Masks: Reason and Reactance

Are you getting tired of the circus around wearing masks? The demonstrations that some say had 500,000 people, others 20,000? The sick comparisons that say “mask = yellow star?”The professors and doctors coming on with smug faces and saying: “It was all wrong, it’s just the flu, the dead are not dead”? Don’t be tired. Democracy is the child of philosophers, it was never really accepted, it’s complicated and needs a lot of attention.

Face masks, something dentists use, doctors use, surgeons use, even construction workers use, and people who ride bikes in cities could/should use because of pollution, have become a huge bone of contention that a lot of people are gnawing on. There are many reasons for this, but two main lines stick out. One: Scientists can’t quite agree on clear recommendations, not because masks don’t protect, but for reasons having more to do with human behavior and the complexity of confronting the coronavirus and the diversity of masks and how people use them (that was the recent Dutch issue). Many, as scientists are wont do, have tweaked their views with the spread of the virus and the evolution of society’s response. This doesn’t mean they are confused…

Secondly, there is the behavior of some leaders, notably the fellow pretending to be the president of the USA, who made an issue of it early on, mainly because the virus highlighted his utter incompetence in leadership, and it threatened to consume the time he needed for golf, tweeting, and watching television. He had to find something to distract and deflect from his failure and recent impeachment, so he blurted out a few stupidities about bleach (probably a reference to Miracle Mineral Supplement, a poisonous disinfectant  being sold as a cure-all for everything from cancer to autism), UV lights, miracle cures, summer killing the virus, and Democrat hoaxes. The media spent weeks being outraged, and on cue his cultish followers started yelling liberty, unpacking their guns, cosplaying patriots fighting the neo-red coats, threatening health care professionals, in a nutshell, an embarrassing spectacle for an industrialized nation. Thus, the virus spread, and infantile chaos  replaced reason.

Out of the woodwork crawled the conspiracy theorists, and with them the disgruntled doctors with axes to grind against their more successful colleagues – who are part of the conspiracy, along with “the media.” The professors of recondite institutes hopped on board, too, and because it’s such a great occasion to be heard and revered by the data spreaders of social media, the anti-vaxxers unpacked their  axes, of course, and the climate change deniers, holocaust deniers, Q-Anoners, Reichburgers, “populists” (that’s the other word for you-know-what), the Gateway Pundit, gun-toters, Tea-Party apostles, evangelicals, in short, all the usual suspects. A circus that should have been painted by Breughel.

(Update May 2021: Two articles on masks here and here with thanks to Sharon Presley for the two links)

Suddenly we have a kind of war about nothing, one of those terrific distractions that seem to expose a society bored stiff and pampered by comfort and cheap consumer goods, a “Societé du Spectacle,” to conjure Guy Debord, one that has nothing  more serious to think about, like the actual value of liberty (hint: liberty is deeper than being asked to wear a face mask, nor is it equivalent to traffic lights, condoms, seat belts, air bags, helmets, and saying hello when you meet someone).

How are we to get along if every time there’s a collective challenge or problem that needs all of us to concentrate and work together, the political majordomos seize the occasion and set up an army of drama kings and queens with fallacious arguments and oddball theories. Imagine all those whirring servers chewing up energy just to keep all that hot air, arguments, YT-clips and gaslight moving!

Maybe it comes from too much television. Too much info. Boredom. The lure of “interesting” if wobbly facts. A false dialectic. Deep-seated fears of a new-ish situation. Or, as I often suspect, plain egotism and what psychologists call reactance: An almost irrational/immature reaction to being told what to do, even if it is perfectly reasonable. Which is then experienced as an infringement on personal liberty, a deep aggression on the individual, an attack on Grundrechte, basic rights, the Constitution, Magna Carta, the freedom of speech.

Marchers against the mask…. right-wing extremists have gotten involved…

All it’s about is trying to prevent the spread of a deadly virus. And since the situation is quite new, new data demands a new approach. It’s not about basic rights and human rights. It’s more like putting a traffic light at a dangerous intersection.

This sounds very one-sided, and it is, because bothsiderism happens to be an intellectual plague that has invaded the media and it’s doing no one any good. It equates flimflam with the real thing. It’s time to put the church back into the village, as the Germans say : In a democracy*, we have the blessing of rights. Switch off Facebook and the TV, read some material on feudal or autocratic societies by some decent authors, and you’ll immediately see what is meant by rights. But there’s the companion to that: duties or obligations. My liberty is limited by the liberty of others and of the collective, and that means I have to sometimes accept 60%, or even less of the rights-cake. If that means that by “spontaneity” is being infringed upon, then so be it. If I have to urinate, I look for toilet, I don’t just do it where I am standing. Ethics demand that we ask ourselves: What if everyone did this, what would the world look like (I think that idea was propounded by Kant, but let’s not get too serious).

Rights and obligations maintain a balance between the individual and the collective. Otherwise our society would become an ochlocracy. A rule by mob. Where silo-dwelling groups, believing that they have the right to do X, Y, or Z (like the gun owners in the USA, by the way), theatrically proclaim it, do it, and get into everyone else’s hair. This can have dire consequences, even murder. Imagine if everyone did it with the anti-mask and anti-confinement actions… You don’t have to imagine it. Look at the USA. 185,000 deaths (updated) and climbing. Brazil the same, where the evangelical boss ignored the threat completely.

