One thing that often occurs to me these days is that people don't genuinely believe whatever it is they're yelling about. They're often just the tools to hand, e.g. people suddenly acting outraged about an issue they've never expressed outrage about before because a political opponent has recently made that a viable line of attack.
There's a DeLillo interview where he says something about the modern conspiracy theory - the interview was published in 2010, iirc - being less about the theory and more about it being a statement of protest and dissatisfaction. It's not the actual narrative, it's that it disagrees with the official one.
"The earlier era of paranoia in this country was based largely on violent events arid on the suspicions that spread concerning the true nature of the particular event, from Dallas to Memphis to Vietnam. Who was behind it, what led to it, what will flow from it? How many shots, how many gunmen, how many wounds on the President’s body? People believed, sometimes justifiably, that they were being lied to by the government or elements within the government. Today, it seems, the virus is self-generated. Distrust and disbelief are centered in a deep need to raise individual discontent to an art form, often with no basis in fact. In many cases, people choose to believe a clear falsehood, about President Obama, for instance, or September 11, or immigrants, or Muslims. These are often symbolic beliefs, usable kinds of fiction, a means of protest rising from political, economic, religious, or racial complaints, or just a lousy life in a dying suburb."
