspiracy theories (n = 40), the Great Reset (n = 36), and the satanic paedophile ring conspiracy theory (n = 35). Consistent with previous research, multiple suspects reported believing in multiple conspiracy theories at once. Crimes related to the sovereign citizen movement reflect an aversion towards external authority and the idea that laws do not apply to sovereign citizens, whereas crimes related to other conspiracy theories often reflect a deep societal discontent in general. Better understanding of crimes associated with conspiracy theories can help institutions such as the police respond to these crimes more effectively.

Keywords

Conspiracy beliefs conspiracy theories crime suspects criminal offending sovereign citizens

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Amarasingam

Argentino

M-A

(2020) The QAnon conspiracy theory: A security threat in the making? CTC Sentinel 13(7): 37–44.

Armaly

Buckley

Enders

(2022) Christian nationalism and political violence: Victimhood, racial identity, conspiracy, and support for the Capitol attacks. Political Behavior 44: 937–960.

Bartlett

Miller

(2010) The Power of Unreason: Conspiracy Theories, Extremism and Counter-Terrorism. London: Demos.

BBC News (2021) What is the great reset – and how did it get hijacked by conspiracy theories? Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-57532368 (accessed 14 March 2024).

Bruns

Harrington

Hurcome

(2020) ‘Corona? 5G? Or both?’: The dynamics of COVID-19/5G conspiracy theories on Facebook. Media International Australia 177(1): 12–29.

Chandler

(2020) Where we go 1 we go all: A public discourse analysis of QAnon. McNair Scholars Research Journal 13: 15–28.

Christensen

(2023) The great reset and the cultural boundaries of conspiracy theory. International Journal of Communication 17: 2348–2366.

Cubitt

Morgan

Voce

(2024) Grievances and conspiracy theories as motivators of anti-authority protests. Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice 693: 1–16.

Davis

(2024) Violence as method: The “white replacement”, “white genocide”, and “Eurabia” conspiracy theories and the biopolitics of networked violence. Ethnic and Racial Studies 48(3): 426–446.

10.

De Boer

(2024) Soevereinen en autonomen in recht en rechtspraak. Nederlands Juristenblad NJB 5: 300–315.

11.

Douglas

Sutton

(2023) What are conspiracy theories? A definitional approach to their correlates, consequences, and communication. Annual Review of Psychology 74: 271–298.

12.

Douglas

Sutton

Callan

, et al. (2015) Someone is pulling the strings: Hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories. Thinking & Reasoning 22(1): 57–77.

13.

Ebner

Kavanagh

Whitehouse

(2022) The QAnon security threat: A linguistic fusion-based violence risk assessment. Perspectives on Terrorism 16(6): 62–86.

14.

Fekete

(2012) The Muslim conspiracy theory and the Oslo massacre. Race & Class 53(3): 30–47.

15.

Fiebig

Koehler

(2022) Uncharted territory: Towards an evidence-based criminology of sovereign citizens through a systematic literature review. Perspectives on Terrorism 16(6): 34–48.

16.

General Intelligence and Security Service (2023) Anti-institutional extremism in the Netherlands. Available at: https://english.aivd.nl/publications/publications/2023/11/7/publicatie-anti-institutional-extremism-in-the-netherlands (accessed 8 November 2023).

17.

General Intelligence and Security Service, National Police and National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (2024) With your back to society: An analysis of the sovereign movement in the Netherlands. Available at: https://english.aivd.nl/publications/publications/2024/05/02/an-analysis-of-the-sovereign-movement-in-the-netherlands-with-your-back-to-society (accessed 6 May 2024).

18.

Goertzel

(1994) Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology 15(4): 731–742.

19.

Hakim

(2021) SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, and the debunking of conspiracy theories. Reviews in Medical Virology 31(6): 1–11.

20.

Imhoff

Dieterle

Lamberty

(2021) Resolving the puzzle of conspiracy worldview and political activism: Belief in secret plots decreases normative but increases nonnormative political engagement. Social Psychological and Personality Science 12(1): 71–79.

21.

Imhoff

Lamberty

(2018) How paranoid are conspiracy believers? Toward a more fine-grained understanding of the connect and disconnect between paranoia and belief in conspiracy theories. European Journal of Social Psychology 48(7): 909–926.

22.

Imhoff

Zimmer

Klein

, et al. (2022) Conspiracy mentality and political orientation across 26 countries. Nature Human Behaviour 6: 392–403.

23.

Jamison

Broniatowski

Dredze

, et al. (2020) Not just conspiracy theories: Vaccine opponents and proponents add to the COVID-19 ‘infodemic’ on Twitter. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review 1: 3–35.

24.

Jensen

Kane

(2021) QAnon-inspired violence in the United States: An empirical assessment of a misunderstood threat. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 16(1): 65–83.

25.

Jolley

Douglas

Leite

, et al. (2019) Belief in conspiracy theories and intentions to engage in everyday crime. British Journal of Social Psychology 58(3): 534–549.

26.

Jolley

Paterson

(2020) Pylons ablaze: Examining the role of 5G COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and support for violence. British Journal of Social Psychology 59(3): 628–640.

