Post-truth politics: Demystifying conspiracy theories

Hans Kundnani

Hello, everyone, and my name’s Hans Kundnani. I’m a Senior Research Fellow in the Europe Programme at Chatham House. Welcome to this members’ event on Post-Truth Politics and Conspiracy Theories. Before we get started, this is a – this event is on the record, so we’ll be recording it. You can tweet, using the hashtag #CHEvents. And if you would like to ask a question, you can do so by indicating in the ‘Q&A’ box that you’d like to do so, and then ideally, what we’ll do is, invite you to ask your question yourself. If you’d prefer not to do that, please indicate that when you ask your question in the ‘Q&A’ box. The ‘Chat’ box is open, you can use that to chat, to raise, kind of, side issues and so on, but I won’t be monitoring that box, so if you do want to – if you do want me to see that you want to ask a question, then do that please in the ‘Q&A’ box instead.

So, post-truth politics and conspiracy theories. We have three fantastic panellists who are going to talk us through this issue. David Aaronovitch, who is a Columnist at The Times, who I’m sure you all know. For the purposes of this discussion, particularly relevant is the fact that he wrote a book called ‘Voodoo Histories’ on conspiracy theories. Then we have Sarah Boseley, who is the Heath Editor at The Guardian, and finally, my colleague Patrick Schröder, who is a Senior Research Fellow in our Energy, Environment and Resources Programme at Chatham House.

So, each of them is going to speak for about five minutes, and I’ll, sort of, encourage them to try to, sort of, answer three questions. The first is whether there’s anything new really in our relationship with truth. Secondly, if there is something new, as lots of people claim that we’re entering some kind of post-truth politics, there’s been something like truth decay, then what’s driving it? Is it technology or is it something else? And then, thirdly, what the solutions might look like to this problem, if it exists. So, we’re going to start with David, who is going to talk a little bit about some of those questions and some of the history of conspiracy theories, and then we’ll move on to Sarah to talk about health policy and how conspiracy theories work in health policy, and then Patrick to talk about climate policy. David, over to you.

David Aaronovitch

Yeah, I was just thinking about the difficulty of encompassing this history and that formal prospectus in five minutes, and then reminded that this company, which is called something Aberdeen has now taken its name down to Abrdn in public and thinking that maybe there’s some kind of – if I just leave out all the vowels, maybe we’ll make it within about five minutes’ time, but I lack the wit to be able to do that that quickly.

When I wrote a book about conspiracy theories, which it started off in all kinds of different places, being largely about the, kind of, exotic things that people believe and why they believe them, and the structure of belief and the rationality of belief and espousing views and so on, I decided to begin it in the period immediately after the First World War, because I wanted it to be modern. So the very first thing that I started with was the belief that became pretty rampant in Europe and elsewhere after the First World War in a Jewish conspiracy and the idea that the Jews of the world had somehow conspired to cause the First World War and to cause the Russian Revolution. And this was a very big conspiracy theory about – in about 1919 to 1921, later taken on by the Nazis, of course, the far right people. But even very conventional newspapers, such as my own, The Times, actually carried an editorial saying, “Well, is it possible that actually, this conspiracy theory is true? Because there is,” – and they put it, this phrase, “An uncanny note of prophecy in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” which was an utterly preposterous and ridiculous document.

And one of the reasons for beginning there was because in many ways, the Protocols embodied the, kind of, leaps of belief and logic that you had to take in order to get to a much neater theory of why things had happened. I mean, after all, if the Jews caused the First World War, then a number of things happened. Firstly, somebody wanted it, and somebody had deliberately created it and so on, and it was all the product of an agency. Second, it wasn’t our fault, it wasn’t because we had gone onto the streets of London or Paris or Berlin calling for war, which had then subsequently turned out to be ruinous and disastrous, it was because some other small group of people had done it, and so on. And next, it offered a, kind of, “I know the real truth. We understand the real truth of what has been going on here and so on, which I’m now going to reveal to you.” And the only reason I give this as an example is because there are some elements there in what almost any, kind of, substantial conspiracy theory has always had to have and, in many ways, still does have.

My book ended, it was – the paperback version was published in 2011, with the birther conspiracy theory about Barack Obama, that somehow or other he had not been properly born in America, but had been born somewhere else, and things had been altered and so on, so to make him appear American, and he wasn’t really American, and wasn’t therefore a proper President. The book came out just before a significant American celebrity endorsed it and sent his own investigators to Honolulu to try and find out if it was true, and this of course was Donald Trump. And later that autumn, Barack Obama in his White House Correspondents’ Dinner made fun of Donald Trump, with Donald Trump there, an event which many people believe was the thing that animated Donald Trump to stand for the Republican nomination. Whether that’s true or not, we don’t know. We can’t have any idea.

