THE CONSPIRASPHERE

In a global landscape marked by competing narratives, is it any wonder that conspiracism now plays a major role in shaping and controlling them asks NOEL ROONEY.

GET WITH THE NARRATIVE

COP 26, the periodic gathering of the great, green and good (and this year setting a new record for the amount of pollution produced by the delegates) came as the Covid era (it is hard to know how else to describe it, it’s gone on so long) approached its second anniversary. On the face of it, two very different existential emergencies; but there are some curious similarities between the two, even if we dismiss the observation (common in the C-sphere) that both belong to the overall strategy of the New World Order.

I’ve been banging on for some years now about the migration of conspiracy theory into the mainstream, particularly in the news media, and I’ve observed a kind of step change in the status (or perhaps function is a better term) of conspiracism in a media atmosphere that is continually, tediously fervid and apocalyptic. It is not unusual for a long-running – and hotly disputed – topic in current affairs to exhibit elements of conspiratorial thinking on both sides of the debate. And it is tantamount to conventional for each side to accuse the other of either engaging in a conspiracy or concocting conspiracy theories so as to muddy the (often murky to begin with) waters.

The long-running saga that was Russiagate is a perfect example. Before its rather undignified demise at the hands of actual evidence (and who is to say it won’t resurrect itself at some point, if only to save the Washington Post from handing back its Pulitzer?) an outside observer might have been forgiven for thinking that every individual involved in the furore believed that every other individual involved was a conspirator or a conspiracy theorist; and, comically enough, that they were all bang on the money.

Climate and Covid provoke similar attitudes. In each case there is an offifificial narrative; in each case there is a minority (albeit a fairly informed minority) that disputes elements of that narrative; and in each case there are groups and individuals (on both sides) whose views can reasonably be termed conspiracist. In some respects, they are both what one might call emergent mirror conspiracy theories; global phenomena that have morphed, somehow, into dual, mutually exclusive narratives and belief systems, which encourage conspiracism and accusations of it.

The idea of a narrative is key here. One of the reasons for conspiracy theory’s migration into the mainstream is because the mainstream is dominated by competing narratives. This in itself is not new; but there has been a subtle shift in the value of the narrative in recent years. It has become the primary expression of power and compliance and, equally, of dissent. It is no surprise that ‘nudgers’ (behavioural scientists) now inhabit all the corridors of power, and have become powerful in the process; shaping a narrative to encourage consensus or compliance is their stock in trade.

And in a world where the narrative is king, conspiracy theory is a shoo-in for court jester; its motley is the perfect camouflage in the gaudy spotlight of public affairs. It serves a raft of functions: useful idiots can be propped up like coconut shies to spout the extreme version of the offifificial narrative, then be dismissed as conspiracists (after they have conveniently widened the Overton Window); even more useful idiots can be found among the dissenters, offering exaggerated versions of the dissenting view that can be shot down by gleeful conformists; and those who dissent – often with good reason – from the offifificial narrative can be neatly pigeonholed with other, rather less cogent individuals who have expressed a similar viewpoint.

Where the power relations between the opposing views is more even (which is not often the case) the adversarial drama is usually symmetrical, and regularly comic. But in those situations (and both climate change and Covid belong here) where the offifificial narrative has the backing of governments, powerful institutions and corporations, the dissenting view is more likely to be conspiratorial, at least on its extreme fringes, and the consensus view is more likely to include an image of the dissenting voice as emanating from under a tin-foil hat.

Both climate change and Covid have their share of alarmist voices; these voices often tilt the narrative away from science and rationality towards something more magical and religious in tone. The consensus of the powerful indulges these voices because they give the cold, technocratic incantations of scientism an emotive, human tone, even if the content is wayward. And, of course, they turn the public perception of the problem into a more urgent existential threat. Meanwhile, the voices of dissent, though in many respects they resemble the scientific narrative in tone and evidential emphasis, are pushed to the margins, where they appear to contend only with the lunatic fringe of the public consensus.

When the public domain is infested with a faux competition between tilted versions of opposing arguments, the chances of the average citizen being able to locate, let alone understand, the arguments on both sides are remote. Instead, most of us are treated to an illusory, slanted parody of the actual issue; a parody replete with accusations of conspiracy, and counter-accusations of conspiracy theory, and largely evidence free. Finding a source that evaluates the arguments in a dispassionate and unbiased way (where are the unbiased news media when we need them?) is too diffifificult for most people, not because they are too dim to understand, but because they are too immersed in the spectacle to see beyond it. And that, of course, is the point of narrative reality.

Any day now, some enterprising denizen of the C-sphere will propose that the migration of conspiracy theory into the mainstream is a mainstream conspiracy designed to obscure legitimate dissent. Crazy, obviously…

It is no surprise that ‘nudgers’ now inhabit all the corridors of power