That’s why I posted the quote by Mathieu Ricard from his book Altruism on my Facebook page:

Individualism mistakes the freedom to do what you please and real freedom, which consists in being master of yourself. (…) Spontaneity is a valuable quality as long as it is not actually mental agitation. To be free inside means first and foremost liberating yourself from the dictatorship of egocentrism and the negative sentiments that go along with it.

Here’s the deal: Many friends of mine complain about having to wear a mask. That’s a luxury. The same friends pass around the shrill screeds of anti-maskers and usually in the same breath anti-vaxers, another great luxury, since the same people tend to live in nations with outstanding medical infrastructure, excellent doctors, with health insurance, a phone number that will get you an ambulance in ten minutes, and where vaccination programs have led to herd immunity already, so you are free not to get vaccinated. That’s not the case in many developing nations, where crowded conditions, lack of medical care, and poverty (often due to our unquenchable thirst for cheap consumer products that have to be manufactured for $3 a day) make diseases deadly. I often mention diphtheria in Yemen and polio in Afghanistan, but there are others.

I don’t have the luxury either. I work. Every day. About 140%, because I do my work as a drifting journalist and copywriter, and as a teacher. The latter means I am in a small classroom (about 45 square meters), with twenty-three teenagers, who tend to chatter a lot (aerosols). I have to speak loudly (aerosols). Some kids might have asthma (risk), or diabetes (risk), or it’s their parents. Or their grandparents, who take care of them, because the parents are working. We are dealing with a highly infectious disease (if you think Covid-19 is a hoax, please protect yourself with tin foil). I might carry the virus without knowing it. Or it’s one of the kids who brought it in. I might transfer it home without knowing it. I do know that a mask can help however. Because I read a lot about it. And because three dentists  told me. And other medical personnel, like my doctor. Especially if social distancing is not possible. That’s all. It makes me a covidiot, a sheep, and some other choice terms, but too bad.

My classroom is a two-thirds of this and the tables are closer togteher

And by the way: Even before the pandemic, I sent sick kids home. Because I didn’t want a classroom of sick kids to delay the course. Maybe this time we can even reduce the impact of the other flu. Who knows.

At any rate: Here is the conclusion from a long article in the Telegraph explaining that the mask alone might not be perfect, because the problem is in the feeling of  safety that a mask can generate, which in turn means that people can forget to keep their distance. The article is fairly clear, and a lot less smug than some of the stuff floating around. Bottom line:

Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh, said: “A number of new studies and systematic reviews have persuaded most researchers and public health officials that they should be worn, including those who were skeptical a few months ago …  Growing evidence on potential airborne transmission of the virus adds to the case for face coverings.”  You don’t have to wear a mask at home. But if you’re in a train (which many of my anti-mask friends are not, in a shop, or in a crowded place, just do it. Even if you think it doesn’t look chic enough. You can take a selfie without it at some other time.

*Democracy…. what is it…. I have a few ideas about one branch, but it’s for later

Parallel Worlds (Part 3): The Followers and the Fighters

 

This is the last section on conspiracy theories (for the moment). It is written to bear witness to what I see as a genuine poison in discussions these days about matters political and social. More and more people dear to me are falling for these patently false narratives created to enhance the “owner.” And increasingly, they begin sounding like members of a cult, with a specific liturgy, tropes about “freedom,” constant self-victimization, and the arrogance to think that their narrative, unsupported and  made of whole cloth, is somehow of paramount importance for the world.

Why I take the time to write is a good question. It’s not to criticize my friends or acquaintances who decide to post this stuff. They are well-intentioned, often. Many seek self-improvement, self-knowledge, new-age solutions, but in our discussions, I sometimes notice a reluctance to be stringent in their thinking. They are suspicious of authority, they question shibboleths, they want to find alternatives, they don’t want to be conventional. This is all good, when exploring a topic dialectically. But when you set up syllogisms full of weak or fallacious premises, the entire construct collapses in a sorry heap. That is not the result of a conspiracy, but rather shoddy data.

One of the almost laughable contradictions of many conspiracy theories, particularly noticeable in  the ones swirling around Covid 19, is that they keep saying that “they” (government, journalists, etc.) are trying to create fear in order to “fill in the blank.” The conspiracy theory (hereafter CT), of course, is in and of itself based on the idea of spreading fear. In fact, fear is a major emotional pillar holding up conspiracy theory, even if the creator or “CEO” of the theorist pretends to be above it all. He/she must communicate the fear to the followers. “Whenever there’s an event, a global event or even a local event, that makes people feel that they have lost control over their lives or their future, that is when conspiracy theories emerge,” said psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky, on 60 Minutes, Australia. He pointed out that CT, ironically,  offer some people comfort, a way to explain the randomness of life.

Fear and rationalism are not good friends

It’s sad to see your friends drift into this bizarre, ephemeral thought system. Because passed a certain point, no amount of rational or empirical argumentation can help. The CT acts like a psychotropic drug of sorts and conspiratorial group think begins to kick in and it all starts smelling like a cult, in which people are bound together by a certain core beliefs. As one friend wrote about another: “She understands what I am saying but just wants to believe. She wants to believe it.” Let that sink in. And she feels good with this strange and provably false world view.