So, in all these – and in many of these theories, going from 1919 to 2011 and so on, the reasons why people search for and believe and espouse notions that – of conspiracies for events which are actually far more plausibly explained by other explanations, I felt were more or less these, and I’ve just, kind of, written them down.

Firstly, discomfort with accident and contingency. Just discomfort with the idea that circumstances are so complex and, kind of, created of so many, not just random, but interconnecting facets, that actually, it is very, very difficult at any one given moment to say anybody caused this thing, anybody made it happen and so on.

The second is a desire to explain loss. Something has gone. Something has been taken away or is threatened with being taken away, and I need a better explanation as to why it is. And incidentally, a need for a better narrative seems to me to be, kind of, run through all this as well.

Thirdly, a feeling of persecution is often very, very important to a motivation for conspiracy theory. Somebody is doing something to me. I am the victim of whoever these people are. It may be me personally, it may be me collectively – as part of a collective, usually, kind of, collective, but nevertheless, you know. So, take something like a replacement theory. Replacement theory, the idea that you deliberately want to replace White people, i.e., me, with other kinds of people, despite the fact that I, as White people, have by and large had the best of things and so on, makes me the persecuted person, makes me the victim.

And then finally, quite often, for the people who espouse conspiracy theories, a need to feel as though I am the repository of an occult wisdom. I know something you don’t. I am going to tell you. In that sense, it functions as a, kind of, mega gossip. You are the person who knows that the woman or the bloke next door is having it off with the milkman, and so on, and you’re going to tell other people. This is your secret knowledge, and you are now going to impart it.

Two further things about it. Firstly, these things become more significant at moments of crisis or moments of – or of big moments, classically in terms of individuals, the death of John F Kennedy, how could that possibly be a single person? The event seems too big to be that kind of explanation. Same with the death of Princess Diana. How could it possibly be that you have her one minute and she’s snuffed out by a car accident the next minute?

And the next thing that you will think is, by and large, the other side did it. In other words, whoever’s side you’re not on, they’re the people who did this particular one. So, for example, Democrats were more likely to believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theory that George Bush had done it, than Republicans, and Republicans were far more likely to believe that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, rather than in Honolulu.

Now, onto the question of whether or not when we look at the current crop of conspiracy theories and occult theories and so on, there has been a significant change, which corresponds to this notion of the, kind of, death of truth in the Trump era. In one way, it has changed from the recent past, which is that with the election of Trump and some other populist politicians, this was the first time for some time that these theories have been espoused by people in positions of authority and leadership, within the Western world, not within other countries by the way, there are plenty of takers for it in the leaderships of other countries. You only have to think of Mahathir Mohamad, the Leader of Malaysia, who firmly believes in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and so on, so it’s certainly in the West.

So, the next question really is just about the form it’s taken. My overall feeling is I – in 2011, I thought that the internet at that point would largely negate at the negation of conspiracy theories, because although it acted as a, kind of, great conduit for people with conspiracy theories to meet, it also acted as a much more rapid rebutter of conspiracy theories than had previously existed, and you could use it for that. And then along came social media, and that completely, if you like, kind of, exploded that sort of notion. But what I think you see on social media is the form having changed, but not actually the content. The content is recognisably what it was and for the same psychological reasons. The form has changed, and that means that the problem of dealing with it, which is what you want to come to later, and arguing about it, takes a different form, possibly, than the one that it did up until now, and I’ll end it there and put myself on mute.

Hans Kundnani

Thanks, David, that was a brilliant start. Maybe I could just push you, though, before I turn to Sarah on exactly that point where you ended. Is it a worse problem now than it was?

David Aaronovitch

I don’t think you could say it’s a worse problem now than it was at the end of the First World War with the antisemitism. So no, I wouldn’t say it’s a worse problem than it has ever been, than the, possibly, the United States in the McCarthy era, hard to say that. And also, I think we should bear in mind that actually, it’s different in different countries at different times. So, we might be talking about a, kind of, dampening down of it in the, you know, in the period after the, kind of, full flush of the JFK conspiracy theories and the CIA conspiracy theories, in the 60s and 70s and so on. But it might very well have been happening somewhere else.

I think the fact is, you just know a lot more about people who believe it. Because in the past, they just believed it, and now they tell you they believe it, ‘cause they go on Twitter to say they believe it and they go on Facebook to say they believe it. So, I think it’s hard to say it’s actually more, it’s just that we know more.

