How conspiracy theories went mainstream

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings This is probably not the most sensitive way to put it, but still, man, I miss the days when conspiracy theories were fun. You know what I mean? Who really killed JFK? How could they possibly have faked the moon landing? Wouldn’t it be hilarious if the earth really was flat? And listen, the NBA definitely rigged the 1985 draft, and if you don’t believe me, you can look that one up. Conspiracy theories are not fun anymore, that’s putting it extremely mildly. Instead, they are open incitements to hatred and violence against immigrants, against people of colour, gay and trans people, Jewish and Muslim people, and of course almost anyone in the media or in government right now, conspiracy theories and those who believe in them are incredibly dangerous and they keep proliferating. In 2023, experts who monitor how these things spread, noticed a significant evolution in where and how widely these theories were circulated in 2024 with an American election headlining a year with dozens of key elections across the globe. Those experts are sounding the alarm. So what do you need to know about conspiracy theories in 2024, and more importantly, what do you need to know is false? I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is The Big Story. Amarnath Amarasingam is an assistant professor in the School of Religion, cross appointed to the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. His research interests are in terrorism, radicalization and extremism, conspiracy theories, and online communities. Hello, Amarnath.

Amarnath Amarasingam: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Jordan: You are welcome. If you had to sum up the last year of studying conspiracy theories in a word or two, how would you put it

Amarnath Amarasingam: Mainstream? I think most of us who study this stuff are used to thinking about them as fringe ideas and fringe topics, which a few people may entertain. But I think what we’ve seen in the last year, but also since the Trump campaign in particular, and then the Covid Pandemic was a kind of mainstreaming of some of these bad ideas and watching them as they became popular, going from the dark corners of the internet to talked about on mainstream media outlets.

Jordan: You mentioned a couple of them there, but if you had to, could you pinpoint a moment in time when that shift began, when you could see it move from those fringes of the internet into mainstream discussion?

Amarnath Amarasingam: Yeah, it’s a tough question. I mean, if we were to talk broadly about trust in government and its gradual decline over the years, the real dive I think started with the Iraq War in 2003, and it hasn’t really recovered since then. By the time Obama came to office, you also had a very polarized media landscape, which made everything kind of tribal us versus them good versus evil. Remember Obama’s birth certificate, and he’s a secret Muslim and he was born in Kenya and it kind of hasn’t really recovered since then. The difference with Trump, I think, was that you had for the first time, in my memory at least a kind of sitting president daily engaging in a campaign to erode trust in the government that he was controlling. So you can’t trust the FBI, you can’t trust the judges, you can’t trust the media. And so his campaign, I think starting in 2015 was a major game changer and I think set the stage in many ways for the second major game changer, which was the pandemic.

Jordan: When we talk about the specific theories that are spreading, and we’re going to do that today, sort of looking at 2023, but also what to expect in an American election year. So I’m sure it’ll be great in 2024, but is there a difference between the sort of classic conspiracy theories, I’m not sure how to define this, but the moon landing was faked or the JFK assassination or whatever, and the modern conspiracy theories that are going mainstream, and if there is a difference, what is it?

Amarnath Amarasingam: Yeah, I mean, it might be useful to think about conspiracy theories and define them first. I think there’s a bit of a confusion sometimes I see in the public between things like conspiracy theories and basic misinformation. And I think part of what most scholars define conspiracy theories as is a kind of belief in a sinister group of conspirators who are orchestrating all that happens for their own benefit. And you really need all three of those components for there to be a conspiracy theory. And so the way to think about that is if I believe that the covid vaccine causes infertility, that might just be misinformation. That might just be something I read on the wrong website. But if I believe that the Covid vaccine was manufactured to cause infertility by a sinister group of elites, a shadowy group of some kind to keep the population down or to erode the white population, then you’re in the realm of a kind of conspiracy theory. And I think the main difference, I would say over time that we’ve seen is the move from, as you say, this kind of event related conspiracy theories, nine 11 truthers to Epstein did not kill himself to JFK assassination, to these more broader systemic conspiracy theories, which scholars like Michael Barkin calls super conspiracies, right? This ability, some of these ideas to basically vacuum up conspiracy theories as they go along. And Q Anon is a good example of this is basically anything it encounters any idea that encounters from vaccines to stop the steal to whatever have you, it just kind of vacuums up and makes it a part of its own. And so I think that’s the major shift that we’re seeing. In terms of your question about the nature of the current ones, I would say there isn’t much of a difference in the sense of particulars, but they’re just more mainstream now and they’re more in our faces now, and they seem to be resonating a bit more with people than I’m used to. And so a good analogy is the guy with the end is near sign. You might see in downtown Toronto or something, if you walk by him today and you see two people listening to him, but then you walk by a month from now and you see 30 people listening to him, the question isn’t what message changed because his message has always been the same. It’s just for some reason that message is resonating with us more. Now, that I think is the problem here with conspiracy theories is for some reason these ideas are resonating with people a bit more than they used to. And that’s quite worrisome because we know that conspiracy theories have a load of social consequences. People tend to vote less, they tend to volunteer less, they tend to donate money less. They tend to vaccinate their kids less. And so it really enters people into a worldview of distrust where everything starts to be suspicious and everything starts to be sinister, and it makes sense, right? You can’t believe that the media lied to you about covid and then trust them completely when it comes to politics, or you can’t believe that scientists lied to you about covid, but then totally believe them when it comes to climate change. So that’s kind of what’s worrisome is that it’s resonating with a lot more people are resonating more with people, and that says something about something that’s in the water, if you will, in our culture as opposed to the message itself, which has always been fairly inconsistent.