This reinforces the drug/cult analogy. Addicts do not like to be told to stop. They often go into a rather immature form of reactance and will continue cutting their nose to spite their face. The cigarette smoker will say “I like to smoke after meals,” without realizing that the non-smoker does not because of one difference, namely, the addiction to nicotine, which informs our brain to like tobacco and will make it “taste good.” Furthermore, like the cult member, the conspiracy theory peddlers will sacrifice friends and family to the growing obsession with the theory itself. They will say and do anything — the most callous, disrespectful, absurd nonsense — to support their view. They will dig themselves ever deeper, send you more clips in the silo that the YouTube or Facebook algorithm offers them. The tone of the conversation will get condescending, and then aggressive. I have seen this happen repeatedly.

For some, this might appear quaint, almost funny – though irritating after a while, as a few spouses of conspiracy theorists confessed to me – but for others it’s like watching a person become slightly psychotic and it is worrisome. I’ve seen people spew unadulterated bilge in public and not even get corrected. On the contrary, when I do speak up, as I am wont to do,  the company shushes me, not the conspiracist. Facebook is a case in point. It’s public.

What drives people to embarrass themselves this way? (Because it is embarrassing to fall victim to transparent sophisms). It may be something banal: lots of time, no necessity to earn a living and boredom. Sometimes it’s merely reactance, that psychological switch that tells us to resist being told what to do. It could also be the thrill of being engaged in something apparently meaningful.  The conspiracist has made it to the barricades of humanity. So, the Follower is now part of the Epic Battle against a huge, invisible, ungraspable, lethal enemy, and plain logic and banal, provable facts are just too insipid to get the endorphins going.

The Internet, of course,  is a great incentive for believing in, and generating, conspiracy theories. The True Believers can gather together, raise their profile (the German language has the verb sich profilieren), and be seen amidst a community of backslappers. Flat Earthers, Truthers, Birthers, those who believe that Theodor Adorno wrote Beatles songs to destroy our society’s moral fiber (or something like that) … It has become one of the great tools for real research and communication, but it is being taken over by a rising sewer of nonsensical conjecture that a critical mass of people believe in for reasons only a psychologist can explain — whereby I put it down mostly to loneliness caused by that very Internet, which is increasingly atomizing society into little units of despair, where immediate human-to-human communication has become a rarity.

When your cat channels the CIA

The rabbit hole

What you soon discover, when dealing with these souls, is that arguing is pointless. You love your friend, because you knew him or her as a kind or funny person, quirky maybe (Ph., I’m talking about you), you offer alternative views, you point out the logical errors (essentially to alleviate the fear you hear in the conspiracist’s language), you ask for real evidence, you shed as much light as you can on the issue. In one case, after listening to 90 minutes worth of of utter bilge, I told a friend: “I know the solution, we should just commit suicide.” He stopped his rambling and asked: “Why???” And I answered, because all is lost, everything is occupied by an invisible enemy, they are obviously on the building opposite and listening to this conversation…” For two hours after that, we could converse normally.

In the end, however, you will lose the argument, since the goal posts get moved with every factual contradiction. The conspiracy grows and grows, like some horrid blob… Ultimately, you will have to follow a standard 12-step program. Number one:  You are powerless in the face of a CT junkie. Two, you cannot change another person. As the Fighter against the nonsense, you must, at some point, admit defeat, and that admission will be your personal victory, the moment you stop enabling the other. You can offer your view – and suffer the consequences – and that’s it. The alcoholic, like the CT-junkie, has to hit rock bottom. A number of conspiracy theorists who got Covid-19 and almost died or lost relatives have spoken of their experience in public. The illness brought them back to reality. But that is not something you wish on your friends, now, is it? As for the rest, they will continue filling their minds with these exciting but vaporous theories until some event drags them back to reality. And I am afraid that event will not be pleasant.

 

 

Parallel Worlds (part 2): The Makers and Shakers

My last post was a general explanation about why I feel it’s important to expose conspiracy theories (hereafter CT) for what they are: in short, dangerous bullshit (cf. Harry Frankfurt On Bullshit). Dangerous because they get people confused and they very often lead to violence. Here I explore what CT is, and what is the reason for promoting it. A note: This is merely a short intro… Books have been written about this subject. I can recommend Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (not directly about conspiracies, but the anti-expert idea is closely related) and Thomas Milan Konda’s Conspiracies of Conspiracies.

Short version:

1) Conspiracy theories have been around for ages. Some are fairly harmless, many have sparked mass killings. If you don’t believe me, check the pogroms, beginning in 38 AD in Alexandria, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Rwandan massacres, various “ethnic cleansings” that we’ve seen since 1992, etc. And just a note: The ur-conspiracy theory in the West is anti-Semitism.

2) What are they and how to identify them: The CT is a style, in fact, a way of cherry-picking facts or inventing new ones, and then drenching them in jaw-dropping conjecture. The more absurd, the better. The bigger, the better. In fact, CTs are open-ended when it comes to size and absurdity. The tonality is “whispered,” in case someone is listening, the unheard music behind the CT is spooky.  Conspiracy theorists love certain terms, like “elites” (meaning invisible puppet masters in their tales), or “deep state,” (a great one that the Trump cult seems to have launched. They love spy-talk, like “stochastic terrorism,” “false flag,” etc…). The popularity of Q-Anon was based on this: someone “inside” was divulging top-secret stuff…Even the use of the letter “Q” was clever, I have to admit.