Hans Kundnani

Yeah, and just one final point. So you talked mainly about conspiracy theories, but then you did talk about Trump and some other populist figures and so on. So, for you, is this concept of post-truth, is this basically the same, sort of, mentality, the same, sort of, phenomenon as conspiracy theories? Or is this something slightly distinct?

David Aaronovitch

I think – I find it hard to distinguish from, if you like, the hopefully temporary victory of populism. I mean, populism requires a certain, kind of, approach to storytelling and so on, and authority, which is arguably different. I mean, it’s very noticeable that the moment the birther conspiracy theories came up against Obama, the then moderate leadership of the Republican party, people like John McCain, were incredibly indignant to try and repress it, despite the fact that this was coming up from Tea Party people and so on in the States. And what then changes is effectively the people making these allegations – or the people who feel they can benefit from it and don’t want to rebut it – actually take over the party, effectively. Well, that does put you in a different situation, even if the thing is not remarkably different in type.

Hans Kundnani

Yeah. So that, in turn, I think, raises the question about other countries apart from the US, and in particular, how things look in Europe, and maybe we can come back to that. But Sarah, from your point of view, following, sort of, health policy, does that story that David has told, sort of, seem familiar, or does it look a little different in your policy area?

Sarah Boseley

No, I think it’s very familiar, with the caveat perhaps that this has been going on forever in health, and that there are maybe different – like, some different drivers, not – only some. But, I mean, conspiracy theories, they’re usually about the causes of ill health and disease and also, about those people who are – the Doctors and Scientists, basically, so – who are trying to help us in some way. So, I think there’s a human need to find someone or something that’s to blame for disease outbreaks, and we’re seeing that in COVID, just as we’re seeing it in other things as well. And then there’s the suspicion of Doctors and Scientists, and that goes back as far as, probably, you know, when snake oil was first invented. So, certainly as far as vaccination against smallpox in the 19th Century, which I was thinking about. And there were concerns over the risks of vaccination at that time, and suspicion of public vaccinators, who were getting paid. So, exactly the same thing really plays out in the whole vaccination debate now.

But oddly, alongside that suspicion, the other side of the coin is the willingness of people to embrace the miracle cure. There’s no shortage of that, and I come across both things in what I do. So, I think they have their roots in fear and misunderstanding of science. People do not understand what it can, and it can’t tell us. But also, there are differences between Scientists. So, Scientists do not agree. You know, there’s no, actually, concept that – black and white doesn’t work in science, so that’s what a lot of people don’t realise. They don’t have clear cut answers. It’s all shades of grey. So, Doctors and Scientists can have disputes amongst themselves about what’s going on, and that will feed people who have particular ideas.

So, if you look at the conspiracy theories going on around COVID-19 at the moment, it’s said that the virus was made as a bioweapon by the Chinese or that it leaked from a lab in Wuhan, that 5G technology is responsible, and that it’s just a hoax, which is a bit difficult to actually, to maintain, when you see the photographs that we’ve got at the moment from India, for instance. But all of those sorts of theories we’ve seen in the past as well. So, you tend to have underlying theories, and I think we might see that they’re the same in the environment as well.

And these undercurrents of suspicion really blow up, if you like, when you get a disease outbreak, and HIV/AIDS denialism in the 1990s was a case in point. So, I mean, there is a parallel there, because most Scientists think that the virus, HIV virus, jumped from monkeys to humans, just as most Scientists actually think that SARS-CoV-2 came from bats via an intermediary animal to human. But you will hear an awful lot of people who refuse those theories in both diseases. But the – certainly with HIV, you know, you had a terrifying illness that suddenly appeared, for which for years there was no cure of vaccine, so all sorts of theories were aired, and one of them, for instance, was that the CIA created it to kill gay men and African-Americans. A bit like the Chinese, I suppose, creating SARS-CoV-2.

And really, sort of, central to the HIV denialism was Peter Duesberg, a Californian Scientist, who maintained and, you know, for years and I think his supporters still say so, that it’s caused by recreational drug use. And then later the antiretroviral drugs, which of course were given to people to suppress the virus and stop it happening. And that theory was then adopted by Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, and that’s actually where I came into the whole AIDS story, right back then. So, Mbeke had a roundtable, he called a roundtable in South Africa in 2000 and got international Scientists from all over the world to come. But he had, as often happens, he had a real Scientist who he was able to – who fuelled the whole thing, because as I said, science isn’t black and white, there’s always a nugget of truth in something that a denialist Scientist will say, and it’s enough to make the theory run. So, Mbeke claimed that AIDS was brought about by a collapse of the immune system.

