Here at The Patriot Post, we often express exasperation at leftists for making their entire identity all about victimhood. However, there is a growing version of this on the Right as well that takes on the guise of conspiratorial thinking.

How are victimhood and conspiratorial thinking the fruit of the same poisonous tree? Leftists believe that people are victims of society at large. They have set up their own morality, their own version of compassion and justice, based on the belief that different types of people have it harder and therefore deserve extra privileges at the expense of others they deem less worthy (e.g., white heterosexuals).

Conspiratorial thinkers have concocted a very similar worldview. Ostensibly, they are the victims of being lied to eternally by society’s elites and the government. They feel virtuous and justified every time one of their theories supposedly comes to pass. Furthermore, those who aren’t fellow travelers are either evil, being duped, or subservient to “the system.”

Believing that men cannot become women is not conforming to the system; it is conforming to reality. By the same token, believing that the Holocaust or the moon landing did actually occur is not conforming to the system; it is simply in accordance with reality.

Conservative pundit Matt Walsh recently observed that conspiratorial thinking turns peanut gallery observers into the worst, most despicable sort of people. He first gave the example of Sandy Hook and how immediately afterward, a conspiracy theory cropped up asserting that the terrible school shooting there never even happened. Alex Jones was taken to task legally for pushing that bogus conspiracy.

Walsh then went on to address Candace Owens’s conspiracy regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk. This lunatic podcaster keeps insinuating that Charlie’s widow, Erika, and her surreptitious inner circle murdered her husband.

Owens, supposedly a right-winger, is copying from the Left’s playbook by using victim identity to her advantage. She claims that we were lied to about who killed Charlie, and her suspects comprise foreign governments, the U.S. military, TPUSA, and Erika Kirk herself.

The first episode of “Bride of Charlie” — Owens’s defamatory documentary that openly persecutes Erika — recently premiered on social media. It meanders from disconnected anecdote to disconnected anecdote, though Owens points to all these disparate tidbits to conclude that there is something sinister about Erika Kirk. No evidence of misconduct was presented in the episode.

Walsh noted that Owens provides zero evidence. She has anecdotes, innuendos, and non-credible tips from all sorts of people — and yet there is actual hard evidence against the young man charged with murdering Charlie. As Walsh put it, “These attacks on Erika by Candace, and by everyone else engaged in this campaign, are wrong. Deeply, desperately wrong. Wrong morally and factually. They are wrong morally because they are wrong factually.”

Finally, Walsh pointed out that conspiracies today face intense scrutiny because of the internet. At the click of a button, an innocent interview can turn sinister. Everyone becomes an amateur sleuth trying to earn their five minutes of fame.

Frankly, the same sort of brain rot is happening in the search for Nancy Guthrie. Influencers are fighting each other for airtime in front of Guthrie’s house. The sheriff has been criticized for living his life instead of being glued to this case every second of the day. We’re dealing with actual human lives, not watching a kidnapping caper on TV.

Savannah Guthrie and her siblings probably haven’t had a moment’s peace from the media hounds as the greatest tragedy of their lives is unfolding. Erika Kirk has been similarly thrust into the spotlight, all while trying to keep from utterly falling apart.

The conspiracy theorist and the leftist are united in their delusion that they can shape reality with the click of a button. Truth is what they make it. In the process, innocent people are getting dragged through the mud. Not only that, but in Erika’s case, they are painting a target on the backs of her children. A crazy conspiracy theorist might take matters into his own hands and attack an innocent family to see that “justice” is served for Charlie.

That is not justice. It is ignorance, willfulness, and evilness.

Nevertheless, at the end of the day, the conspiratorial thinkers will still claim they are the victims. No matter what solid evidence is presented to them, they won’t stray from their belief that they are being perpetually lied to. It brings truth to the adage, “You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”