Conspiracy theories essentially state that any incident large or small is controlled by some evil forces or individuals who intend to …………………. (fill in the blank). Some of them go very far, talk about lizard people, etc… You’re now in crazy territory. A young student, Abbie Richards drew a very concise chart worth viewing. What she does not mention, however, is that the lower theories are often “gateway drugs” leading to  near psychosis. (More below). But be prepared to be called the idiot if you dare contradict the Believer, because he/she is a member of a secret society battling for the very survival of the community, the country, the continent, then the planet, the solar system, damn, the very universe, which could collapse into pre-Big-Bang tininess, because the coronavirus was created in a lab, maybe.

3) These individuals promoting them like to pretend (or they really believe) they are at the forefront of an apocalyptic battle of good versus evil, usually one that cannot be won anyway, which is what makes CTs so durable: It’s about nothing real. The theorists also like to pretend they are victims of the Great Conspiracy: Ask yourself, WHY are they being taken down from social media or their material is not taken seriously by regular news media? They will say: It’s the evil media, the elites, the deep state, the Queen of England, Jeffery Epstein, the CIA.If you can take it, listen to a guy like Steve Bannon or Alex Jones, and while they rant on about their battles against these invisible windmills, ask yourself: How do they make their money?

In fact, conspiracy theory has nothing to do with free speech. The reason many of them remain obscure, and should, is because of the gatekeepers (editors and the like), who check the material and see if it is relevant, true, verifiable, in any way significant or meaningful. The other reason is because they distract from real issues and are therefore dangerous, even lethal. They can convince an unstable person to commit acts of violence, and in the current situation, they are slowing down the moment when the rest of the planet can get back to work again. 

4) The real personal motivation for generating these myths is usually recognition, money, and/or, power.

5) There is now some serious political motivation and impact: Most of the Covid-19 “anti-maskers,” “it’s just influenza,” “hydroxychloroquine,” “we should be like Sweden,” “It’s all a hoax,” etc., material on the Internet started or has been co-opted by so-called “populists,” a euphemism the media use to describe what are essentially anti-democratic forces.  In the USA, the highest bully pulpit is occupied by a fairly transparent con man who freely dispenses conspiracy theories and lies and bullshit, which are then picked up by his media (Fox News, Sinclair, Breitbart, etc) and his apostles and spread around. Alas, the mainstream media pick this stuff up as well, and make a big deal out of it, so the rubbish gets far too much exposure.

This all has been amply documented by serious journalists, which is precisely why we have a president in the USA who has been rambling on and on about “fake news,” and conspiracy theorists just repeat that message. Like sheep going baa baa. If you have been following the climate change “debate,” you will see parallels: 97% or so of the scientific community says: It’s real, it’s here, here is the evidence (Swiss friends, look at your vanishing glaciers). But suddenly, all attention is on the 3% that say it’s not the case. I asked Australian psychologist Stephen Lewandowsky about this phenomenon, here is his response:

“(M)ost of the dissenting climate scientists had terribly mediocre careers (at best) until they became climate deniers. And then all of a sudden, they appear on TV and testify in front of Congress and so on. The second thing is that most of those scientists have a long history of contrarianism in their field—science does tend to attract the occasional cantankerous individual who would not fit in anywhere else. But those are just anecdotal impressions rather than hard data, so I can’t be too certain except for the first three—money, ideology, notoriety.”

6) Watch out: Facebook and other social media are an easy and cheap way of spreading the deflection, because most people think” oh, this is interesting, maybe it’s true.” I would posit then, that a major factor in the spread of conspiracy theory is the fact that “clips” from YouTube are easy to absorb and difficult to deconstruct. It is just like the coronavirus, each reader/listener needs to use an intellectual filter to sort  out the  lies and the BS and the vapid arguments from what’s more or less real. An example: When the coronavirus hit, there was very little information about it, but the conspiracy theorists were already online (Dr. Wodarg in Germany was one of the first) developing all sorts of ideas. The duly elected governments, however, have a duty to protect us, it’s their epistemic responsibility. So they can’t just fllow Mr Wodarg or the hydroxychloroquine salesman in Marseilles… And the lack of data meant that many governments were faced with a very difficult choice. 20/20 hindsight is useless at this point.

Finally: What you can do about it: First, stop posting this stuff and saying “I don’t have an opinion, either way.” If you don’t feel competent to read a text, don’t promote it, it’s irresponsible. You are literally risking people’s lives from the safety of your keyboard. Also, the moment you post something, the algorithm will register you as having an opinion and will send you more of the same rubbish.  If you do feel like posting something you find interesting/different, then check it out carefully: What is the source? Did you Google it, and which sources came up first will tell you who is pushing it. Check out the fact checkers like Snopes, etc., they often do excellent work. And then check their work. Many conspiracy theories are built using syllogisms. Check each element. Does it sound right? Does it even sound possible? What’s missing?

