As Australians discovered after a shooting in Queensland this week, as Germany found in its network of princely houses last week, and as New Zealand found in the Christchurch shooting of 2019, it looks like a major American export now is conspiracy theories.
They are delivered through a sophisticated process of amplification and distribution. They are politically mainstreamed through the US Republican Party, laundered through right-wing media voices such as Fox, and powered by social media.
Since Donald Trump announced his candidacy in 2015 and quickly became the standard-bearer of his party’s conspiracist faction, it’s been hiding in plain sight. It peaked last week when the world’s erstwhile richest man Elon Musk used his own platform to tweet “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” to the virtual applause of 1.2 million likes.
Conspiracies once evolved into cults — now they power the political right.
It’s just another episode in the “those crazy Americans” drama so popular around the world. Except now viral speed rushes these made-in-the-USA conspiracies across oceans to be translated out of context into local circumstances, before bouncing to-and-fro around the world, turning the conspiracy global.
Police are investigating the online activity of Gareth and Nathaniel Train, the two gunmen who killed three people, including two police officers, on a remote property in Queensland on Monday. An account with the name “Gareth Train” posted about the Port Arthur massacre conspiracy — that the 1996 mass killings in Tasmania were a false flag to provide political cover for gun control.
It’s a theory previously dabbled in by “just asking questions” Pauline Hanson. Now it’s woven into the US right’s conspiracy that children caught in mass-school shootings are “crisis actors” in the “government wants our guns” movement. (It was conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ over-eager embrace of the “crisis actors” meme that bankrupted him in multimillion-dollar defamation payouts to parents of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.)
The “sovereign citizen” theory originated with an over-interpretation of the US constitution. It’s been adapted in Australia (again, apparently, by one of the Train brothers), stripped of its very American constitutional mooring. The German version of the theory — the “Reichsbürger” movement — inspired the coup-curious group arrested last week.
The 2019 manifesto of the Australian-born Christchurch killer drew on past manifestos in the US and Norway and inspired others in return. (Six months later, a killer in El Paso started his own manifesto with: “In general, I support the Christchurch shooter and his manifesto.”)
We saw the cross-Pacific back-and-forth in the reporting of News Corps’ Walkley Award-winning reporter Sharri Markson on the “lab-leak conspiracy”. Her book What Really Happened in Wuhan constructed the narrative for the “lab-leak theory”, a theory that has culminated in turning US President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci into the scapegoat for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now we understand better how conspiracies spread, it’s time to answer two harder questions. Where do they come from? And why do they find such an enthusiastic market?
Sometimes we can see back to a theory’s origin moment — like the 2017 posts of the anonymous “Q” on 4chan’s message boards that have inspired the twists and turns of the QAnon right. But even those had roots in the “deep state” conspiracy, and even further back in the notoriously anti-Semitic child blood libel.
We’ve known since the 1920s that the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion was forged by imperial Russia’s secret police (although that knowledge hasn’t stopped its spread). But again, the protocols only supplied documentation for an already widespread anti-Semitism.
This week, we saw the reemergence of the most popular take on why conspiracies are embraced: some people are just plain nuts. As an Occam’s razor response, it’s easy to understand its attraction.
A bit too easy. When conspiracists get dangerously out of hand, it’s a way of blaming the theorist while protecting the theory. It’s made “mental health” the go-to waive-off by the pro-gun crowd in response to the all-too-regular US shootings. Same in Australia this week when a News Corp tabloid manoeuvred to explain how Nathaniel Train’s “sudden spiral from respected primary school principal to cold-blooded killer started with a heart attack that struck as he battled an exams cheating scandal”.
Much safer than trying to look at how he was radicalised by right-wing conspiracy theories — and a lot safer than looking at how those theories come to be spread.
There’s no shortage of people looking. Some point to the surge in uncertainty driven by the big technological and economic shifts of the past two decades leaving people vulnerable to authoritarianism and extremist impulses. Psychologists look to the desire for significance or for the offerings of community that conspiracy groups offer. Cultural theorists point to “the paranoid style of late capitalism” (Fredric Jameson) or the attraction of pseudo-rationality for the “semi-erudite” (Theodor Adorno).
For journalism, it’s the hardest of calls: how to get the right mix of reporting, analysis and, yes, mockery of the conspiracy noise without lending the credibility of the craft to the amplification of the political signal that noise is trying to send.
It’s also significant that the Trains were raised in an isolated religious cult. There are strong similarities in following a conspiracy theory and the more extreme versions of various religions. They all provide neat explanations of everything, they all encourage paranoid views and deep suspicion of outsiders. They reward the faithful for sticking with bizarre beliefs against all external attempts to persuade them otherwise. And so on. Perhaps the only difference between a conspiracy theory and a religious cult is that the latter typically also involves some supernatural elements.
