These are the stories of three people who embraced radical anti-government conspiracy theories, but then later they saw they were wrong: Brent Lee, Jeran Campanella, and Jules Diamond. What led them into conspiracy theories? What led them out? How did their communities respond?
I created this video as my final project for ENGL 470: Rhetorics of Conspiracy, a class I took at Purdue University under Dr. Michael J. Salvo.
Video Transcript
Everyone opts into some kind of belief system. Everyone puts their trust somewhere. Some beliefs may be formed by the New York Times or what our school teachers taught us or what we think we can see with our own eyes or what our peers seem to believe. We opt into belief systems about the shape of the earth, about history, about God, about medicine, about happiness, and about morality.
Sometimes we opt out. We label those who opt out of mainstream beliefs and into fringe territory conspiracy theorists.
Today we are exploring the stories of three people who embraced radical anti-government conspiracy theories, but then later they saw they were wrong.
First, please allow me to introduce you to an English musician named Brent Lee.
1. Brent Lee
When Brent was 24, he downloaded a series of videos with curious claims about 9/11. He began to wonder, was 911 a terrorist attack, or was it planned by the government? Brent held a sense of justice for the victims of 9/11 and he had a desire to find the real people who organized the 911 attacks. This motivation drew him in. Then he was drawn into one conspiracy after another after another after another until one day he heard the US broadcaster Alex Jones claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax and that none of the 20 children had actually died. Alex Jones called the parents crisis actors.
Now, this didn’t sit right with Brent.
He began to have doubts and see where he had errored in his other conspiracy theories. Eventually, he became disillusioned and he left his beliefs.
Now, we must ask, how did Brent’s community of conspiracy theorists respond when he switched away from the conspiracy theories he used to believe in? I was reading a book called Fringe Rhetorics by Karen Schroeder Sorensen and I thought, hey, well, maybe this could work pretty well if you have an ex ex-conspiracy theorist sharing their story with current conspiracy theorists. And to show you why, I’m actually giving you an example of a current conspiracy theorist named Mark Sergeant.
Sidebar: Mark Sargent & Rhetorical Assent
Mark is a flat-earther. You would expect him to take his flat earth model very seriously if he showed you it. But um when Mark shows you a flat earth model for the first time, he says, “If you don’t make fun of this, there’s probably something wrong with you.” He’ll give you a moment to laugh at it. And he admits that he used to laugh at it. This gives you a gateway to ask skeptical questions and to further explore flat earth beliefs. And it’s really interesting to me.
Let’s think about rhetorical ascent. Wayne Booth defines ascent as the art of discovering warrantable beliefs and improving those beliefs in shared discourse. Sergeant uses ascent by affirming that skepticism is valid. “Everyone starts with skepticism. Everyone’s skeptical of the flat earth at some point in their lives. So, let’s normalize that and let’s build on this common understanding and introduce some new beliefs.”
So, this is a very interesting and effective use of rhetorical ascent. Now, my question is, could Brent Lee do the same thing? Could he go to current conspiracy theorists and say, “Hey, I see you. I appreciate your curiosity and your longing for justice. I was there once. Let’s pivot from false conspiracies to real issues.” What would a conspiracy theorist say to that?
Well, here’s a quote from Brent. Brent said, “My first intention was just to bring my friends back out of the rabbit hole. That backfired on me. They have completely cut me off, treated me like a pariah.”
Ouch. It’s not quite what we were going for here.
Next, I’ll introduce you to Jeran Campanella and see if we can find a happier ending.
2. Jeran Campanella
Jeran and his wife one day decided that they were going to rebuild their belief system from the ground up based on what they could prove. And as they were in this process, his wife looked out the window one day and said, “What if the Earth is flat?” And he said, “That’s stupid.” But Jeran, he started to look into it and do some Googling, do some research, and he became convinced that the Earth was flat. And he became a pretty serious flat-earther. And a YouTuber.