Now you’ll start seeing why the satrap in the White House has tried to denigrate and minimize the hard work of real news gatherers. I’ve never been a “great journo” doing big things, but I did not get a press card because I believed in hobgoblins. Now you’ll also understand why there’s a job description called journalism.

Here’s the longer version:

Conspiracy theories have been around for ages.  Many are simply developed by individuals seeking to draw attention to some pet political/social topic, expose a bugaboo, frequently a non-existent one, or simply to boost an individuals need for self-importance and recognition. In politics, the conspiracy is a great way of attracting attention and demonizing the opponent, and in the religious field, one finds a great deal of  these stories, especially since religious leaders tend to self-victimize and self-stigmatize. It’s part of the charisma.  At any rate, CT can be fairly effective, depending on the audience.

So what is a conspiracy theory? Basically, it’s the idea that the world’s events, large and small, are in fact being controlled by invisible, all-powerful forces. Sometimes these are  organizations, sometimes they are individuals, but then they tend to be “untouchables,” like billionaires Bill Gates and George Soros, whose elevation to Dastardly Doyens of all that is evil is in fact nothing more than latent anti-Semitism, the financier having replaced the Rothschilds in the roster of Jewish evilissimas. The groups or organizations have often existed for real, like the Illuminati, Freemasons, the Jews, the Club of Rome, and so on, but their impact is nothing like what the conspiracist will describe. The Communists have been favorites in the USA since 1871, believe it or not, and a separate chapter should be devoted to them. Suffice to say, when you hear grown men who are supposed to be leaders call Democrats “Marxists,” you know they are merely string up archaic fears.  

I would encourage people to read Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style”  published in Harpers Magazine in November 1964, a time during which the impact of the McCarthy-driven red scare was dwindling. It pithily explains how the conspiracist actually works. Hofstadter uses the clinical term not because he considers CT a sign of proponents being “of unsound mind,” but because “(i)t is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant (…) Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our political psychology through our political rhetoric.

This is a crucial distinction to make. It’s not only the content of the CT, but the tonality. At its core, therefore, CT is the obvious backed by a spooky soundtrack.

In my view, there are at least three identifiable tiers to the CT, plus a few ancillary players, like the media. Tier 1 covers the owners of the information, the ones who launch  or really curate the conspiracy theory. “As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public,” wrote Hofstadter, “the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated.

Therein lies the danger. This is a fight that will need confrontation. And in a country like  the USA, where guns are a plenty,  who knows which neurons will suddenly start sparking and backfiring… In addition, the conspiracist will always intimate that he/she is a victim of sorts, and has been or will be attacked. One inspector from the Federal Criminal Office (the German FBI) I knew told me that one political cult I was researching used to call him up to tell him they’d been shot at, or attacked in some way. All nonsense, but he had had to investigate. Pete Evans, an Australian star chef and noisy conspiracist also kept suggesting in an interview that if he disappeared or died, it would not be an accident. An incredibly irresponsible thing to say, but conspiracy theorists are, if anything, irresponsible.  

The motivation

There are too many reasons to create these odd fables to list here. In recent times, though, becoming an Internet celebrity is one way to slake ones thirst for recognition and money. You have the notoriously callous Alex Jones, whose porcine grunting especially about the Sandy Hook “crisis actors” finally got him into well-deserved trouble he well deserved, or Glenn Beck, with his Vicks-induced theatrics and his chalkboard covered with phony connections. For these two, dumping their self-respect to make fools of themselves brought in the riches. Pete Evans, mentioned above, was also selling some $24,000 “light machine2 that was supposed to perform some miracle.

The Internet has boosted CT considerably, by offering very cheap platforms to spread the nonsense. Facebook and others, have become festering sewers of conspiracy theories, and the average user will spread the stuff without really thinking. This is irresponsible (as I mention above). But it’s also why Facebook and Twitter have come under attack.

The notorious Q-Anon conspiracy theory is particularly pernicious in this regard. Q is allegedly a clandestine source in the government explaining to the world how Trump is combating elites, the “deep state” (a typical “obvious thing” with spooky music in the background), child pornography; in other words, he is the Messiah. Indeed, the QAnoners use terms like “awakening” and are awaiting some grand moment when a bunch of Hollywood stars will be arrested for child pornography. This strange obsession is in and of itself unhealthy. Q cannot be seen or named, and is thus particularly thrilling for those who’ve fallen for the con. This irony, that an invisible person is spreading non-information, and people believe it (several spreaders are members of Congress or want to be) make Q the almost the perfect conspiracy theorist. My hunch? Look for a 400-pound guy in a basement, or the like (in the meantime he’s rich…there are so many suckers out there).

Worrisome…

Ranters like Jones and Limbaugh and Hannity  and Savage and Kirk are dangerous, because they tend to fill their audiences with fear and loathing. They will not incite violence directly, but they will condone it, and the anger they generate can easily fuel violent acts. When you speak of a specific group with such hatred, violence must always be considered as a possibility. The far-right, Trump-boosting  Sinclair Broadcast Group finally pulled a 26-minute video called “Plandemic” by an anti-vaccination barker named Judy Mikovits that put Dr. Fauci at the center of a massive conspiracy theory (they are always huge!), which in turn drew death threats to the good doctor and his family. Really nice, right? CT is dangerous.