Now, that’s true, but he blamed poverty and malnourishment and not a virus and his Health Minister advocated lemons, garlic and beetroot, among other things. But this, you know, this is the top – at the top of government, and at the time, Mbeke wanted financial support from donor governments. He wasn’t so keen on the idea of AIDS drugs. I never really knew, actually, what Mbeke really believed. I don’t think anybody really did. ‘Cause after a bit, he got so much flak from the rest of the world that he stopped saying it.

But health conspiracies, as I say, are fuelled by Scientists and Doctors who have maverick theories, and MMR and autism is the other classic example that you cannot not talk about in this discussion. So Andrew Wakefield, the British Doctor, was a Gastroenterologist. In other words, he was a Doctor, he was a Scientist, he actually wasn’t a Specialist in viruses. His Lancet paper in 1998 came from investigating the causes of the gut disease, Crohn’s, in children who had autism. So – and he became convinced, and I actually do think that he really was convinced and still is, that it was triggered by a measles virus. Doesn’t mean he was right, but I think he believed it. And then the leap from there to MMR was actually because at the press conference back in 98, and I was there, he actually said, “Maybe it would be wise to have the three vaccines, measles, mumps and rubella, separately.” There’s actually no reason to do that, but that’s how it came out.

And that just shows how the differences of scientific opinion, which are normal, allow people to cherry-pick the evidence. And I remember actually being very confused by it. I was supposed to be covering this, but nobody, none of the Scientists would categorically say to you, “He’s wrong,” not for a long time. And I was besieged by people citing studies purporting to support Wakefield’s work, and that I realised eventually that these were actually very minor Scientists compared with a lot of the others. But still there’s – there are Scientists out there, and that’s very difficult for laypeople to deal with. So, I would say that this was very badly handled, actually, the whole MMR crisis. ‘Cause Wakefield was ousted and became a hero for standing up to the Establishment, and it is never a good idea to create martyrs. And he’s still out there in Texas making films, and a lot of people follow him.

And then of course – and, again, actually, we thought he was – he’d perhaps gone away and had certainly gone quiet, and then Donald Trump gave him credence as well. He invited him to his celebrations after he got the Presidency and said a few things that made people think, “Oh maybe, you know, maybe Trump does believe that MMR causes autism.” So that was very difficult. And then you’ve got populist parties in Europe supporting the anti-vax movement, not because specifically of the link that was claimed, but because – on the basis of individual freedom. So, opposing mandatory vaccination. And Marine Le Pen in France was pushing that boat, and so was the Five Star Movement in Italy. And you got – a few years ago now – but you got massive refusals, actually, and you got a big measles outbreak across Europe at that time, and this isn’t always a right-wing thing, by any means. You’ve got people on the left as well, who may embrace, for instance, holistic medicine and are hostile to the pharmaceutical industry, and this sort of thing feeds also on having a villain. So the pharmaceutical industry is being a villain.

In France, for instance, you’ve got the Mediator scandal, so Servier, the pharmaceutical company, that has just actually – and this has just been heard in court, I think, and they have been found guilty of pushing, I think, promoting the drug, which – the problem with it was that it was actually – worked on an amphetamine basis. It was an amphetamine-based drug, and it was sold as a weight loss drug, which I don’t think was entirely their fault, but that’s what happened, and people got heart valve damage as a result, so. That sort of thing that happens can really cause huge trouble. In France there’s great hostility to pharma, and there’s great anxiety about vaccination, and confrontation doesn’t help, that was my point. You entrench views further and social media means that if you try to confront this head on, it simply goes underground, none of the theories go away. So I do think we probably have to address social media in the answer to this, but not in that, sort of, confrontational way. I think I’ll leave it there.

Hans Kundnani

Great, thanks, Sarah. So, very interesting what you were saying there at the end about the French case, and sort of scepticism towards the pharmaceutical industry, ‘cause earlier on when you were saying that the roots of this were in fear and misunderstanding of science, I did want to, sort of, ask, is it not always – is it not also sometimes not so much scepticism or misunderstanding of science, or fear of science, but of governments often, and of corporations in other cases? Are we not being a bit unfair here on sceptics?

Sarah Boseley

I think it’s all tied up together. I think – so yes, it’s a hostility and a fear, it’s of being told what to do, actually. That’s – so that’s suspicion of government, certainly, but governments take their cue, or they will say they do, and certainly ours does, throughout this COVID pandemic, from the Scientists. So, they’ll say, “We’re taking an evidence-based view.” They always do say that, and fair enough. And it is, you know, in the case of COVID, I would support that absolutely. But, you know, you get differences of opinion amongst Doctors. You get – you do get quite a lot of people who are still willing to say they think that – or they still do say they think Doctors and Scientists have got it wrong. But yeah, I mean, it goes back – the link with government is inextricable because the government supports, you know, as I say, governments supports science, and you know, claim to be acting on science.

