The Weaponisation of Conspiracy
medium.com/@markheley/the-weaponisation-of-conspiracy-4fc3c8dd71fa"I think it’s time to address the behaviour of members of our communities who have weaponised propaganda against us. Calling it ‘conspiracy theory’ massively overstates the coherence of what I am talking about.
Personally, I have direct experience and knowledge of dark and manipulative agendas. They exist. But the only dark and manipulative agenda I see in this case, is the one orchestrating the distribution of aggressive nonsense and- frankly -those participating in sharing it.
I respect the choice of every person to have unusual, and even incredulous, belief systems. I certainly have them. I respect the choice of every person to explore strange and eccentric world views, bizarre ontologies and weird cults (personally, I include ‘organised religion’ in this bracket). If you are not harming others, knock yourself out.
However, there is such a thing as being on the wrong side of history. If you still believe that a legitimate reason for supporting the Trump presidency is that he is going to release child slaves from underneath New York City, I’m going to include you in that. If you think COVID-19 is caused by 5G, or that Hydroxychloroquine is a suppressed miracle cure, I’m going to include you in that. If you think that ‘All Lives Matter’ is a meaningful statement and not just a racist dogwhistle, I’m going to include you in that.
It doesn’t mean I hate you as a person. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think you have other redeeming qualities, but it does make you sound awfully like a person who commends Hitler on his vegetarianism.
I have to preface what I’m about to say next with that, because unfortunately the biggest casualty of the aggressive distribution of propaganda is that the space in which civil discourse can happen is diminished and sometimes destroyed entirely.
What I want to do is to talk about is the damage that this behaviour does to our communities and I’m going to have to get personal here, because I live in one, a town in the West of England that is unfortunately notorious for this.
I’m also going to have to specifically call out the exact behaviour I am talking about, so as not to be vague. I don’t care in you believe in a Flat Earth and habitually post that fact to your personal social media feeds, but otherwise behave in a basically decent way. That’s not what this is about.
What this is about is a form of harassment, both online and (more subtly, but definitely actually) in the real world. I will give you an example, at the beginning of lockdown in the UK a longstanding friend bombarded me on multiple social media channels with videos with strong arguments about widespread ritual child abuse that included imagery evocative of those acts. I asked him to stop. He redoubled his efforts. I reminded him that I was grieving for a close family member who had suddenly died and didn’t want to receive material like this at this time. He continued and accelerated doing this until I systemically blocked him on all channels.
I have also had multiple people approach me in the street, or in other public spaces, ignore any protocols on social distancing and in an unsolicited way force their opinions on me. On one level, I’ve seen this as a product of denial and fear leading people to make poor choices about what they believe. On another level, when I have restricted myself to walking away without comment, I’ve been subjected to quite extreme anger.
When I post on social media, I’ve found myself self-censoring to avoid potential conflict with some of these people. Most of them are real life friends who I have multiple forms of connection with, but having their way with delivering their opinions on things, or demand that I pay attention to some ill-researched nonsense has become their dominant modality. And, the inference is that if I don’t want to play this toxic game, that I’m either ‘one of them’ or ‘not awake’. You are either with us, or against us, is the underlying theme. It’s dangerous territory.
Out of these things, as a writer, I have realised that self-censorship is the most dangerous one of all. During the pandemic and when I was in the midst of deep grief, I just didn’t have the strength to confront this. So, I kept quiet.
It’s difficult and demoralising to attempt to address the lack of factual underpinnings for weaponised conspiracy. Especially as this multi-headed hydra spews a constant and never-ending stream. If you try to rationally address one emission, not only does it give it more attention and air time, the hydra will simply move onto a new permutation on the same theme as soon as the credibility of the last one is seriously challenged.
We can’t fight that without also fighting the complicity of social media platforms and well-organised, well-funded fomenters of discord (some of whom who are state actors) that lie behind that. Information war is a given in this time. The best we can probably do is to realise that and adapt accordingly.
We can, however, address the behaviour of the people who spread misinformation, who perpetuate the information war and who seek to dominate discourse without actually bothering to participate in it. Not that I suggest seeking it out, as hopefully you have better things to do. But when it does show up in our communities, let’s call it out. If you can’t speak directly to that person, as they are aggressive or domineering, or just unwilling to examine their beliefs, or addicted to their behaviour, or whatever reason it is… you can still speak to the rest of us. More importantly, if we stay silent, we are actually enabling this.
I really am saddened that we live in a time where we still have to say things like, ‘I am an anti-racist’, or ‘I am an anti-fascist’. But we do. Or, alternately I could say, ‘I believe that we need to create a juster, fairer society that works for all of its members and to prevent, when necessary, those who seek to create tyranny and oppress others from doing so.’ If we want to frame what is meant to be an obvious and self-evident truth in the form of a positive statement that isn’t anti-something-else.
Honestly, I’m angry about this. I’d like to be able to walk down the street without being accosted. I’d like to wake up to see my social media posts without snarky, unsubstantiated comments that are just designed to create argument. But, on a deeper level, what I’m really angry about is my decision not to say anything about this. I’ve restrained myself to walking away and social media blocking so far, but the best way I’ve found to confront this anger and to own it, is to write about it. And to encourage anyone else who finds themselves in a similar situation to do the same thing in their own unique way. That way, we can at least defuse some of the anger, maybe even bring little humour to the situation and best of all, prevent this decade from becoming a re-run of the 1930’s."