Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Coronavirus

Richard Greene, Rachel Robison-Greene

• Publisher: Open Universe
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781637700075
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Saggi di filosofia

There are common categories of conspiracy theories, variants of which pop up over and over again. These theories can be used to closely track people's most significant philosophical concerns. In this up-to-date study of conspiracy theories, the authors look at the history of conspiracy theories, discuss the history and hallmarks of such theories, and examine what counts as a conspiracy theory--and what doesn't.

Part I

Understanding Conspiracy Theories

1 Conspiracy Theories Past and Present

The Case of the Fiddling Emperor

On the night of July 19th (or some say the 18th), 64 A.D., a fire broke out in Rome. It began in the merchant area near Circus Maximus, in the heart of the city, at a shop which contained flammable goods. That night there was a strong wind coming off the river Tiber which caused the fire to spread rapidly.

The blaze initially burned for six days and seven nights and subsequently for another three days when it reignited. Ten of Rome’s fourteen districts—more than seventy percent of the city—went up in flames. Hundreds of thousands of people either died or were rendered homeless. These are pretty much the known facts of the case (along with a handful of insignificant details about precisely how the fire spread, and so forth).

So, what happened? How did the fire start? Who, if anyone, was to blame? Despite the fact that no one at the time knew the answer to these questions, there was no shortage of conjecture. The historians Suetonius and Tacitus speculated that the emperor Nero was behind the fire. Suetonius suggested that Nero burned the city simply because he could. His account includes (highly suspect) witness testimony that Nero’s agents were seen carrying torches through the streets of Rome. He also reports of Nero singing at a location near the fire at the time. This is the origin of the “Nero fiddled while Rome burned story,” which shouldn’t be taken too literally, as fiddles had not yet been invented.

Tacitus held that Nero was not in Rome at the time of the fire, but rather, was at his palace in Antium (about fifty miles away), where he ordered the city burned so that he could rebuild it to his own specifications. Nero, on this account, had requested and had been denied approval from the Roman Senate to build a number of palaces, which were to be called “Neropolis” in the heart of the city, including his celebrated Domus Aurea (the Golden House). Gutting a large chunk of real estate nicely facilitated Nero’s plan.

Nero, according to Tacitus, blamed the Christians for starting the fire. (Stephen Dando Collins, in his book The Great Fire of Rome, argues that Tacitus had Nero blaming Egyptians for the fire, and this was later changed to Christians.) A number of Christians, in fact, admitted to being part of the plot to burn Rome. Of course, there is plenty of reason to believe that their confessions may have been coerced. Still, the confessions served Nero’s purpose.

Do we have any reason to favor any of these theories? Tacitus, who was in his early teens at the time of the fire, admits that his account is heavily reliant on hearsay and rumors. Suetonius’s account is based on one quoted exchange in which a man is reported as saying to Nero “When I am dead, let the Earth be consumed by fire” to which Nero reportedly replied “No, while I live.” And yet, each of these conspiracy theories about the great fire of Rome served its purpose, and each has managed to endure, with some percentage of the population accepting them.

Bridging the Gap

We begin with the story about the Roman fire of 64 A.D. for a couple of reasons. First, as countless reporters, political pundits, and clever creators of internet memes have pointed out, there are striking parallels between the actions (or lack thereof) attributed to Nero and those (again, or lack thereof) attributed to Donald Trump during the first eleven months of the coronavirus pandemic and especially to Trump’s actions— mostly golfing and claiming without evidence that the election was rigged—just after the 2020 presidential election was called for Joe Biden (more on the conspiracy theory centered on the rigging of the 2020 presidential election to come). Second, and more importantly for our purposes in this chapter, it highlights the fact that conspiracy theories have been around for a very long time. Throughout that time, they have been used for similar purposes, such as discrediting political rivals, furthering political agendas, shifting focus from one issue to another, deflecting blame, scaring citizens, and to some extent, even fighting culture wars. The list goes on and on.

As was made abundantly clear in the introduction to this book, we are in a sort of “golden age” of conspiracy theories. It is widely held, at least by laypersons and casual observers, that this level of acceptance and proliferation of conspiracy theories is completely unprecedented. While there have never been quite as many conspiracy theories as there are floating around today and they have never been quite as impactful as they currently are (neither of which should come as much of a surprise to anyone given the rate at which information now travels) this is not the first time that conspiracy theories have enjoyed this kind of prominence.

