Real life: “My brother is a conspiracy theorist”

Anne is deeply ashamed of her brother. Their bond used to be very strong, but in recent years he has changed enormously. Anne thinks he has completely lost touch with reality.

‘My brother Dennis has always been a quiet boy. He is only two years older than me, and we used to play a lot together. We are really the opposite: I am very extroverted, he is introverted. That’s why I often took him along, so he would be around people. He didn’t have many friends of his own.

When it was just the two of us, we could chat for hours about everything and anything. I thought he was just selective about who he considered his close friends. When he was alone, he spent a lot of time on the computer. Gaming, with a headset so he could be in contact with his fellow players. Many of his friends were online. I didn’t understand much of that; I only talked to my friends online whom I also saw in real life, but I wasn’t a gamer either. My parents also thought it would be fine with him and didn’t worry too much: he was happy, right? That works differently for everyone. At school, he got good grades and was determined to go to university; he wanted to study computer science.

But somewhere in his second year of study, something changed. He became even more withdrawn and didn’t let me in anymore. I no longer lived at home, but he did. Every time I came to my parents’ house for dinner, he acted so strangely. Dennis made derogatory comments. He often said that we knew nothing and advised us to educate ourselves more. About what, he was vague about, probably because we corrected his strange comments. He had remarks about literally everything. The weather, school assignments, and especially politics. In that last area, he became more and more interested, but in an unhealthy way. He found the news unreliable and said that so much was happening in the world that we were unaware of.

We realized how far he had gone after about six months. It happened so quickly for him; within six months he had changed from a quiet but sweet boy into a convinced conspiracy theorist. I didn’t talk about it with anyone because I was deeply ashamed and was sure people would laugh at me. Understandably, because that’s also your reaction when someone tells you with conviction that the Illuminati exist and have ultimate power over the world. Completely insane, you would think. But when it’s your brother and you see in his eyes that he means it, it’s really not funny anymore. Scary, indeed.

It got worse and worse, and now we hardly reach him anymore. The scary thing is that he is such an intelligent boy and that he no longer lets himself be guided. We sometimes — cautiously — urge him to talk to a psychologist, but he brushes it off and says they just want to get him in line. They want to make him a compliant citizen, like we are. He thinks we are docile sheep. And now with the coronavirus, it’s worse than ever. He is convinced that the virus was created to eliminate weak people, so that only strong people remain. This would be at the behest of the Illuminati, who want to do something about overpopulation on Earth.

We can’t take it seriously, but we also don’t know how to deal with it anymore. I especially feel sorry for my parents, with whom he still lives at home. But I’m also afraid that it won’t just be thinking…’

In this unusual time, we asked people to share their honest story. To avoid hurting others, the names of Anne and Dennis have been changed.