But pulling out late is actually just a brand-washing technique… the insemination has taken place and the story, boosted by the Internet’s steroids, then runs all by itself. No amount of debunking will work (pizzagate is still a thing among the QAnoners, in spite of a guy actually going there and shooting up the place only to find it didn’t even have a basement.  But the conspiracists can now ALSO say: “You see, they are trying to silence us!” It’s a perfect con game.

The plunderers

That’s when the second group of conspiracy theorists gets going and plunder the first. They are generally less noisy, so you must train your ear. I call them “Monday-morning quarterbackers,” mainly because the only reason they can comment and critique and invent is because they are safe, they will not really get their hands dirty. Take the Covid-19 conspiracies: Governments have already imposed measures that have “flattened the curve” and saved lives, so the conspiracist is not faced with a very dramatic situation. They can be smug about it and say: “Merkel should have done this differently. Look at Sweden.” Extrapolating from Sweden, Germany would have had about 50,000 deaths. Then the same people would be on television or YT channels saying: “The government ran a euthanasia problem, they should have imposed a lockdown…” See how it works?

Their discourse is easily recognizable, but sometimes they manage to sound so reasonable, you almost think they are legit. Take  the hydroxy clamor: It started with a little-known doctor in Marseilles… He suddenly says he has a miracle cure. It’s early in the pandemic, people are afraid. Hope blossoms. His name, as is to be expected, is uttered from pole to pole. He may legitimately think he has got the solution. But the medical field has rigorous  systems in place to test, and his “testing” didn’t pass muster. The testing system is to prevent accidents (like thalidomide) and points out that his study has serious flaws and the drug he’s using has unwanted side-effects… (The average vaccine takes over 10 years to get onto the market).

But Trump gets wind of it and uses his platform to promote it.  And then come the real plunderers, like Simone Gold, promoted by a far-right-wing group affiliated with the astroturfish Tea Party. She  makes a video (much better than writing the stuff down, which then has to be read and checked) that goes viral. By time the real fact checkers have pointed out the incredible flaws in it, the absolute nonsense, including the speech by some strange doctor in Texas, who believes in “demon sperm,” and the dangers of  believing her, the  video, like the coronavirus, has infected  millions.

 
Conclusion:

I have spent a lot of time just skimming the surface of CTs and hopefully communicating how urgent it is put a stop to them. Unfortunately, they are now genuine money-makers, and that means they are driven by robust profit motives.

In our both-siderist  culture, it may appear unfair that I only listed the right-wingers. There is a reason for this. First, they are definitely the most dramatic and loudest ones. Second, they have now been integrated into the mainstream of conservative politics, which have drifted to the extreme right wing. Third, they have made it over to Europe, where, suddenly people of all stamp have started demonstrating against mask-wearing, the confinement, the government, etc. There’s a political will behind it. As I mentioned: The boy who cried wolf…. If you can train people  to not react to the  cry of wolf, when the wolf is there, you can’t get people to move. Think of climate change. Governments will have to act at some point. What will my anti-masker friends say: “Here’s a really interesting clip, a scientist no one has ever heard about says it’s just a way to achieve the New World Order. Actually, he says that driving SUVs and flying around the world millions of times a year is totally harmless.” And the person saying that will be the same boy who cried wolf.
I’m not saying conspiracy, but one fake conspiracy is a really good way to conceal a real one.

In part 3, I’ll briefly look at the Common Folk, those who carry the water for the conpiracists.

Parallel Worlds (Part 1)

 

The following is the tip of an iceberg that I have been writing and gathering information on for ages it would seem. I’ve cut the story in three parts (Part 2 and Part 3 plus a note on masks). No one has time anymore to read, alas, which is one of the problems causing the issue explored below, but if you need some background, like my motivation for touching on this subject, maybe some credentials, a deeper look, you’ll find it after the main body. For those who send me clips that I “have to watch,” please consider how much time I’ve spent with pen in hand listening, reading, taking notes. Deconstructing. You can get through about 1000 words.

Here’s why I am writing it. The Covid Crisis has become highly political. It has destabilized people in our very comfortable societies, where having one’s nails done or going to the gym is considered essential for survival and liberty. As every expert on conspiracy theories will tell you, unsettled times tend to boost the spread of these strange tales. Today, it’s the Internet, notably mass-gathering platforms like Facebook and Twitter, which are like Speaker’s Corner in London to the power of 100. I have been confronting them among strangers, and especially among friends since before the Covid crisis. And each time, it’s a journey down the rabbit hole.

Sadly, I have lost dear friends to this bilge, because CTs are an assault on intelligence and they literally block any discussion by their very nature: The conspiracy is always immense. It gobbles up any evidence proving it is nonsense. And those who become entranced by them tend to act like addicts (I’ll cover that in Part 3).

They are petty as well: Conspiracy theorists, for example, call mask wearers sheep for following rules, the way one might stop at a red light. Is that nice? Are the 163,000+ (now over 1 million…) dead Americans sheep for dying? Herman Cain didn’t wear a mask. He’s dead. Oh yes, they say: Covid is a hoax, they died of something else… like the truthers who deny that planes didn’t take down the Twin Towers. I’ve argued with fundamentalist Christians…. They have the same attitude. They believe and promote patent lies, but the non-believer is the idiot.