Hans Kundnani

Yes, but also because of the, you know, some of the history here. I mean, this is, kind of, what I was driving at. I mean, can one really be that sort of – I mean, one can understand, can’t one, how an African-American, given the history of the Tuskegee experiment, for example…

Sarah Boseley

Yeah.

Hans Kundnani

…might be sceptical about the COVID vaccine.

Sarah Boseley

Yes, absolutely. So – but yes, absolutely, they do, they will do, and they are. But I think it’s – yeah, I mean, but the Scientists haven’t helped either. Now, I’m not going to let government off the hook, yeah, I mean if – certainly. But they’re inextricably linked. And when we’re talking about public health, which we are with vaccination, that is something that government has to promote. You know, government – you know, our public health service here is Public Health England, is government, it’s the same thing. So – and usually, you’ll find that most of the suspicion in health is over public health measures, and that’s because you’re not talking about – usually you’re talking about prevention rather than cure. It’s far easier to make people accept a cure than it is to make them accept a vaccine for something that hasn’t happened to them yet. So they do not see necessarily the threat.

Hans Kundnani

Yeah, okay, let’s move onto climate policy. Patrick, I guess this is one area where there has been a real, sort of, shift in public opinion in the last ten years or so. Has that simply been because people have become less willing to believe in conspiracy theories?

Patrick Schröder

Yeah, so climate change conspiracies, they have been around for decades, so they are not new. But they have had a real impact on climate policy and action. The direct result of climate change conspiracies can be said is climate denial, refusing to accept the scientific fact that climate change is happening and therefore, they cannot really be dismissed as being trivial or harmless. So, from the policy perspective, they have caused significant delay in policies to reduce emissions. As you said, there’s been a change of recent years, but I think there is still an impact of this conspiracy thinking. One example just being that it has impact on – Donald Trump has already mentioned, but also Bolsonaro in Brazil are climate deniers and have been influenced by climate change conspiracy thinking.

There are different variations of these conspiracies, but probably the main one that has been most relevant is that climate change is a hoax. And it wasn’t helped that it was actually an atmospheric Scientist who said that global warming is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the American people. So, it’s a complex issue and on the one hand, the two elements to climate conspiracies are probably – first the scientific conspiracy. I think that has many parallels to also the issues and conspiracy thinking in health. So, the thinking here is that the science behind global warming has been invented or data have been distorted for either ideological or financial reasons, for example, climate researchers want to get new funds to conduct their research, therefore the data are wrong.

The other aspect of this is that it’s seen as a political conspiracy and climate change is used as an attempt to introduce something like a world government, and the UN process of the climate convention is seen as an example here. And an interesting incident took place in 2009, the so-called Climategate issue, just before the big conference in Copenhagen, which was supposed to be one of the breakthrough conferences. What happened then was that there were emails and other data from Climate Scientists at the University of East Anglia were hacked and then these data or – and email communications were put together and presented in a way to show that these data are manipulated, and that climate change actually doesn’t happen. So, the objective was to impact the UN process.

I think, yeah, I would say also there’s probably, again, a link to health as we heard just before. There’s often some, like, an ideological element to it. So we know climate change being a global problem, it does require global co-ordination, a co-ordinated approach by governments and strong intervention. But if you believe, as a principle, that state intervention or government policy is wrong, then acting to avert climate change must also be considered wrong, therefore, this, in a way, would be the ideological basis for believing in the conspiracies and denying climate change.

So, over the last – since the pandemic, we haven’t really heard much on – from the climate conspiracies. That’s, yeah, I would say due to COVID being so dominant. However, just a recent event, I wanted to mention, which I think might be something new to the whole climate change conspiracy issue, has been the extreme weather event in Texas in February, where there was a severe winter storm, which caused severe disruption of the electricity system, causing blackouts. And the way it was in the social media, especially, but also on – also celebrities picking this up and talking on other platforms, this was then presented in a way that, it’s not a natural event, so, generally, you’re saying climate change is a hoax, traditionally people would just say, “Oh, this is just natural, we’ve had storms in the past, etc.” But this time, and I think this links to some wider QAnon related conspiracies, there’s – what people were saying, that this has been a conspiracy by China together with the Biden Government. So, the Biden Government was paid billions of dollars so that China could test some new weather controlling technology that is operated from a research centre in Latin America.