One critical difference between contemporary conspiracy theories and their predecessors is that contemporary theories gain traction and spread much more easily. Contemporary conspiracy theories are analogous to wildfires. Any particular bit of wildfire is fairly easy to put out, but they spread extremely quickly, and extinguishing an entire wildfire can be quite difficult— containment is challenging but essential.

Conspiracy theories from an earlier era, once established, had considerably more staying power. This is due to the fact that in earlier times fact checking was a much more challenging endeavor. Often, key facts were not available to the general public and, if they were, accessing them wasn’t just a matter of searching Google. To continue with the fire analogy, these conspiracy theories were more akin to something like a burning oil field or a tire fire. They didn’t spread as rapidly, but they were and are very difficult to extinguish. In these cases, containment is not the problem. It was much more difficult to refute conspiracy theories from bygone eras. So, in some ways the situation has improved, at least in theory. People who have a genuine interest in believing what the best evidence supports and have the skills to make reliable discernments have more information at their fingertips to do so. In other respects, however, the situation has become much worse because of how quickly bad information can spread on the internet and how disinclined people are (for one reason or another) to exercise best practices when it comes to assessing information.

Another important similarity lies in the sorts of circumstances that might give rise to certain types of conspiracy theories. As Jan-Willem van Prooijen and Karen M. Douglas point out, conspiracy theories thrive in times of societal crisis. Human history, of course, is a virtually never-ending stream of societal crises. They argue that the ways in which people feel during times of societal crises (fear, uncertainty, being out of control, and so on) motivates them to create conspiracy theories in order to “make sense” out of what is occurring. These explanatory conspiracy theories eventually manage to become part of the historical narrative, which affects the way that people actually remember the events. This account is consistent with recent literature on the high degree of confabulation that naturally occurs when people remember significant events—even those that don’t rise to the level of societal crisis—as described, for instance, in Chris Weigel’s article “Quotidian Confabulations.” If we remember many of the big events incorrectly, it stands to reason that when we find ourselves in crisis situations, sometimes without good explanations ready at hand for why we are in such circumstances, we produce theories to account for the circumstances, seemingly out of thin air. We often do this in ways that make us feel more comfortable or in control. It’s common to want to identify a scapegoat—someone to blame to avoid the recognition of the sometimes tragic absurdity of our experiences.

Given all of this, it’s not surprising that conspiracy theories have tended to thrive throughout history whenever there was uncertainty or upheaval, which is almost always the case somewhere. If we simply examine the major events that have occurred over the past one hundred years or so, we’ll find conspiracy theories associated with each, and in many cases there were or are numerous conspiracy theories. For the purposes of illustration, we will consider a handful of examples. Conspiracy theorists have postulated that World War I might have ended much sooner had Allied forces not had an economic incentive to keep it going. The virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic was thought to be a bioweapon, delivered by way of aspirin pills created by Bayer—a German pharmaceutical company. The Great Depression was allegedly brought about by a powerful New World–type cabal. There is no shortage of conspiracy theories pertaining to World War II. Most notably, conspiracy theorists have denied the Holocaust, claimed that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew about the attack on Pearl Harbor in advance, and have contended that Hitler’s death was faked. Famously, there are also a number of conspiracy theories pertaining to President Kennedy’s assassination (take your pick here: the CIA did it, the FBI did it, the KGB did it, the Mafia did it).

One conspiracy theory, fueled in part by some obvious and some not so obvious hints from the band itself, held that Paul McCartney of The Beatles actually died in 1967. Conspiracy theorists have claimed that the Moon landing didn’t occur, and that the photos of the landing were faked. At the time that the Soviet Union fell, a number of conspiracy theories were floated that it was a hoax designed to catch the West off guard. 9/11 was claimed to be an inside job. The very presidency of Barack Obama was challenged on the grounds that he wasn’t eligible to be president, because some alleged that he was born in Kenya rather than the United States. Many of the same conspiracy theorists held that he was secretly a Muslim. One theory that just very recently began making its way into public discourse, is that the 2020 California wildfires were started by Jewish space lasers. And finally, the coronavirus pandemic has given rise to numerous conspiracy theories, including, but not limited to the standard pandemic line that it was a lab-created bioweapon, and that it was created so that Bill Gates could produce a vaccine with a tracking chip in order to track people’s whereabouts and activities (The irony that this conspiracy theory was most often spread via cell phone—devices that track the whereabouts of people—is not to go unnoticed.) Each of these events to some degree coincided with real upheaval in the lives of many people.