Jordan: This is something that’s been evolving for, I mean, if you go back to the Trump campaign almost a decade now, as strange as that sounds, but you also wrote in a recent piece that 2023 marked a significant evolution for these types of conspiracy theories. What did you mean by

Amarnath Amarasingam: That? One of the well-known facts about conspiracy theories is they tend to rise during moments of crisis. They tend to come in and give people an explanation. They give you someone to blame, they give you someone to hate. They provide an explanation that reduces the sense of chaos. What scholars like Timothy Melly have called Agency Panic, this idea that you’re losing control over your reality and conspiracy theories really come in to say, actually, we know who to blame. We know who’s behind all this, and it’s up to you to get out there and wake up with sleeping masses, right? A lot of the former Q Anon supporters I’ve interviewed over time basically say that when they were in the thick of it, they felt like they were the vanguard, right? They were tasked with waking up with sleeping masses and that they had to kind of do something at all times to bring this secret knowledge that they’ve been gifted to the public. And so that I think is how these things are evolving over the last little while is they tend to resonate more. They tend to have an impact on more and more people. And I think as crisis moments go forward, whether it’s another pandemic or a war or climate change, I think we’re going to be encountering this a lot more going forward.

Jordan: I wanted to ask you if maybe we could go through some of the more prominent conspiracy theories out there, and I mean sure, debunk them. I think it can go without saying that a lot of these need debunking, but also just kind of unpack them a little so people understand them because if they’re in the mainstream now, they’re going to encounter them in places that don’t seem fringey. So maybe we could just start with what you singled out as the major one, and again, kind of a super conspiracy theory, the great replacement theory. What is it? Where did it come from?

Amarnath Amarasingam: So the great replacement theory basically says that white European populations are being deliberately replaced ethnically and culturally through migration and the growth of minority groups. And so that might sound familiar as, oh, that sounds like neo-Nazi groups or something just

Jordan: Sounds like regular racism.

Amarnath Amarasingam: Yeah, exactly. So while elements of that have always been part of these Far-right groups, it really got going with this French writer, Reno Camus’s 2011 book called The Great Replacement, and he basically said that elites are plotting the replacement of white Europeans through mass migration. And the reason we singled it out is it is one of these rare conspiracies that has inspired several lone actor attacks from Christchurch in New Zealand. The manifesto that he wrote was literally called a great replacement to the Buffalo shooting, and even closer to home Nathaniel Valman in London, all of these kind of concerns that something about their in-group, whether it’s Western cultural in-Group or the white race is under attack and is being slowly replaced. So what’s dangerous about it, I think, is the theory itself is a kind of call to action. What are you doing to protect your people? You could follow examples from other attackers that have done it well, and you need to follow in their example, you need to stand up and do something before your people completely disappear. This white genocide kind of argument. And if you read a lot of their attacker manifestos, they add a level of urgency and imminent threat to their ingroup in a way that the faked moon landing doesn’t. Right? And I think that’s that kind of moral, that kind of moral urgency is what makes the great replacement in particular kind of dangerous because it’s proven to actually inspire a lot of attacks over the last little while.