So, with this, I think, as we see more and more climate change impacts happening, on the one hand, what we might see is that people become convinced that climate change is happening, but on the other hand, we might see people becoming – or thinking about more complicated explanations why these things are happening. And this could be also an issue, the link between the Biden administration and China having also agreed to co-operate more closely on China, that this will also become a target of climate deniers and climate conspiracy thinking. I’ll stop here now.

Hans Kundnani

Thanks, Patrick. So, before I take some questions, and do keep typing your questions into the ‘Q&A’ box, Patrick, since you’re the think tanker on the panel, the other two panellists are Journalists, so you, unlike them, are meant to come up with policy solutions. So why don’t you kick us off, in terms of telling us how we solve this problem?

Patrick Schröder

Okay, yeah, and it’s a big question, I’m not sure if I have all the answers. But I would say one important aspect is to strengthen science and technology education at school. I think, because a lot of the conspiracy thinking is based on the wrong reasoning. So, I think – and there’s some evidence also from climate change that this has already changed perception of young people towards climate change. So, I think that that can make a difference.

In addition to this, I do think that taking these issues seriously on the policy side is also necessary. Often, they might have been just dismissed as basically wrong or not worth to engage with, and we often also hear that in the climate change space, that people say, “Oh, it’s not worth engaging with this thinking. We should rather focus on developing solutions and turning to a low carbon economy, etc.” But I don’t think this is an either/or. I think we need to do both of these things.

Hans Kundnani

Okay, I don’t know if Sarah or David, you want to add anything on solutions? In particular, I suppose, maybe on the politics. ‘Cause I worry a little that if we just think the solution is education then we’re not really engaging with real, sort of, interests that people have that often are related to these conspiracy theories that people have or perhaps driving them.

Patrick Schröder

Maybe I can just add something to that. So, in the climate change context, we talk about a just transition and the energy transition especially. ‘Cause – so, there are people who are going to lose out from the transition to renewables and low carbon sector, so – and I think that’s a breeding ground in industries or workers who are affected by the change. So we need to make sure that this transition is just and various policies to support communities in the making of this transition. And so, within the current context of green stimulus, green recovery, there are options to design these policies, plus financial support. And for example, also Biden’s investment programme in the US, the EU Green Deal, these are opportunities.

Hans Kundnani

Yeah, that’s what I meant, so there are real political choices. David?

David Aaronovitch

And one of the difficulties with this is that there is – there can be a fantasy that you have, which is that somehow or other, if you just do X, Y and Z, if governments were just more open, then in that case, conspiracy theorism would wither, or if you just take – or if, you know, take a bit more time to explain, that these things are incredibly psychologically powerful in themselves. They are analgesic in a – politically analgesic in a very real sense.

So, I was fascinated going back – Sarah’s taking us back to the AIDS crisis. One of the big motivations behind the AIDS denialism was the desire to prove that heterosexuals would not be carriers of AIDS. It was a really, really big thing. If you could say that it was drug users and homosexuals, then you could corral it in a very – and if you were neither a drug user nor a homosexual, it was of no threat to you. But as soon as you started saying, “This is something that the heterosexual people are going to have as well,” then in that case, they would have to take note of the need to use condoms and to follow safe sex procedures and so on. And this was enormously resented by a, kind of, “How could it be that somebody as, you know, upstanding as myself could possibly find myself” – and what part of the Thabo Mbeke notion was, “We don’t have these terrible practices that those White people have, and so on, so we’re not going to get it,” and say, “It will be a completely different order of medical problem.”

And you see something very similar in the course of – I mean, with the measles vaccine, where a lot of the resistance, MMR, was entirely middleclass. It wasn’t – I mean – and by the way, most conspiracy theories emerge from the middleclasses and the educated classes. They are not, by and large, the products of, sort of, ignorant masses, etc., as they are depicted. They are, by and large created, constructed by Doctors and Lawyers and students and so on, and put out there into the mainstream, which was, incidentally, what allows them to claim a, kind of, degree of spurious authority. I mean, one of the major figures behind the 9/11 conspiracy theories in the States was one of the most outstanding Professors of Theology that the United States had, David Ray Griffin. He was the, sort of, you know, I’d described him as the Dean of 9/11 Truth Studies, was essentially what he was. So, the idea that they come in from some kind of – and QAnon, funnily enough, is something of an exception to this particular pattern.