27.

Kaplan

(2021) A conspiracy of dunces: Good Americans vs. a cabal of satanic pedophiles? Terrorism and Political Violence 33(5): 917–921.

28.

Landis

Koch

(1977) The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 33(1): 159–174.

29.

Miller

(2023) The “who, what, and why” of QAnon. In: Miller

(ed) The Social Science of QAnon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3–13.

30.

National Coordinator for Counterterrorism and Security (2022) Terrorist threat assessment for the Netherlands 56. Available at: https://english.nctv.nl/documents/publications/2022/05/17/terrorist-threat-assesment-for-the-netherlands-56 (accessed 24 April 2024).

31.

Obaidi

Kunst

Ozer

, et al. (2021) The “great replacement” conspiracy: How the perceived ousting of Whites can evoke violent extremism and Islamophobia. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations 25(7): 1675–1695.

32.

Oliver

Wood

(2014) Conspiracy theories and the paranoid style(s) of mass opinion. American Journal of Political Science 58(4): 952–966.

33.

Raab

Ortlieb

Auer

, et al. (2013) Thirty shades of truth: Conspiracy theories as stories of individuation, not of pathological delusion. Frontiers in Psychology 4: 1–9.

34.

Rathje

(2022) Driven by conspiracies: The justification of violence among “Reichsbürger” and other conspiracy-ideological sovereignists in contemporary Germany. Perspectives on Terrorism 16(6): 49–61.

35.

Rottweiler

Gill

(2022) Conspiracy beliefs and violent extremist intentions: The contingent effects of self-efficacy, self-control and law-related morality. Terrorism and Political Violence 34: 1485–1504.

36.

Sarteschi

(2020) Sovereign Citizens: A Psychological and Criminological Analysis. Cham: Springer Nature.

37.

Šrol

Mikušková

Čavojová

(2021) When we are worried, what are we thinking? Anxiety, lack of control, and conspiracy beliefs amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Applied Cognitive Psychology 35(3): 720–729.

38.

Sunstein

Vermeule

(2009) Conspiracy theories: Causes and cures. Journal of Political Philosophy 17(2): 202–227.

39.

Thompson

Beveridge

McCabe

, et al. (2024) Anti-Black political violence and the history of the Great Replacement conspiracy. Perspectives on Politics 23(1): 1–16.

40.

Uscinski

Enders

Klofstad

, et al. (2022) Have beliefs in conspiracy theories increased over time? PLoS ONE 17(7): 1–19.

41.

Uscinski

Parent

(2014) American Conspiracy Theories. New York: Oxford University Press.

42.

Van Bruchem

Hendriks

Sunde

, et al. (2023) How citizens stop riots: Analyzing the case of the 2021 Dutch curfew riots. Deviant Behavior 44(11): 1650–1663.

43.

Van der Linden

(2022) Misinformation: Susceptibility, spread, and interventions to immunize the public. Nature Medicine 28: 460–467.

44.

Van Prooijen

J-W

Acker

(2015) The influence of control on belief in conspiracy theories: Conceptual and applied extensions. Applied Cognitive Psychology 29(5): 753–761.

45.

Van Prooijen

J-W

Douglas

(2017) Conspiracy theories as part of history: The role of societal crisis situations. Memory Studies 10(3): 323–333.

46.

Van Prooijen

J-W

Etienne

Kutiyski

, et al. (2023) Conspiracy beliefs prospectively predict health behavior and well-being during a pandemic. Psychological Medicine 53(6): 2514–2521.

47.

Van Prooijen

J-W

Van Lange

PAM

(2014) The social dimension of belief in conspiracy theories. In: Van Prooijen

J-W

Van Lange

PAM

(eds) Power, Politics, and Paranoia: Why People Are Suspicious of Their Leaders. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 237–253.

48.

Van Prooijen

J-W

Van Vugt

(2018) Conspiracy theories: Evolved functions and psychological mechanisms. Perspectives on Psychological Science 13(6): 770–788.

49.

Van Veldhuizen

Darmont

(2024) Los van het geld: Soevereinen en het financiële systeem. Justitiële Verkenningen 50(2): 65–77.

50.

Vargen

Challacombe

(2023) Violence risk assessment of sovereign citizens: An exploratory examination of the HCR-20 Version 3 and the TRAP-18. Behavioral Sciences & the Law 41(2–3): 55–77.

51.

Williams

Marques

Hill

, et al. (2022) Why are beliefs in different conspiracy theories positively correlated across individuals? Testing monological network versus unidimensional factor model explanations. British Journal of Social Psychology 61(3): 1011–1031.

52.

Zhao

Van Prooijen

J-W

Spadaro

(2024) Coping capacity attenuates the effect of natural disaster risk on conspiracy beliefs. Journal of Environmental Psychology 97: 102363.

53.

Zonis

Joseph

(1994) Conspiracy thinking in the Middle East. Political Psychology 15(3): 443–459.

54.

Zuckerman

(2019) QAnon and the emergence of the unreal. Journal of Design and Science 6: 1–15.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.02 MB

0.01 MB

0.02 MB