Conspiracy theories and witchcraft persecutions

Contemporary conspiracy theories and older witchcraft beliefs have a lot in common. Both are networks of ideas, mostly unconnected with each other, but linked by tenuous theories. This comparison has been explored by a team of researchers at UCLA and Berkeley using AI and folklore to map the key people, things, and relationships in thousands of social media posts.

On reading the article in The Guardian, a couple of things struck me. One was the similarity to rhizomatic theory as expounded...