So, the power of the desire to believe something else is not easily susceptible simply to us, sort of, having done something else before the conspiracy theory is constructed, which heads it off at the gulch, so to speak. But on the other side, it is not true either that it’s not worth arguing about and that it’s not worth explaining and that it’s not worth talking about and it’s not worth saying, “Here are the real facts.” I mean, people often said to me when I was writing, publishing my book about this, “Well, this is, kind of, pointless because no-one will listen to you.” And then years later people start texting, emailing, etc., going to it and saying, “You changed my mind. I was, you know, I felt, kind of, you know, here were my ideas and you engaged with them at some, kind of, level or another, and I did change my mind.” I’m not going to overclaim for that, by the way.

There were some very interesting examples of how people, even before the great disappointment, as I suppose QAnon people must call it now, of the Presidential inauguration and then the March the 3rd, was it, which was the date on which the shadow government was supposed to take over, etc. But even then, before then, there were people who had begun looking at their own commitment to the QAnon theory and thinking, “Well, that doesn’t quite match up with that, and that doesn’t quite match up with that.” So I think there is a lot to be said for saying, “Yeah, but that’s the fact, and that’s the fact, and that, as we can tell, this is the fact,” and having – and actually having the argument. If you simply vacate the space and say, “I’m not going there and it’s not worthy of any, kind of, engagement,” I don’t think really you leave any – people with anywhere to go.

Sarah Boseley

Yeah, I completely with that, totally agree. And I think some of the people who espouse these theories are people who feel they are not listened to anyway. So you do have to engage. I think it’s really important. And I was thinking about – and you’re right about the middleclasses, most definitely, and they have thought it through for themselves, and they have their own ideas, and they’re not prepared to be persuaded by governments, actually.

The WHO has got a playbook for dealing with anti-vaxxers, and what they do, their instructions to, you know, to Scientists, are do not engage – do not take on somebody who is – somebody like Wakefield, who takes that, sort of, stance. But you must address the arguments. I mean, just don’t go on a platform with them, because you’re just going to lose. But it’s very important to explain to people what the alternative is, what the real position is. Just don’t try to fight them on a case-by-case basis. So, I think persuasion is it and I think there’s such a need for trust. There’s a need for trust in governments, and that’s a terribly easy thing to say, and a terribly difficult thing to establish, but it’s where that trust has broken down, as trust has broken down in Doctors and Scientist, it’s broken down in governments, broken down in authority generally. So how you rebuild that is by taking people’s concerns seriously, I think, talking to them like adults and trying to explain why, you know – not why they’re wrong, but what’s in it for them if they go down a different road.

Hans Kundnani

I still don’t quite understand who’s supposed to do this explaining, you know, because it can’t be the government if there’s no trust in government, or these people don’t trust in government, and if it also, kind of, overlaps with, you know, the political fault-lines in our societies, I mean, populism has come up several times, the US obviously being a good example of polarisation, I don’t quite see who’s supposed to do this explaining or educating.

Sarah Boseley

Well, I think it’s quite interesting. If we’ve been watching the broadcasts on TV over COVID. So, you’ve got the Chief Medical Officer, Chief Scientific Advisor, Vallance and Whitty, alongside Boris, talking to the public. And in a way, it’s got to be that sort of, combination of people. It’s got to be the Scientists and the Doctors and the Politicians all talking through, from – you know, playing the same playbook, really. I mean, they don’t feel the need, actually, to discuss the COVID theories. You know, they’re, sort of, 5G technology, that, sort of, stuff. I think – but on something like vaccines, where there’s an easy yes or no situation, you know, are you going to have one or are you not? They’ve actually done very, very well by just talking about the science and trying to be trustworthy and truthful. I think they haven’t done badly. I think they’ve done very badly in all sorts of ways, but not actually on vaccines, as we know.

Hans Kundnani

I must take some questions, ‘cause I’m already super late doing that. I’m going to ask Euan Grant to ask his question out loud, and hopefully Douglas Bruce as well, and then Jeremy Ross. Euan, do you want to start, if you can? Or Douglas Bruce, if you’re…

Euan Grant

I’m unmuted?

Hans Kundnani

Yes, go ahead.

Euan Grant

Yeah, thank you, everyone, very much food for thought. Do you have any examples of where attempts to debunk conspiracy theories or the theorists, you’ve all made it clear it’s extremely difficult, have actually worked? I taught the John F Kennedy case in the Civil Service 20 years ago, and it rapidly became almost impossible, because people were so embedded with all the hocus pocus. Thank you.

Hans Kundnani

Great, thanks for that. Then Douglas?

Douglas Bruce

Actually, I have two questions, one very short, maybe a little – another one a little bit more complicated. The first one is, when and where did replacement theory actually originate?

Hans Kundnani

Yeah?

