From the heights of US leadership, Donald Trump and his new buddy - Elon Musk, are operating a chainsaw in everything from domestic budget spending to international relations. Employees of various federal agencies are being laid off from one day to the next to make room for loyalists, the likes of the people who propose that Trump be imprinted on the 100 dollar bill and be carved on the Mount Rushmore next to Washington.
Meanwhile, Musk brags about how he stopped millions of dollars intended to buy condoms for Gaza or circumcisions in Mozambique. Trump himself talks about money used to make transgender mice. It used to be "transgenic," but the obsession with the imaginary issue of "virus woke" made the message go like this.
All of this, and the dynamiting of US relations with allies, is completely and unquestionably based on a series of conspiracy theories. The internal cuts are based on the theory of fighting the 'parallel state' and the 'globalist elites' who want to impose the ' wokeagenda '. Foreign relations are being assassinated because of the belief that the rest of the world has only taken advantage of the United States, this benevolent and magnanimous superpower, and that this has to change.
Similarly, most of the messages on which GOLD, SOS, or POTUS operate are based on conspiracy theories. Let's take the idea that anti-COVID vaccines would be downright dangerous - would cause heart disease, cancer, the most absurd side effects and millions of deaths, when the reality is the oppositemillions of lives have been saved.
This message is often connected to what I've called the Major Conspiracy, which claims that "globalist elites" want to decimate the world's population and turn the survivors into modern-day slaves. Sometimes the elite is Marxist, and the new slavery would be a consequence of the elimination of private property. But there are variations in which the "slave" would be controlled directly (chips, 5G), indirectly (through PsyOps implemented by secret services) or conditioned by technology (transhumanism).
This article aims to provide some explanations of the phenomenon conspiracy - the belief that it is all part of conspiracies, which, as Peter Pomerantsev has argued[1]has replaced political ideology.
Conspiracies and conspiracy theories
Have there been conspiracies in the world? We certainly know there have. The "MK Ultra" program run in the 1970s by the CIA was trying to develop a "truth serum" and experimented with hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis and other methods in what now sounds like an action movie, if documents had not been declassified. The burning of the Reichstag (the German parliament building) in 1933, which led to the consolidation of Nazi power in Germany, is considered by many historians to have been a plot organized by the Nazis, or at least one to which the Nazis contributed. Other examples where state actors or private groups operate in the shadows to influence political decisions or the public can easily be found.
But what does that mean? Is everything in the world coordinated by secret groups? Are demonic forces involved, as is written even on the walls of Bucharest - "Down with the Satanists who rule us"? Does Bill Gates want to control us with chips? Are there secret cabals that theorize children in underground tunnels, then consume their blood to stay young and strong?
Certainly not.
How can we, however, tell when we are dealing with a genuine conspiracy and when with a conspiracy theory? When we are just being paranoid, or when someone is really out to harm us?
A coherent definition was proposed as early as 1999 by Brian Keely[2]: a conspiracy theory is a conspiracy-centered explanation that exhibits a set of five characteristics: (1) the explanation is in opposition to other official or "common sense" explanations; (2) the intentions of the conspiracy are necessarily evil; (3) it connects unrelated events; (4) the truths presented are well-protected secrets; (5) there are errors or omissions in the data used to construct the explanation.
Let us return to the Major Conspiracy, described above. It is easy to show that all of Keely's criteria are satisfied. We have an evil plot - the plan to decimate the population. Proponents often connect unrelated events - a discourse about the need for vaccines with the existence of backlash plans (which is to be expected), with another discourse about demographic problems, etc. Obviously, this plan is hidden, although all sorts of influencers and politicians have exposed the secret. There are not only errors and omissions in the data used, but even proven deliberate falsifications - for example speeches from which a few seconds are cut out to make it look like they are saying something else. The theory proposes an explanation for something that doesn't exist - the serious illnesses and deaths caused by the vaccine, suggesting that the vaccine is one of tools by which the conspirators want to implement their plan. In fact, the official and common-sense explanation is that the anti-COVID vaccine is, although imperfect (like any other vaccine), an extraordinary achievement of humanity, which has saved millions of lives and seems to have spurred breakthroughs in the fight against cancer and other diseases (through mRNA technology).
Why conspiracy theories work
There are a myriad of reasons that fuel conspiracism, from low trust in authority and poor education to social inequality or the impact of social networks on public discourse.
But I will focus on three interesting motivations:
The first is that it gives people an easy justification for their own failures. It's an attractive proposition to learn that if you feel you don't have the job, car or house you want and think you deserve, it's not because you're not good enough, but because you're being sabotaged by others.
The second reason is that it gives people the feeling that they are special, that they have access to hidden truths, that they are part of a small circle of people who have seen beyond appearances.
Paradoxically, the third motivation is that conspiracy theories are reassuring. It is more stressful to admit that sometimes the whole world is in crisis, that there is chaos, that nobody knows exactly what to do. Conspiracy theories reassure people that everything is a plan, so everything will happen "when they at the controls want it to happen", giving the illusion that everything is still under control.