In some ways conspiracy theories are a belief in “something bigger.” We have always had conspiracy theorists but atm they are being validated by people that know better. Sure, you won’t find journalists going as far as lizard people nonsense but they’ll go right up to the edge of that line. Most of these conspiracies are just rehashed old conspiracies.
The sort of journalists you describe do not necessarily know better, and if they do they also know that is an irrelevant consideration for their craft. They are paid to get clicks on articles and plenty of response in comments. So, the choice between stoking the fire or pouring cold water on it is no choice at all. They have to earn a crust and this is how its done.
And when even the ABC abides by this ‘business model’, one is forced to ask whether it’s fit for purpose any longer.
They know they’re pedaling lies
Getting clicks on articles could possibly be described as entertainment but has little to do with journalism.
I’d say that pretending to be something constitutes a greater relationship than ‘little to do with’ 😉
Much better to think of lizards as people.
It would be bigotry & exclusionary to do otherwise.
Well hey, not only do I object to ‘…people that…’, it’s ‘…animals who…’ from me.
As IF animals aren’t people. And nearly all of them are nicer than humans.
Our former PM decided to announce to his Pentecostal brethren that “you can’t trust Government” – what a hypocrite he is.
At the Robodebt Royal Commission, he consistently proclaimed his “faith” in those senior bureaucrats he was throwing under the bus.
There’s a particular kind of inner turmoil associated with clicking ‘like’ on pretty much any bald statement of fact about that stinking grub.
Thanks for mentioning the kook for Cook.
He definitely belongs in this discussion. Frikken happy-clapping amen snorter.
I’d say the key element in these subcultures is the development of a personal bullsht filter is discouraged.
Unfortunately, critical thinking is hardly more encouraged in wider society… We’re perched on the precipice of an abyss.
A conspiracy theory is a set of beliefs where evidence to the contrary can be taken to prove you were right all along. Older-established conspiracy theories are called “religions”. Nothing new here.
Religions prove that many people are happy to suspend reality.
This is only looking at the darker fringe of religion. Conspiracy theorists are obsessed with finding someone to blame for various ills. This is not the preoccupation of most religious people.
“…it was God’s will that ‘gran died of covid’ or, if you prefer, ‘gran died of being vaccinated’…”
There’s this Satan chappie. You might want to look into him.
No such bloke.
But surely where there’s smoke there’s fire? Surely??
As I say, few religious people are obsessed with “this chappie.,” even those who believe in him.
The Satan of the Satanic Temple is wholly admirable, and does a splendid job of annoying the bejasus out of the Xtian zealots of the USA by, for example, mocking their attempts to subvert the separation of church and state.
And he’s prone to quoting chapter and verse of their book at them, to do it, too.
Lucifer Morning Star was the First of the angels until he blotted his copybook by leading a third of the heavenly host in revolt, refusing to kowtow to the upstart son.
Hm, so was he to the left of Jesus?
I might take a pamphlet.
I would rephrase this as “conspiracy theorists are obsessed with find ways to blame the people they want to be responsible for various ills”.
So believing in childish nonsense is ok? Over generations? Reality not important?
Apparently not Paul, no. There’s ample evidence for people “believing in childish nonsense”.
A lot of these conspiracies are not particularly new. QAnon basically is the Satanic Panic repackaged, the “evil Jewish bankers” goes back a really long time. It’s fairly banal to say, “elites get away with stuff others don’t”
Right, so it shouldn’t raise any eyebrows to state that the elite got where they are, and continue to reinforce their position, via getting away with stuff – while we all drag ourselves through the weekly grind following their orders with nary a peep. Right?
So why do I have such a hard time getting anyone fired up over these ravening psychos driving our civilisation and biosphere off a cliff? If we’re so mindless that we continue to lick the boot these days, we deserve to fail.
Hearteningly, there are finally a couple of faint flickerings (whodathunk the good old SEC could be on the table, and ol’ Rupe seems to be losing the lead out of his pencil), but it kinda needed to be a raging bonfire by now.
That urgency, of the social consequences of fifty years of class war waged by the elite, and/or impending ecological apocalypse, is so thick in the air.
A lot of folks aren’t well-informed/educated enough to find the true signal in all that noise out there.
But any fool can tell you, blind Freddy will chip in too, that the pomp and the circumstance and the guns and the bombs and the suits and ties cover a nest of lies and a vacuum of legitimacy.
At least the tinfoil brigade are acting on that basis, unlike the vast majority who must compartmentalise it away, I guess
I know that we are not supposed to do this, but I can’t help but feel contempt for, and want to ridicule, losers like this. And I agree that the USA seems to be the petri dish for all of these stupid and dangerous ideas.
Hey, at least they’re acting on the basis that the cake is a lie, I’ll give em that much.
Alex Jones may be bankrupt, but he is still on air, peddling his poison, and completely free to do so. Just ask Kanye. No doubt Jones will hail the Queensland killers as heroes for taking a stance against State oppression.
I’m sure that some knuckle head has done so by now no matter where they’re located.