The factory of conspiracy

A QAnon activist during a Donald Trump rally on August 2, 2018 in Pennsylvania, United States.

Matt Rourke / AP Photo

Text by: Sophie Malibeaux

6 min

As old as the world, conspiracy theories have always known how to exploit the most severe moments of crisis to proliferate, renew themselves and reach new audiences.

By claiming to reveal a hidden truth, the objective is often to designate scapegoats.

This is where conspiracy is dangerous, because it fuels the hatred and stigmatization of certain categories of the population.

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To get their messages across, the propagators of these theses use the same methods as the gurus of sectarian groups or the leaders of radical movements.

Social networks play an accelerating role in the spread of conspiracy.

Each current event, attack or disaster of any kind, becomes an opportunity to add a chapter to the conspiracy story, now almost instantaneously.

The speech and the method

The conspiracy discourse aims above all to strike the spirits, thanks to more or less sophisticated techniques of mental manipulation.

Its authors take advantage of moments of weakness in societies or individuals, when the novelty of a pandemic for example provokes an effect of astonishment in public opinion, to propose a narrative based on alternative facts, disconnected from reality.

Faced with the complexity of the world, conspiracy provides a version of events that contrasts with the uncertainties and contradictions displayed by the media, scientists, state institutions and other authorities.

If conspiracy develops in times of crisis, it is also because it reassures by offering an explanation that is worth what it is worth, but fills a gap.

By naming the “evil”, by designating its perpetrators, we avoid the slow and sometimes painful process of seeking the truth.

It is also a way of getting rid of all responsibility.

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Conspiracy is reassuring.

The plot seduces.

And to do this, he abolishes the borders between fiction and reality.

Conspirators like to quote and reproduce excerpts from fiction - often disaster films - when these can be used to support their version of the facts.

This is the opportunity to brandish the argument that everything was written in advance, everything has been manipulated in the shadows by the global globalist elite or the deep state, in order to enslave the rest of the world.

The opposite of the scientific method, conspiracy does not bother with complex reasoning and proceeds by amalgamation.

For methodical doubt, in search of tangible proof, it substitutes unfounded allegations, fabricated from scratch.

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Unlike the scientist who does not know in advance the result of his research, the conspirator starts from the conclusion to develop a "theory", which moreover is not one, in the scientific sense of the term.

Rather, it is a chain of propositions whose logic defies understanding.

Propagators and their vectors

The most active participants in the conspiracy enterprise find satisfaction in the self-gratification that comes from knowing what no one else knows, what the "one" wants to hide from everyone.

Traditional media are one of their favorite targets.

Like President Trump, conspirators routinely accuse the media of lying.

Hence the injunction to cut television and radio, not to read the newspapers.

In fact, conspiracy takes advantage of the opportunities offered on the internet and on the networks to propagate its theses without mediation, in the illusion of a direct relationship between the sender of the message and its recipient.

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As in a sectarian group, this mode of communication tends to lock the members of the community in a form of bubble, which the algorithms of digital platforms favor de facto.

Following on Facebook or Twitter the accounts most imbued with conspiracy theses is enough to be offered an infinity of other accounts of the same type.

The followers and their scapegoats

Membership in a community of beliefs sometimes isolates group members from the rest of their families and from society.

In the face of adversity, the conspirators stick together.

It creates links between the followers of the different conspiracy theories.

Often, the flatists are also antivax, they share the same denial of the Covid-19 pandemic, and doubt both the September 11 attacks and the various killings that have made the front page of the American press in recent years.

Many of them fiercely defend the right to be armed, oppose vaccines and abortion.

They show a rather clear penchant for negationist and anti-Semitic theses, denounce the Judeo-Masonic plot at length on video.

They see the invisible hand of George Soros, Bill Gates and the Rothschilds, as well as NASA, the CIA, the Vatican, and international finance, behind the Covid-19 pandemic and the 'round earth lie'.

In recent years, the QAnon movement has added the American Democrats, Hillary Clinton and a number of Hollywood stars, all accused of communing in Satanism, child sacrifice and pedophilia.

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Of course, there are conspirators who do not fully adhere to this worldview.

But Donald Trump's tenure, his complacency towards QAnon and the ultra-conservatives helped bring the movement to light.

The conspirators, more and more uninhibited, are not limited to the

but are spreading on major digital platforms and into the streets, when it comes, for example, to challenge the means to fight against the Covid pandemic. 19 which, in their eyes, is only an invention of the powerful of this world to establish their power.

The accusation of conspiracy is mocked by those who claim it.

But the phenomenon raises the same concerns as sectarian and radical drifts.

The conspiratorial narrative exerts a strong hold on the individuals who claim it, and can hardly come out without a feeling of loss of identity.

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