"You're going to notice an increase in fog everywhere in the world, this is a chemtrail for you to get sick. Place unused barbecue charcoal near the windows to reduce its risk."
That was a statement in January by Alia Gad, an Egyptian doctor who for years has been known for providing medical information to the public about sexual health, and then suddenly turned to supporting conspiracy theories in all their forms, as well as pseudoscience centered on energy therapy, but the most frequent theories in her statements were usually about chemtrail.
And it's not just about her, the vast majority of Arab conspiracy theorists are talking about chemtrail intensively right now, which has taken it to social media as a whole. The chemtrail theory (1) assumes that the white thick steam trails left by high-altitude aircraft are not water vapor, but "chemical paths" consisting of chemical or biological compounds sprayed for warfare purposes against ordinary citizens.
Well, you know these purposes without us telling you: weather modification, psychological manipulation of individuals, and most importantly and most popularly; to say that these substances are poisons to slowly kill humans or at least prevent pregnancy or reduce fertility, with the main purpose of controlling human numbers and returning them to about a billion individuals, so that a group of disheveled-haired villains can easily control the whole world.
Search for the United States
Over the past three years, chemtrail has been very popular among conspiracy theorists to explain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Getty Images)
Talk about the chemtrail began in the late nineties, and as usual, the main source of the story was the United States of America, after the publication of a report by the US Air Force in 1996 on the possibilities of modifying the weather, and there are already experimental techniques in this range, so some voices came out accusing the government of spraying the population of the United States with mysterious materials from aircraft.
The matter has evolved year after year to say that the smoke tail coming out of airplanes is chemtrail, especially the "unusual" patterns of this smoke, such as if the smoke, for example, remains in the sky for a long time beyond hours after the plane passes, or swells in size to resemble clouds or breaks and takes various forms, and they claim that this happened only in the nineties, after the start of the alleged American project, and this is the central argument of the theory of chemtrail.
With the advent and spread of the popular Internet, theory (2) flourished on forums and was promoted by the host of a famous American conspiracy program called "Art Bell", which helped from 1999 to spread it among conspiracy journalists and American radio programs, and prompted American government agencies to respond, but believers in the theory interpreted this as an attempt to cover up, and this only increased their conviction that something strange was happening.
During the past three years, the chemtrail found great popularity among conspiracy theorists to explain the spread of the "Covid-19" epidemic, the explanation that they resorted to was simply that someone threw the epidemic on people from the air, in fact this was so widespread that a team of Indonesian researchers published a research article (3) in the Journal of Public Health, in March 2023, to examine a phenomenon that has spread in Indonesia, and is related to the conviction of many citizens. The government is "spraying" something on them that causes (or prolongs COVID-19).
It was a new starting point for the theory to find more believers, and now as conflicts escalate in Ukraine and China is perhaps preparing for a new war in Taiwan, along with the seemingly high tension over the issues of climate change and environmental pollution, the chemtrail theory seemed to have found its full purpose: a group of villains preparing the world for the final battle, to dominate it. Twitter and Telegram in particular were the two biggest sites of the theory's spread.
It's nothing but a myth.
Scientists in a Harvard study have agreed that the claims of the chemtrail are a myth that has no basis. (Shutterstock)
The strange thing is that the idea of a plane's smoky tail can be explained simply, on a very cold day you follow your breath in the air, do you notice it? The air comes out of your mouth like steam, and that's because you exhale a lot of water vapor with each breath, the cold weather outside intensifies it and it looks as clear as smoke.
Airplanes do the same, their engines burn fuel and release exhaust loaded mainly with water vapor, and with it exhaust residues – compounds containing carbon, nitrogen and carbon dioxide that combine with the steam and condense it due to the cold air outside the plane, becoming small pieces of ice. If the humidity is high, these residues remain in the sky for a long time, and over time they turn into thin, separate, hair-like clouds, and with the change of humidity, their shapes and lifespan change.
Claims of the chemtrail usually say that the nineties saw the beginning of the release of this material, but ancient observations of aircraft during World War II indicate that the smoke lines they leave behind were kept in the sky for long hours as well.
In fact, the chemtrail theory was so widespread that it called for a survey (4) of the world's leading atmospheric scientists, who categorically rejected the existence of a secret spray program under this description.
The survey results showed that 76 of the 77 scientists involved said they found no evidence of a program to spread classified material into the air, and agree that the alleged evidence cited by individuals who believe in chemtrail can be explained by other factors. Harvard University has done similar research (5) and its scientists have been completely unanimous that the allegations of the chemtrail are a myth that has no basis.
