Among the aggressive warfare occurring in Ukraine from the Russian invasion, it seems like conspiracies and fake news can still sway people into a delusional land of lies.

Like we used to analyze in junior high, propaganda is a tool used by certain opponents who want to dismay people into believing a certain way.

Typically used in posters and radio advertisements, it isn’t a surprise that propaganda is now used through our new forms of media.

There is a known fact that Russians have been publishing propaganda that scapegoats Ukraine to be portrayed like the enemy, but if people research the history of the Russia-Ukraine conflict that occurred in 2014, it isn’t hard to spot the fallacies.

A common rumour circulating social media is that the Ukrainian army has been wrongfully killing civilians in Donestk and Luhansk since 2014 and that Russia is putting things in order and bringing peace to these regions.

The validity of these posts and claims have been from people saying they live in Russia.

Vladimir Putin has even repeated false claims of genocide that have been debunked by several fact-checking sites.

Politifact.org shares that despite multiple claims of a Ukrainian genocide against ethnic Russians, there is no evidence to support it.

As well, international bodies that include Russian representatives report that civilian deaths have plummeted since 2014. Including Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., who has relied on misleading and outdated evidence to back the claim.

Another slice of fake news has been linked to an ongoing dangerous conspiracy theory regarding a New World Order (NWO).

People who have followed platforms like QAnon and other conspiracy-based sites have shared that Putin didn’t start this war, but it was created by Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden — supposedly using war as a distraction to keep us from focusing on the works of an NWO.

What is an NWO? Essentially, a new world government, a single-world currency, all under the government form of communism.

The conspiracies source comes from a 100-year-old book by the name of ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ which is about how Jewish individuals plot to take over the world by starting wars, manipulating banks and media, and forming a lifelong one-world government.

This book claims to be about a real record of a meeting that occurred.

The book was read by people like Adolf Hitler and suggested one of the reasons for majorly scapegoating Jewish people.

Though Trudeau and Biden are not Jewish, you don’t have to be Jewish to instill the idea of an NWO, according to this belief system.

People believe that global elites and billionaires are all in this together and are plotting to create a totalitarian one-world government.

Who is to blame? Well, considering misunderstandings and conspiracies have been around for centuries. For example, we used to exorcise people who had seizures and hanged women who were literate and, thus, must be a witch.

Blame the double-edged sword of what we use every day, the internet.

How exactly can there still be this type of nonsense when we have such valuable information at our fingertips? Well, there is no censorship on the internet, and people are free to believe what they want.

Why exactly do people believe so deeply into conspiracy and misinformation?

Studies done by Union College, show that there is a common trait shared among people who believe in conspiracies.

“Our results clearly showed that the strongest predictor of conspiracy belief was a constellation of personality characteristics collectively referred to as ‘schizotypy,’” Joshua Hart said, a journal sourced by the study.

For example, the former President of the United States, Donald Trump, wasn’t voted out because of democracy but because a group of cannibalistic-paedophilic-elite group of politicians are conspiring against him.

People often believe in theories that fit their own political narrative.

“Our results clearly showed that the strongest predictor of conspiracy belief was a constellation of personality characteristics collectively referred to as ‘schizotypy,’” Joshua Hart said.

“The trait borrows its name from schizophrenia, but it does not imply a clinical diagnosis. Hart’s study also showed that conspiracists had distinct cognitive tendencies: they were more likely than nonbelievers to judge nonsensical statements as profound (a tendency known as “BS receptivity”).”

Hart continued, “they [conspiracists in conducted study] were more likely to say that nonhuman objects — triangle shapes moving around on a computer screen — were acting intentionally.”

Perhaps it’s the idea of believing that there is no way bad things can happen without a sinister reason for them, and these individuals often fill the gaps with their own theories.