Jordan: This is a theory that has been around for some time in one form or another. Why has it spread so far and wide since the pandemic began? Yeah,

Amarnath Amarasingam: I mean, I think there is a real sense of loss of control, very rapid demographic changes, very rapid cultural shifts that a lot of these white supremacists are feeling most acutely. I’ve interviewed a whole host of former neo-Nazis and some current far-right members as well. For them, the speed at which cultural change is happening, the speed at which demographic shifts are happening isn’t just something that’s happening through natural policy. It’s actually an orchestrated attempt to get rid of them. And once you start to think that way, whether it’s the Democrats or the Liberal Party of Canada or Jews or CIA or whoever is orchestrating the slow replacement of your community and things that you hold dear, then it’s a kind of call to action. And so I think part of it is just natural flows of immigration and demographic shifts and cultural changes that are happening in the background, but for these guys, and it’s mostly guys, for these guys, it is a kind of orchestrated attempt to get rid of them, which I think is what’s galvanizing a lot of the violence

Jordan: We’d covered last year, the 15 minute cities conspiracy, mostly because it seems so ridiculous to take something that is so clearly sort of an innocent urban planning term and create something so sinister from it, but you categorized it as a restriction of freedom conspiracy. Can you explain that category and why they’ve become so attractive?

Amarnath Amarasingam: Yeah, I mean, it’s perhaps an in elgan term that we use to capture a bunch of these similar conspiracies, which purport to show that the government is dead set on taking our freedoms, controlling our behavior, controlling and limiting our mobility, controlling our choices, and so on. And so the Pandemic really, really gave a boost to this kind of thinking with the anti lockdown movements and the anti-vaccine movement and the anti-vaccine mandate movement. And it really got a boost after the pandemic. Perhaps the funniest one is this 15 minute City one, which is a fairly boring urban planning concept and try to protect our mental health and protect the environment by keeping a lot of the things that we can access within a 15 minute walk. And that has now been transformed into it is a plot to restrict personal freedom and movement. It is a plot to confine individuals to small areas and control their activities. And the agenda 30, which is a kind of un movement around sustainable development, has also gone through a similar conspiratorial izing, which is basically to say that globally elites are trying to reduce the world’s population and control people’s lives, et cetera. The reason I traced this back to the pandemic is because it was this moment when any initiative by governments, any well-meaning initiative by governments, was immediately reinterpreted as governmental overreach to impact our freedoms and to take away our freedoms. The kind of distrust in government and government initiatives really began in its current form with the pandemic and lockdown initiatives, which is now touching anything that governments want to do that is about the communal wellbeing or community wellbeing as opposed to the individual. We’re used to seeing this in the US with the gun rights, they’re coming to take our guns phenomenon, but it’s transforming into basically anything, any global initiative, any local initiative that is trying to impact individual freedoms at a fundamental level to say that we should be thinking about the community people outside of ourselves as opposed to just us. And that’s automatically being reinterpreted as a sinister.

Jordan: I mean, not to put too fine a point on it that sounds just awful for the future of civilization in general, that any sort of collective goodwill push is now being interpreted as a way to control people. That’s the first step down what seems to me at least a pretty dark road.

Amarnath Amarasingam: Yeah, I mean, this is what I was saying earlier in terms of it’s almost not about the ideas anymore. It’s about how people approach the world around them, how people approach information trust in government. And so conspiratorial thinking really puts you in a worldview that everything around you is suspicious, everything around you is sinister, everyone’s out to get you. And so something as simple as a fairly boring urban planning policy becomes a sinister plot by the global elite to keep you within confine your movements and confine your choices that really impacts how you view the outside world, and particularly those in power.

Jordan: The last specific one I want to ask you about from last year, and I guess moving into this year is the groomer conspiracy, and is it even really a conspiracy? I don’t see the actual narrative here. It just sounds like homophobia and transphobia. I don’t see the sinister secret plot. Do you know what I’m saying?

Amarnath Amarasingam: No, you’re right that some of the ways it manifests doesn’t fit the kind of earlier definition of conspiracy theory that I was talking about as requiring sinister actors and so on. But there are definitely versions of it that spill over into conspiracy, particularly when expressed by some white supremacist groups who often talk about the gay agenda or the trans agenda as eroding the purity of the white race, making sure white people have less children and things like that. And even outside the white supremacists, I mean, there’s often talk of elites and pedophilia, particularly linked to the Q Anon movement and some of the rhetoric coming out of the protests that we’ve seen, anti-trans protests that we’ve seen even in Canada, which kind of spills over into some shadowy elites that are pushing this to kind of erode culture in some way, erode our culture in some way. And so a lot of these movements go simply beyond generic homophobia or generic transphobia into arguing that the mere education of some of these concepts and gender affirming care is actually a broader sinister plot by elites in power to erode white culture, erode morality in society as a whole and things like that. So while that kind of rhetoric isn’t mainstream at the moment, it is very much part of some of these movements which we might see grow as these movements evolve

Jordan: As we start to see these theories more and more in the mainstream, and as people who would otherwise never encounter them, start to hear them and maybe start to wonder and maybe because of a particular place they’re in mentally start to think that they make sense. How do we debunk these theories when they’re just sort of getting their hooks into people who would otherwise have never been exposed to this stuff?