And so I am beginning to feel like Bérenger at the end of Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. Lonely, but incapable of joining the cult-like community that believes that there’s a “they” out there and “they” are out to get them. There’s also something somber to these CT. The same people who are spreading doubt about climate change, are also spreading doubt about the veracity and impact of the virus. And they are the same people who want to see Trump re-elected. Those are just the facts, available straight from the horse’s mouth, no mysterious dot-connecting necessary. Look it up. The Fox pundits, the Breitbart gnomes, etc., all are maintaining a large base of conspiracy-addled people, mainly for financial gain …

(New info: a friend of mine I promise to keep anonymous dined with Glenn Beck, the man who uses Vicks under his eyes to “cry” about the desolate state of the USA.. He asked him about the conspiracy nonsense. Beck waved it off, saying he didn’t believe any of it himself. To the question “Why do it then?” Beck just pulled out his black Mastercard.

 

Conspiracy theories and fake news are good friends. They are often promoted by groups with an axe to grind, with an agenda (yes, they are projecting). What Trump has labelled fake news, for example, is merely his way of discrediting the hard work of journos. By repeating that stupid trope over and over again, he has created a nimbus of doubt around the mainstream news, and suddenly everyone is calling news they don’t want to hear fake. Ironically, by reporting all his nonsense, the MSM have, to a certain extent, started reporting fake news, precisely the hallucinations put out by the Trump admin. Of course, they are forced to do their job and report from the White House. But couldn’t they slot this rubbish behind the weather?

Anyway: There are such things as facts, with a bit of bias maybe, but anyone with a functioning brain can distill the info out of the editorializing, as long as it’s not just editorializing or out-and-out lies, like the stuff pumped out by Fox News and the other far-right channels. It’s called critical rationalism.  For years I read the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine, it didn’t affect my appreciation of its news value. Many conspiracy theories regarding masks, Hydroxychloroquine, sipping luke-warm water, “where are the bodies,” Covid as Hoax, “it’s just the flu,” “it was created in a lab,” the film “Plandemic”, etc., are not true, or are slightly true, making them in Harry Frankfurt’s definition: bullshit (cf. his treatise on the subject).

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

When I receive information, because a conspiracy believer or a well-meaning both-siderist assumes we all have to read fake news, otherwise we are violating someone’s freedom of speech, I have the politeness to read it carefully. But before spreading it, it is actually the first reader who should check the sources, check out everything. That is what I do, and I don’t get paid for this job. You check who is promoting the information. And finally the famous question: “cui bono?

Years ago, a friend sent me a strident, Islamophobic harangue from Britain First politician, a neo-Fascist party. It led me to a peculiar Institute (where I found John Bolton on the board) that seemed to specialize in Islamphobic rants. One on Germany listed endless  crimes of migrants (heavy emphasis on the sexual, since that is a special department of the conspiracist). I started looking them up online and contacting people and found some that were 5 years old, others that were non-existent, some were poorly reported (a foreigner, no country of origin, had accosted a woman on the train, another woman had falsely reported being harassed, but it turned out to be a hoax, etc …). I’m not saying that NO CRIMES were committed. But this was pure propaganda… written by a fellow with apparently lots of qualifications.

That’s the work that needs to be done.

I’m not saying people are stupid for believing this stuff. It’s just that I happen to have a good nose for CTs, having literally studied them and read hundreds of primary sources and secondary sources. It began in school with people throwing  around “Commie” as an insult, and I wanted to know what a commie was.  I investigated a political cult years ago, read all their literature and tracked the other organizations they ran, and where their information was landing. You can “hear” the conspiracy vocabulary emerging through the language. And it’s politically left and right, though these days , the right wing has made CT their main means of self-promotion and attack. Reasonable friends of mine have fallen for the stuff, reporters who should know better but who, trawling the internet, slowly caught the bug, and are buying the data.

CT is like a drug. It’s so attractive. Everything, at first, seems so easy to folow. All the pieces are in place and everything works. As if real life were so simple. Ever see the film “Small Change?” It was the Truthers’ big moment. I wasted hours on that one. It unveiled, nay, it screamed out a GIANT conspiracy involving all sorts of actors…. but I had a friend who was an architect and who explained very simply how the towers fell and why building 7 fell. The information was corroborated by other architects and experts. So the CTs make you feel like you understand everything, and that the Lie is So Big, that it must be true. But that is exactly what the Conspiracy Theorist is banking on. Using a Big Lie to uncover a Big Lie, which is non-existent. And being shown proof that the theory is wrong in 100 small points,  shouldn’t make you feel ashamed, just corrected. But this is where Brandolini’s Law kicks in:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

Even if the information comes from a doctor: Listen and read carefully. I communicated with a psychologist, a known CT specialist briefly. His answer: Besides money and ideology, “(o)ne of those additional motivations is notoriety: most of the dissenting climate scientists had terribly mediocre careers (at best) until they became climate deniers. And then all of a sudden they appear on TV and testify in front of Congress and so on.” My own experience has shown that doctors and scientists are just as prone to peddling fake stuff and then screaming conspiracy, when the community does not react or tells them to check their facts, because they have it bass ackwards..

