Noted he used the word "atomized," which seems like a Hannah Arendt reference. Personally, I don't worry about conspiracies, as I'm indexed on something much more plausible and serious. To scale and really be dangerous, you need for an idea to be simple and seductive. Arendts view was the idea of truth being the enemy, and once people were unmoored from it, they could not resist the directed chaos used against them. The sufficient condition was that good men did nothing. With no truth, there was no basis or identity on which to organize.

So there is no conspiracy. Just a set of incentives to align to and sustain the narrative, and the more absurd the gymnastics, the greater the rewards, because only the powerful can afford to seem so stupid and inconsistent. In that model, absurdity becomes a status signal, because to be that stupid requires hidden power.

Imo, Poppers paraphrase had been used to justify this precise set of incentives, and I don't think he's a useful reference for insight into what's going on now. Arendt, however, nailed it.