Democratic Resilience in the Age of Conspiracy: Balancing Perseverance and Adaptability

Conspiracist ideologies arise and spread particularly easily under democratic conditions and, on the other hand, are a massive stress test for the resilience of democratic principles and institutions. At the same time, conspiracy ideologies provoke extremely polarising group identities and performa-tively undermine confidence in democracy's problem-solving capacity. They are therefore not harmless fantasies, but should be regarded as a serious threat. This makes it all the more important not to try to counter the growing belief in conspiracy myths with authoritarian measures (e.g. cen-sorship), but to rely on the self-efficacy of democracy to strengthen the specifically democratic resilience between perseverance and adaptability, stability and dynamism. Accordingly, this article outlines the contours of a form of political education that, when dealing with conspiracy ideologies, relies less on conventional debunking strategies and the “authority” of truth, and instead primarily promotes tolerance of ambiguity, participation in political plurality and the ability to deal with conflict.