What drives them to this?
Some people tend to think conspiratorial, always feeling that there is a plan to control them, and they collect stories from here and there to collect one integrated narrative. (Reuters)
But despite the conclusive evidence against chemtrail, you will be surprised by the extent of the spread of the theory, as a study (6) conducted in 2011 on people from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom found that 2.6% of the people included in the sample fully believe in the conspiracy theory, and 14% believe it partially, and in 2017 a research paper in the journal "Nature" (7) indicated a clear escalation in the percentage of believers in this theory, where about 10% of Americans declared their full belief in the theory, but the strangest is the percentage of those who said that it Fairly correct, which reached 30%.
In the Arab world, we do not have clear statistics of convictions in the theory, but a simple search on Facebook groups and YouTube channels will give you an indication that they are clearly widespread, millions of views, thousands to tens of thousands of followers, and even posting videos of the sky from everywhere.
We know that belief in superstitious conspiracy theories of this kind is related to a number of factors, some of which are related to the individual himself, as some people tend to conspiracious thought, so they always feel that there is a plan to control them, and they collect stories from here and there to collect one integrated narrative, and here in particular superstitious conspiracy theories differ from real conspiracies, the latter usually includes relationships between things that can actually be related, for example, a pharmaceutical company conspires to pass approval for a drug, in this type of conspiracy. You will usually meet a man from the pharmaceutical company, a bribed officer, a legal officer at the Ministry of Health, and you can also find a senator who supports the company. In superstitious plots, the plot points are usually far apart: a pizzeria in New York, a strange statue in the Egyptian province of Giza, three buildings in New Delhi that together make the shape of a devil's horn, a candy vendor in Congress, lawyers, statesmen, actors, and politicians who may already be from countries that have political enmity with each other.
For his part, Joachim Algaier, professor of scientific communication and media at the University of Fulda, Germany, believes that there are motives related to the personal interests of those who promote the chemtrail conspiracy, according to a survey (8) he conducted on the matter, some conspiracy celebrities have allocated full-time work to chemtrail, and receive financial compensation from donations from conspiracy theorists, in addition to sales of some tools (things to counter the chemtrail attack such as the coal referred to by Gad), books, as well as YouTube views and the fee for participating in television programs.
New religion
Proponents of superstitious conspiracy theories tend to follow pseudo-religious movements such as the "New Age" and "New Thought." (Graffiti "Chemtrail.. They smoke us.") (Reuters)
Chemtrail conspiracy theorists sometimes describe their experience as akin to the experience of religious conversion (9), a state in which someone is oblivious to the truth and then suddenly wakes up and sees everything clearly, as if it were a "message" sent to them. This "new faith" sometimes causes problems beyond the individual, for example, some of whom attend climate conferences and send threats to academics working in this field!
Overall, the experience of "religious conversion" is present in the literature of contemporary conspiracy theory, take Q-Anon (10), a conspiracy theory that appeared online in October 2017 that says former US President Donald Trump is fighting an internal war to entrap a satanic sect that runs the country behind the scenes and wants to control the whole world. This theory relied entirely on the concept of the "Great Awakening," an evocation of the famous historical Christian religious awakening from the early eighteenth to the late twentieth century in the United States. Proponents of superstitious conspiracy theories generally tend to follow pseudo-religious movements such as "New Age" and "New Thought."
In any case, we in the Arab world seem to be easily influenced by these theories, not only because of the "Khawaja complex" that makes anyone who speaks English look like a strategist or scientist, but also because conspiracy theories do not find a better ground for proliferation than societal fragmentation, political and economic upheaval, all of which are unfortunately strongly present in our societies, those times when people lose faith in the grand concepts on which their lives are built, such as science, politics, and even religion itself in some cases. Sometimes.
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Sources
1- Hot topic: should I worry about chemtrails?
2- CON-trary to What You Have Heard, Chemtrails Aren’t Real
3- Chemtrails in the skies of Indonesia: are they conspiracies to cause prolonged COVID-19?
4- Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program
5- Chemtrails Conspiracy Theory
6- Public understanding of solar radiation management
7- Solar geoengineering and the chemtrails conspiracy on social media
8- Why do people believe conspiracy theories?
9- Climates of suspicion: ‘chemtrail’ conspiracy narratives and the international politics of geoengineering
10- "Seekers of the Savior Prophet". Why do conspiracy theorists believe that the end of the world is approaching?