But let me ask: If you believe, say, Dr. X who says it’s all a hoax, why don’t you believe the other 35,000 doctors who say: “It’s very dangerous, infectious and hard to cure when acute, so let’s be really careful.” Is it because you like to hear a maverick, a contrarian, someone who says different stuff? Is it a form of contrarianism? Or does the doc varnish  your prejudices, the niggling doubt, the grain of paranoia that is stored in our lizard brain for protection?  Or does it awaken the control freak in us, especially at a time when things on the planet seem totally discombobulated?

These are the questions we have to ask ourselves. So please, learn to navigate the web.

One “doctor says” video was the infamous Simone Gold promoting Hydroxychloroquine and the cure by a “doctor” who believes in witches and wizards impregnating women in their dreams, literally! It is all funded by an extreme right-wing group in the USA. Knowing this, why is the video still on people’s timelines?

Then there is another, a French geneticist, who sounds very reasonable, but suddenly, after blandly and sweetly going on about various banal matters, she makes an assumption that pierces the information. “While it is reasonable to suggest that the corona-virus is a natural development, she prefers to think it was engineered…contradicting the bulk of geneticists. Wow. I spent 90 minutes listening to the good doctor, and noting the problems. The vaccination tests in South Africa are another area where she combines conspiracy with truth. ( https://www.conspiracywatch.info/alexandra-henrion-caude )

The most recent “doctor speaks” video I received was one from Sweden. The author says in the first sentence that the information is anecdotal. And seems to support the idea that “ripping the bandage off” is better than slowly pealing it off, as was done in most European countries. That is: no lockdown, etc… Great for the 5,500 people who died, right? What is not said: The Swedish health ministry also applied measures and throughout March to may, the cities were quite empty, and shops closed. The economy suffered, like elsewhere.  People kept distant from each other. And 5,500 Swedes died, because …. Well… That’s what some people would like answered. Because they were old? Sounds like a modern version of Aktion T4. That Sweden seems to be enjoying respite from the infection for the moment has to do with summer vacations, cities less crowded, and the fact that 50% of Swedish households happen to be single, apparently (I have to check that info). It may be interesting to note, that in discussing a Vitamin D study in another post, the doc mentions that Muslim women have a deficiency because they are always covered up. That info needs checking. It sounds sort of strange. It takes time…

So yes, dear friend: Go Sweden, as you say… tell that to the families of the dead. And the death toll in the USA is still going up and up. And in Brazil, where an Evangelical runs the country … Please be careful of what you say. What is hurting our society is selfishness and callousness. It’s time to get back to humane and human norms.

Masks: They are not equivalent to the yellow star. They are one way to protect ourselves and, if we happen to have Covid and not know it, our neighbors. I go shopping here, there are many old people shopping with me. I have a robust immune system, I hope. I might not notice being ill. I could spread it. I’ll be teaching in crowded classrooms, I have to be careful, for myself, my family and the families of the kids. We had cases of Covid, if it was a hoax, it wasn’t a funny one.

And by the way: Is anyone complaining about condoms? Are they a plot to enslave men’s penises and ruin their pleasure (at least one Trumpist thinks so? Is AIDS a dastardly plot concocted in labs to… I don’t know what, but none of the thousands who have taken part in the non-existent plot have ever said anything. Maybe they were all killed? In the basement of a pizza parlor in Philadelphia?

Finally: Are CT harmless? Just a little pseudo-intellectual horse-playing? Here’s where I beg to differ. Some conspiracy theory (CT) is funny, at times just weird,. At best, it starts confusing the issue. At worst it is harmful. It can blow the odd mind, as happened to a friend of mine who is bipolar. The pogroms against Jewish communities beginning in 38 AD, or in Norwich 1177, or during the Black Plague were all triggered by conspiracy theories. Same for the the September Massacres during the French Revolution, or the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, April 19, 1995 (the main perpetrator, Tim McVeigh was a member of the Patriot Movement and was obsessed with the idea of government overreach…. In psychological terms, a case of extreme reactance. Need I add: the Holocaust,Stalin’s mass murder, Pol Pot, even Mao’s brutality: All fueled by conspiratorial thinking, the belief that a mysterious “they” were plotting “something.”

Ultimately, these were victims of conspiracy theories that dehumanize the “other.” Spreading them is very risky.

If Trump and the GOP hadn’t been so obsessed with the elections and how it made this ridiculous con man look, they would have been able to control the pandemic. The result is thousands and thousands of deaths and lots of suffering, plus a supine economy, and no end in sight. That is NOT harmless and it might explain why the American right wingers are desperately trying to distract people with silly tropes about masks. .

In sum: CT are used to manipulate , to distract, to attract attention. My German friends who are convinced this is all manipulation insist that the recent anti-mask demo in Berlin was attended by 500,000 people. The police said 20,000 max. There are scientific ways to estimate those numbers. You measure the surface area where the demo was held, and essentially you count two people per square meter. The police were right. A picture posted on the web was from an anti-racist demo a while back.

The solution: Be skeptical at all times. If anyone seems to have some secret knowledge about some Big Thing, ask how he/she was made privy to that data. Silly clips that say “You won’t believe this….” or “This is the biggest scandal….” … are usually just trying to attract attention. Information these days is easy to spread, and that makes it less than precious. Listen to the tonality…

Part 2 should be up soon.

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