Conspiracist - the belief that everything is a conspiracy
Conspiracy theories have been around forever, and not all are the same. The belief that Elvis is alive is amusing but somewhat irrelevant, with no real social consequences. On the other hand, the idea that vaccines are a tool of globalists who want to control the world affects the level of acceptance of vaccines with major social consequences, just as the belief that there is a "parallel state" that does not allow the elected representatives of the people to fulfill their promises affects the democratic process and public policy decisions.
But the last ten years have brought conspiracy theories to the forefront, mainly due to populist influencers and politicians, who find an easy route to popularity and an easy way to justify the measures they want to impose.
Donald Trump ran - and won - on a platform based on several such theories. This effort is very broad, long-term and includes the amplification of false claims through various channels (print, TV, influencers, etc).
Still after his 2016 victory Trump claimed he would have won the popular vote as well[3] if there weren't so many immigrants voting illegally, promoting the "great replacement" - a conspiracy theory that suggests the Democratic Party supports illegal immigration so it can control the elections.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump built the framework of an electoral conspiracy, repeatedly claiming that he can't lose unless his opponents cheat. After the election, various theories were promoted, some completely fanciful: that Dominion, one of the firms that manufactures the voting machines, was controlled by the deceased president of Venezuela - Hugo Chavez, for "arrange" election; that Italian firm Leonardo's Italian firm Leonardo allegedly used satellites to change votes for Trump into votes for Biden, conspiring with the US embassy in Rome and even the Vatican; that US army allegedly raided a Frankfurt location to pick up servers of a Spanish firm showing evidence of fraud.
For those still in doubt, let it be noted that all these claims were dismantled both through media investigations and in court, in more than 60 lawsuits, all lost by the Trump team. Fox News also ended up paying nearly $800 million to Dominion after it was shown that lies about the firm's involvement in election rigging were being promoted on the station, even though the producers knew they were lies (they themselves wrote this in their own conversations at the time). The case led to the firing of Carlson Tucker, the station's star.
Conspiracy theories - particularly the "great replacement" and election theories - have been revived and amplified as the 2024 election approached. Punctually, others have surfaced, for example the suggestion that some of Trump's legal troubles were part of a plot against him orchestrated by George Soros.
Romania is no better off either.
The anti-EU propaganda campaign supported by the leaders of the so-called sovereignist parties is based on the conspiracy theory that Romania is the richest country in Europe, constantly sabotaged by the major European powers, which would steal our resources to keep us dependent on them.
Deep State continues to be "revealed" on TV and social media, despite the fact that the main source is Călin Hideg, a former PhD student at the SRI Academy involved in thousands of deals with the state, including the delivery of masks at inflated prices, in pandemics. He was sentenced in the first instance to four years in prison in a case of fraud with European funds, after which he became a whistleblower in another case in which he accuses former SRI chiefs Florian Coldea and Dumitru Dumbravă of promising to keep him out of jail in exchange for considerable sums of money.
Conspiracy theories about COVID, going so far as to claim that it was a biological weapon, continue to be promoted.
A lot of the false messages about Ukraine are fueled by various conspiracy theories, such as the idea that Ukrainians have no more soldiers and that's why the EU wants to send Romanians (specifically). Other theories touch the realm of anti-Semitism, such as the "Khazari Jews" theory, amplified after the Russian invasion of 2022. The theory has several variations, but generally holds that the Jews of Eastern Europe are not "real Jews" but descended from a Turkic population that allegedly converted to Judaism in the 8th century to hide their identity. The Ukrainian leaders are also allegedly not "real Jews" but part of the "Khazarian mafia" that handed Ukraine over to the Rotschild family, and the war in Ukraine is in fact Russia's effort to combat world Jewish power.
Life is always more exciting than movies
Idiocracy, the movie that came out in 2006 as a sarcastic and intentionally exaggerated critique of society, is now out of touch with reality. The politics and policies of the most powerful state in the world are changing by the day. The richest man in the world has been given a department of his own, named after the online culture centered on shitposting.
In many European countries, including Romania, it has been filled with people who serenely promote any conspiracy, projecting fear of imaginary problems that only they can solve, usually with white water, onion compresses and patriotic slogans.
If you've gotten to read to the end, you're probably like me, partly annoyed, partly amused, and very confused that we - as a global society - let it get to this point. It's up to all of us to make it a temporary wandering. We need to talk to everyone, go to the polls, organize ourselves civically and politically around one message - don't give up, idiocracy has not yet won.
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By Ciprian Cucu, expert <Digital Forensic Team> and trainer at the "Media Literacy Booster" project
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This project was funded in part by a grant from United States Department of State. The opinions, findings and conclusions stated herein are those of the author[s] and do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Department of State.
[1] Peter Pomerantsev – This is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality. Faber & Faber, 2019.
[2] Brian L. Keeley, „Of Conspiracy Theories”, The Journal of Philosophy (March 1999)
[3] In the American electoral system, you win by state, not by national majority.
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