The Conspirasphere
Climate change conspiracy or just environmentally friendly recycling? Noel rooNeY surveys the latest not-so-new news swirling around the Conspirasphere...
It appears that President trump (or his very interesting press secretary and tweet composer sean spicer) was wrong about the chinese having created global warming so as to eviscerate the us car industry; of course, they were only advancing a theory of a kind. now shocking new evidence has emerged to prove (there is a certain segment of the conspirasphere that really loves that word) that the un, in fact, invented the global warming hoax as a sure-fire way to defeat capitalism. the Executive secretary of the un framework convention on climate change, christiana figueres, made the shocking revelation at a press conference in brussels: “this is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change [sic] the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.”
shocking – or not actually that shocking, or that new. the excited flutter of discovery on a broad sweep of online sources turns out, on slightly closer inspection, to be a little short on fact-checking, and caught in a bit of a time warp. I tracked the story from rense to a number of news sites (‘news’ here is used in its strictly post-truth context) before discovering that the hot headline was in fact from an article originally posted in 2015. the woman featured in the story as the Executive secretary of the un framework convention on climate change, christiana figueres, did hold that post in 2015, and did, apparently, make the statement quoted in the news stories, in february 2015, and in brussels, at a news conference.
but two years have slipped by, and spicer’s chinese car saboteurs have slipped in, and someone in the press office appears to have slipped out for a coffee and returned two years late. In the intervening time, Ms figueres has been replaced (by Patricia Espinosa, a Mexican, and therefore either: safely on the other side of the Wall; or quite clearly another damn communist) and the un, despite the declared revolutionary goals, has failed to dent the bastion of capitalism. and it’s been snowing in Dubai.
this species of recycling is all too common in the world of conspiracy theory; it acts as a reinforcement for views already solidified, and at the same time proposes a false novelty for memes lost and forgotten in the endless swirl of faux-shocking revelations that clutter that area of cyberspace reserved for those Who know What’s really Going on. but it’s not unique to that world; the mainstream media, more often at the tabloid end, regularly promote old stories as if they are new. the latter do it because, increasingly, news outlets lack the staff and resources to fact-check properly, to the point where, arguably, ‘the news’ is a tenuous term in a theatre of events that does not require verity to engage us.
In the conspirasphere, few news outlets have ever had either the resources, or the compulsion, to verify the material they broadcast. It is fractal grist for a partisan mill; and so many of the people who read and disseminate this stuff describe their Internet browsing as ‘research’ that the alt-media could be forgiven for assuming that all those researchers will happily do their own factchecking. If conspiracy theory is migrating into the mainstream, it is fair to say that journalistic ideals of the tabloid variety are regularly making the return journey.
some of the newer news on the alt-right wires is beginning to take on the appearance of a severely welt-ridden equine corpse. Pizzagate ought to have died with the clinton presidential campaign – but, like the dish itself, this one is just too tasty to walk away from. now comes a hot tip from an anonymous FBI insider that arrests are imminent; we’re just waiting for Jeff sessions, Mr trump’s not universally approved pick for attorney General, to take office, and then the satanic Democrats will get their just desserts. unless the un gets its insidious act together, and capitalism falls first. www.armstrongeconomics.com/world-news/ climate/ global-warming-is-about- destroyingcapitalism /; www.unric.org/en/latest-unbuzz/29623-figueres-first-time-the-worldeconomy-is-transformed-intentionally; http :// yournewswire.com/fbi-pizzagate-arrestswashington/