There’s a lot of them out there. Conspiracy theories, that is.
One of my favourites started circulating when large, carnivorous honey badgers appeared near Basra in 2007, killing livestock and frightening the locals.
Some badgers had moved area due to a fall in water supply but the theory that the coalition had released them took hold to the point that a military spokesman had to categorically confirm, ‘we have not released man-eating badgers into the area’.
Such theories spread much faster now, what with AI powered social media targeting people most likely to believe them with deadly efficiency.
But they have always been with us… and they can be dangerous …
In medieval Europe the theory spread that the Black Death was the result of Jews poising drinking water … over 500 Jewish communities were destroyed in what became known as ‘the Black Death Massacres.’
And they can still gain traction, even if the people who believe them know they are false …
Western peace activists in the 1960s were handed ‘evidence’ of American ‘plans’ to launch war in Europe. It was soon proved the documents were fake, but they decided that it didn’t matter if they were looking at a forgery, as ‘we can guess there is a document almost exactly like it.’
So proof is non-essential
I would say you couldn’t make it up … but of course that’s exactly what you can do.
Why do they thrive?
They thrive in times of uncertainty such as a foreign invasion or during a global pandemic. They are ultimately stories that help us make sense of our world, especially when our world is turned upside down.
And they can be distributed with lightning speed by anybody with a computer and an internet connection. As any conspiracy theory promotor worth their salt will tell you: in a crisis you need to get control of the narrative as early as you can. The first story to provide coherence will take seed and will be believed even when later evidence clearly contradicts it.
The secret global network theory
This is the most enduring theory of them all.
Two friends, one a staff writer at Playboy, decided to plant a letter in the magazine attributing all national calamities, assassinations, or conspiracies to an Enlightenment-era Bavarian secret society called the Illuminati. They believed that no one would really believe an obscure eighteenth century secret society was running the modern world. Their role in starting this story is largely forgotten, but the conspiracy theory persists.to this day
Conspiracy theorist are storytellers.
In literary history or world folklore, the stories that endure have a similar grammar, a small group of plots that twist through a similar pattern of beginning, middle and end. Constructed conspiracy theories can tap into this universal grammar of storytelling making them intuitively ‘true’ to us, in a way that disordered, messy, reality cannot be.
And that’s fair enough.
But …
What if …
At least one of them …
Was true
What if, somewhere in the fog, the truth was out there (apologies to X-Files fans).
What if a group of highly motivated people really could take over the levers of information?
Modern day mass information hasn’t protected us against this … it’s made it far more likely.
Now, more than any other time in history, it would be possible.
So here we are.
Welcome to the world of the possible. Welcome to the Kenzie Marsh Chronicles …
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