A look at significant events prior to the twentieth century yields similar findings. (The article by Mark R. Cheathem shows that the parallels between some of those events and our most recent presidential elections are eerily similar.) There have been many conspiracies about prominent historical figures. Take, for example, the death of President Abraham Lincoln. Some claim that his assassination was orchestrated by high-ranking Confederate officials such as Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin (which was a conspiracy theory twofer, as Benjamin was Jewish, and conspiracy theorists frequently target Jewish persons).

Conspiracy theories about the Bavarian Illuminati remain prominent (the Illuminati really existed, but they were initially just six guys who met for drinks and didn’t exactly attempt to take over the world). Some challenge the authenticity of the works of William Shakespeare. One prominent theory is that they were not, in fact, written by Shakespeare, but rather were penned by Christopher Marlowe, who allegedly faked his own death and subsequently wrote under the name William Shakespeare. Another less prominent theory is that they were written by Sir Francis Bacon. There were conspiracy theories about the Black Death. In this case, neither explanation was particularly evidencebased, but the conspiracy theories challenged the generally accepted view of scholars of the day, namely, that the plague was the result of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars all aligning in very specific region of Aquarius on March 20th, 1345. Instead, conspiracists alleged that witches were to blame. Theories about Jesus allege that he was secretly married to Mary Magdalene. And, of course, there are the theories about Nero and the aforementioned Roman fire of 64 A.D.

The dominant events and figures throughout history dramatically impact people’s lives and how they view the world and their position. As a result, it’s not surprising that theories emerge surrounding these events and figures. This book will be an exploration and analysis of theories of this type and the human inclinations to believe them.

Lightening Things Up a Bit

While van Prooijen and Douglas are correct to point out that times of societal upheaval give rise to a multitude of conspiracy theories, they are not the sole source of them. For instance, small-scale upheavals have also given rise to numerous conspiracy theories over the years. By “small-scale upheavals”, we mean less impactful events that might elicit in individuals the same kinds of emotions (fear, panic, uncertainty, a feeling of being out of control, and so forth), but just not on a widespread scale.

Consider, for example, any number of weather experiments conducted by the United States government. These were interpreted by many as UFO sightings. Of course, the most famous of these is the Roswell incident of 1947. What ultimately turned out to be debris from a balloon launched to spy on Soviet atomic weapons testing was initially thought to be the remains of a flying saucer. The need for an explanation quickly and permanently led to wide-spread belief that the “flying saucer” was an alien vehicle. The conspiracy theorizing didn’t end there. The requisite “government cover-up” also included the finding of alien bodies and the occurrence of an alien autopsy. It probably didn’t help much that a spokesperson from Roswell Army Airfield initially reported that they had found a “flying disk.”

All sorts of “unexplained” phenomena give rise to conspiracy theories. That a seemingly large number of accidents occurred in what has come to be known as the Bermuda Triangle calls for explanation. It turns out that the number of accidents occurring there, statistically speaking, is not abnormal, but once the suggestion was made, conspiracy theories were spawned. Simi larly, the lost colony of Roanoke Island—a group of about 115 settlers—disappeared without a trace in the late 1590’s. Their disappearance gave rise to a number of theories, such as that they were killed by native persons or possibly Spaniards. In truth, recent archeological research suggests they merely migrated a bit from the island. There’s no shortage of individuals looking for some sort of explanation for why their children have autism who have readily accepted conspiracy theories about childhood vaccinations causing it, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (along with a retraction by the author of the lone bit of evidence in favor of the thesis). If you have a field with crops in it and you stealthily add a few circles which you photograph from above, conspiracy theories involving ...