One day, someone organized a trip to Antarctica with 12 flatearthers and 12 non-flatears. Jeran was one of the flat-earthers, and they went to see the 24-hour sun. And when Jeran saw the 24-hour sun and the empirical evidence for the Earth being round, he completely changed his mindset and revoked his beliefs.
So, this is kind of crazy, right? A flatearther finds evidence of a round earth. And now, how are the flatearthers going to respond to him? Well, how they actually responded was that they threw him under the bus and they called him a bunch of names and they blocked him in Jeran’s own words. So, that didn’t really work out.
3. Jules Diamond
But, we’ll look at one more example of an ex-conspiracy theorist. We’re going to meet a gal named Jules Diamond. And when she was just 15, she was homeless. She was desperate for meaning and understanding. She was trying to make sense of everything. And that’s when she met an alternative health community in New Zealand and they took her in.
But they had a few conditions. She needed to adopt the belief systems of this group. She needed to believe that the government lied to her, that they were tracking her phone, that vaccines are a threat to personal rights. And she became an antivaxer and very anti-medicine, very anti-doctor.
You see, in this case, this group had a lot of social power over her. more power over her than she had over them. But she cut ties with the group when she moved to Australia. In her late 30s, she found a new community of friends, and that’s when she began to doubt her conspiracy beliefs.
Now, she shares her story with others in hopes of pulling others from the rabbit hole. However, it’s been hard because most conspiracy theorists will dismiss her as one of the sheeple or accuse her of being part of the conspiracy.
Conclusion
Perhaps these stories of Brent, Jiren, and Jules don’t have as much power as we might hope. It is hard to change a mind that is fixed in confirmation bias and circular logic. However, maybe we can still learn from each of these former conspiracy theorists by seeing what led them out. When we look closely, we find a pattern.
One became a conspiracy theorist to pursue justice. And he left conspiracy theories for justice, too.
One joined the flat earth movement to look for truth. And he left when he saw the truth for himself.
One became an antivaxer because that was the community that found her. And later she left because she found a new community.
That’s what I learned when I explored the stories of ex-conspiracy theorists. In each of these cases, these values that drew them into the rabbit hole turned out to be the best values to lead them into the light.
References
Anna Kelsey-Sugg. (2024, July 13). These former conspiracy theory believers were deep down the rabbit hole. Here’s what pulled them out. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-14/former-conspiracy-theory-believers-changed-their-minds/103999008
Anna Kelsey-Sugg, Sana Qadar and Rose Kerr. (2024, June 11). These conspiracy theory believers went deep down the rabbit hole—Then found a way out. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-12/conspiracy-theory-believers-on-how-they-got-out-of-rabbit-hole/103907258
Booth, Wayne C. (1974). Modern dogma and the rhetoric of assent. University of Chicago Press.
Center for Inquiry. (2025, March 31). A flat earther sees the light—A conversation with Jeran Campanella—YouTube [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLkyYDch3zI&t=15s
Gentleman, A. (2023, October 4). Escape from the rabbit hole: The conspiracy theorist who abandoned his dangerous beliefs. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/04/escape-from-the-rabbit-hole-the-conspiracy-theorist-who-abandoned-his-dangerous-beliefs
https://nypost.com/2024/12/19/lifestyle/flat-earthers-admit-defeat-after-seeing-24-hour-antarctica-sun-sometimes-you-are-wrong/. (2024, December 19). Flat-earthers admit defeat after seeing 24-hour Antarctica sun: ‘Sometimes you are wrong.’ New York Post. https://nypost.com/2024/12/19/lifestyle/flat-earthers-admit-defeat-after-seeing-24-hour-antarctica-sun-sometimes-you-are-wrong/
Karen Schroeder Sorensen. (2022). Fringe Rhetorics: Conspiracy Theories and the Paranormal. Lexington Books.
Professor Dave Explains. (2025, September 18). Mocking flat earthers with jeranism (former flat earther)—YouTube [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1grMf17PeEk%20-
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