Another virus is infecting the world in the wake of COVID-19 and it is hitting the United States with particular virulence.
A plague of conspiracy theories is attacking scientific facts about the pandemic, and replacing them with fake theories that will undermine efforts to tame it. Social media permits such misinformation to spread online, globally, with the speed of a virus, whether pushed by lone individuals, groups or governments.
What makes these conspiracy theories particularly dangerous in this country is that some of the worst are amplified by far-right talking heads — and by President Donald Trump.
“COVID-19 has created the perfect storm for conspiracy theorists,” rightly argues the Atlantic magazine, in a terrific new issue on “Truth, Lies and Conspiracies in a Time of Pandemic.” Isolated at home, anxious, distrustful of governments — many people are more susceptible to bizarre theories that claim to reveal “secret knowledge.”
Not surprisingly, state-controlled media in Russia (which has used conspiracy theories as an anti-Western foreign-policy tool for decades) are pushing the claim that the coronavirus is a U.S. bioweapon, developed to destroy China. Beijing is also promoting that theory.
Yet the pandemic has also unleashed a wave of more bizarre conspiracy theories such as the charge (also pushed by Russian media) that 5G networks are spreading the virus. This led arsonists across Europe to set cellphone towers ablaze.
Conspiracy theories endanger our ability to emerge from COVID-19.
And most widespread of all global conspiracy memes is that Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder-turned-philanthropist, is part of a secret plot to take over the global health system.
In posts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, he is being falsely portrayed either as the founder of or profiteer from the virus, who seeks to track the global population by inserting microchip vaccination implants into their bodies. Conservative pundits such as Laura Ingraham, along with leading anti-vaccinators such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., echo these claims.
However, if you want to fully grasp the virulence of the conspiracy virus, consider the tale of the 26-minute “Plandemic” video, which describes a fake secret plot by global elites, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, to profit from the pandemic and grab political power.
Narrated by a discredited scientist, the video claims masks can make wearers sick and assails future vaccines as dangerous. According to a stunning New York Times investigation, in the week after the video’s May 4 posting on Facebook, YouTube and other sites, it was viewed more than 8 million times.
Although Facebook and YouTube had removed the video by May 7, it had already spread throughout social media, and added to the miasma of suspicion toward scientific experts. This will undermine future efforts to keep COVID-19 down.
So how does all this relate to the White House? President Trump is himself a master of conspiratorial thinking. He rose to political power by promoting the discredited “birther” conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and thus not eligible to be president.
The president’s endless Twitter feed has spread libraries’ worth of falsehoods, including claims of a conspiratorial plot by the “deep state” against him. His feed has promoted some of the movements most avidly spreading the conspiracy virus, such as the cultlike QAnon movement that is spreading widely online. QAnon has been an avid promoter of the attacks on Gates and the “Plandemic” video.
Trump cooked up a baseless conspiracy theory against Joe Biden over Ukraine and is trying to do the same with Barack Obama with a baseless “Obamagate” tagline.
