The new word in town is “conspiracism.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for example, though a Democrat, is described as a conspiracist because perhaps from family history he suggests that some secret but influential forces, not the publicly given reasons, are actually responsible for many of the events that we experience. It’s fair to say that the establishment has its conspiracies too, in which Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, Nazis, and the mighty QAnon, are busy trying to destroy “our democracy.” We live in a John Wick universe where powerful cabals rule the world unseen (but without the sartorial style of the movie goons).
But what is conspiracism exactly? Is there a set of canonical beliefs that constitute modern “conspiracism,” or is it merely a questioning attitude that never takes authority at face value? Does conspiracism present another model of how the world works, or does it merely dispute a specific set of facts on specific issues? Disturbingly the facts on many of the most important current issues are now in dispute. As Matt Taibbi points out in “Covid’s Origins and the Death of Trust,” millions believe the medical bureaucracy lied about the origins of COVID and the safety of vaccines.
The coronavirus epidemic did more than make people sick. The lies or perceived lies surrounding it poisoned trust in the institutions. If the establishment can lie about COVID, Taibbi reasoned, the public will figure they can lie about anything.
We thought that in emergencies, even the worst officials would suspend their stealing and conniving long enough to do the bare minimum. As these documents show, however, we can’t even have that expectation. Once people see an institutional malfunction on this scale, it’s like walking in on a cheating spouse, they can’t unsee it. That’s what these scientists were risking when they played around with a lie this big: everything.
January 6, Hunter’s laptop, the 2020 elections, social media censorship … where do you stand? We’ve gone from a society having a different set of opinions to having a different set of facts. In such an atmosphere, conspiracy is not only likely but inevitable. This creates problems of legitimacy and governance. The catastrophic loss of institutional trust has made it imperative for the establishment to roll out virtual reality, not through goggles and special chairs, but by manipulating the entire information environment so that we live inside a lie. In this way, society can still be persuaded to go along with its discredited leaders.
The Narrative may have been in place for some time, but it is increasing in extent. One clue to the existence of this manufactured universe is the sudden rise and fall of breathlessly overhyped emergencies, which like manipulated stocks, are here today and gone tomorrow. Two recent possible examples are COVID boosterism and trans mania. Their rapid transit across the front pages seems somewhat contrived. Manipulation is easier now.
The NYT reports that “Google is testing a product that uses artificial intelligence technology to produce news stories, pitching it to news organizations including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal’s owner, News Corp, according to three people familiar with the matter.” Now that the establishment has found a way to get AI to actually write the news, it’s possible to micro-adjust the information environment around us in near real time to produce a very plausible fake world where everything beyond your immediate ken is curated. Once we are all confined to 15 Minute Cities, what can we really know that lies beyond our sight except through our mediated devices? Already on the average street, there are more and more people heads-down on their phones. That’s the world to them.
The Bubble, to give a name to this simulation, may be everywhere collapsing and yet reconstituting itself, falling and catching itself a thousand times a minute, to all appearances seamless but constantly running out of real resources and replacing them with the fake. How would people living in a world of contrivance perceive the approach of real danger and distinguish it from all the bogus ones the institutions might be manufacturing?
Perhaps one disturbing sign of the strangeness of these times is a news report that Sam Bankman-Fried’s younger brother, a top lobbyist for failed crypto exchange FTX, considered purchasing the island nation of Nauru in the Pacific to create a fortified apocalypse bunker state and create a genetically enhanced human species. “Gabe Bankman-Fried was looking at buying Nauru in the ‘event where 50%-99.99% of people die’ to protect his philanthropic allies and create a genetically enhanced human species, according to the suit filed Thursday by attorneys from Sullivan & Cromwell, which is seeking to recover billions of dollars following the collapse of FTX.” Gabe Bankman-Fried “is a former Democratic congressional staffer and the founder and former head of left-of-center advocacy organization Guarding Against Pandemics (GAP).”
If conspiracy is for crazy people, then why is Elon going to Mars and the effective altruists creating their own apocalypse island? Are they too or just the cabin in the woods survivalists deluded? If there’s your truth and my truth, there’s still the real truth — the objective truth — and we have lost track of it.