Amarnath Amarasingam: Debunking doesn’t necessarily work unless some of these individuals have already one foot out the door. I used to argue a lot with conspiracy theorists back during nine 11 truther days, and I kind of describe it as punching a waterfall. They’re just immersed in this content. They’re immersed in every tiny detail, and you’re not, they know at what temperature steel burns and you don’t, right? And so it’s just going to be a kind of complete waste of time to go tit for tat with people who are deeply immersed in conspiracy theories. This is their whole life and you’re not prepared to argue with them, and it often has a kind of backfiring effect. But what I will say is some of the former Q Anon folks I’ve interviewed who have kind of slowly found their way out of these movements often say that it’s important that we have resources ready for them when they leave. Sometimes it’s just as simple as having family members who instead of dunking on them and calling them stupid for daring to fall for something so dumb, just kind of embrace them back into the fold and help them be part of the family. Again, interpersonal relationships also work. I’ve heard a lot of stories about anti covid vaccine people who just after talking to their pediatrician, who they’ve known for years have changed their minds. So that kind of interpersonal one-on-one conversation with trusted people tends to have an impact as opposed to making it all political. And I think turning down the temperature of our politics is also quite key in terms of the broader importance of this, because not everything has to be cosmic. Not everything has to be tribal. Not everything has to be us versus them, which I think is important. But in terms of early on, it’s very difficult. I mean, I think there’s some work that says pre bunking has some effectiveness, which basically says that you tell people that what kinds of information they’re going to be introduced to. So when they are eventually introduced to it, they kind of have a guardrails up to kind of process that information. If they’re receiving this information completely out of the blue and it seems like something is being hidden from them or someone’s trying to pull the wool over their eyes, all of a sudden these ideas become attractive. And so I think getting people more aware of some of these things has shown to be somewhat effective. But yeah, it’s very difficult once they go down the rabbit hole fully.

Jordan: Well, maybe before you go then, and this has been fascinating, I will ask you for a little bit of pre bunking. Are there any theories out there now or variations on theories that you are seeing in the fringes that you mentioned earlier that as we move into an election year and this stuff proliferates further, that might be more mainstream that people might encounter?

Amarnath Amarasingam: Yeah, I mean, it’s not so fringe, but we have 40 elections around the world this year.

Jordan: Oh, boy.

Amarnath Amarasingam: And rightwing populists are kind of gaining steam in quite a few of them or some of them. And so I think this broader populous rhetoric is also closely linked to conspiratorial thinking, right? Populism basically says that there’s us, the common people, the pure people, the true Canadians, the true Americans, and then we are constantly at war with these quote elites, which can be the media, academics, researchers, scientists, government, et cetera. And so it really creates this kind of us versus them rhetoric, which has proven to be quite popular during the Trump campaign, during the Vivek Ramos Swami campaign during the Modi campaign in India. And so what these elites are up to tends to often manifest in anti-immigrant rhetoric, talk about borders, talk about closing our borders, and of course, kind of antisemitism and Islamophobia. The elites often get coded as Jews if you think about the protocols of elders of Zion or the Illuminati and so on. And I think that populist sentiment, which is proving to be a kind of part of a lot of these elections that are upcoming this year is what is worrying me. It’s not so fringe fringe, but it’s definitely going to be a thing that keeps us up at night, I think this year, and I think the Trump campaign itself and the Modi campaign in India, just the campaigning itself is going to be harmful even if they actually don’t win, just the way they carry it out and the kinds of rhetoric that they allow to become mainstream is in itself going to be harmful. I think

Jordan: It sounds like a prescription for not a great year politically and otherwise am right now. Thank you so much for this, and thanks for all the work you do in this space.

Amarnath Amarasingam: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Jordan: Amarnath Amarasingam, assistant professor at Queen University, specializing in among many other things, the spread of conspiracy theories. That was The Big Story. For more from us, you can head to The Big Story podcast.ca. If you have feedback for us on this podcast or any other episode we’ve done, we would be delighted to hear it. You can send it to hello at The Big Story podcast.ca, or you can speak it on a voicemail by calling 4 1 6 9 3 5 5 9 3 5. In every podcast app, you will find The Big Story in some podcast apps you will have a chance to like and rate and review The Big Story. If you haven’t done that yet, that is one of the key ways new people find this show and we would be most appreciative if you’d spare a minute to do that for us. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. Don’t believe everything you hear. We’ll talk tomorrow.