Douglas Bruce

Oh, and the second one is, basically I think most people will acknowledge that social media is a major problem with the dissemination and reinforcement of conspiracy theories today. What is the – why should we not, or why should governments not become involved, in terms of regulating the algorithms, which are the things that actually draw the conspiracists together?

Hans Kundnani

Great, thank you, Douglas, and then I’ll take one more from Jeremy Ross. And in the meantime, I’ll share a comment from Stella Howell, which you could also respond to if you want.

Jeremy Ross

Hello?

Hans Kundnani

Which is that – hold on one second, Jeremy – and that comment is, “There would be no conspiracy if there was no deceit.” You can respond to that if you like. And then Jeremy, go ahead.

Jeremy Ross

Hello, my point is related to education. I think one of the major problems is that children and young people and adults aren’t taught to think for themselves, how to analyse information, how to put together and contest argument. They have a very didactic form of education, that isn’t really suitable for dealing with the complexities that all the panellists were talking about.

Hans Kundnani

Great, so we’ve got successful examples of debunking conspiracy theories, replacement theory, social media and then, is education a part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution? Patrick, do you want to go first, on any of those that you want to touch on?

Patrick Schröder

Yeah, so maybe on Jeremy’s point, I fully agree with this, and would say also, in addition, what education can do better is to let young people understand more how the scientific process works, how scientific consensus is built, how the debates within science take place, and especially, for example, science is becoming increasingly complex and it’s also often a very collaborative process involving multiple disciplines. So, it is actually very hard as a Scientist to come up with a conspiracy theory. And if we understand how papers are produced, then – or yeah, how the process of generating this scientific data, that also provides some more trust in the scientific institutions.

It’s also – it’s very difficult for an individual, we cannot do climate science ourselves, so we cannot go to Antarctica, drill ice cores by ourselves, we cannot run climate models, because it requires specialised computers. So we need to – we do rely on these institutions and we need to trust that the people who are doing this are doing the right thing and they are. So that’s, in a way, the basis. And education is key to this.

Hans Kundnani

Sarah?

Sarah Boseley

Actually, I feel quite strongly about the education front. I do feel, and I didn’t actually have a very brilliant scientific education myself, I think the basis – basics of science are not perhaps being explained as well as they might be to kids at school. And I’m talking about simple things like risk versus benefit and absolute risk versus relative risk. So, if, for instance, you’ve got a 30% increased risk of cancer from something, that all depends on what your risk was to start with. So, if you only had a 1% risk in the first place, it’s only 30% of 1%. So, concepts like that, I think, most people have not come into contact with, and maybe if we managed to give people a bit of simple stuff along the way, it would help just to get their heads around what science is about. There’s a lot of theoretical stuff, or there was when I was a kid, taught. Maybe there isn’t now.

Successful – I want to say, on successful examples of debunking, no I can’t actually. I can’t give you any, but there are people who aren’t fully decided actually, certainly to take vaccines again, which is a very simple example, they might have them and they might not. They have to have it explained to them. Perhaps they’re inclined to be hostile, but they haven’t swallowed the arguments hook, line and sinker, of the anti-vaxxers, insofar as they exist. So, you can do a lot, I think, for those people on the edge.

Hans Kundnani

Do you have a sense, Sarah, of in which countries vaccination scepticism is high and in which countries it’s low, and what the, sort of, relative factors might be in driving that?

Sarah Boseley

Absolutely. Oh well, as I say, we did a bit of an investigation into populism and MMR vaccine refusal in Europe, and you’ve got, as I say, France and the drugs scandals there, the hostility to pharma, the – but also, and then in Italy where you have – you’ve got a populist government that was preaching – well, it was certainly that, you know, it’s the freedom of the individual for the right to say no. That’s really where the governments, where the populist parties have taken this. Your right to say no, and that’s a problem for public health, because you actually want to have everybody in, and we are individuals these days. We don’t necessarily choose to go in that direction. So, that’s a problem.

And then you get, actually, countries in Eastern Europe, some Eastern European countries where the problem has been supply and having clinics that are available to people. So, that’s where you have a, sort of, peripheral issue. You might have actually people having difficulty getting their kids to where they can be vaccinated, and then you get the really wacky theories of people who are at – actually out to make themselves a reputation, I’m afraid, and some of the African countries are like that, and that’s really bad news.

Hans Kundnani

David, can you think of any examples of successful debunking and any thoughts on replacement theory and/or social media?

David Aaronovitch

I think we’ve been pretty successful on Holocaust denial, to give you an example, and acts of historical denial, such as that. I mean, it would be quite interesting to work out why. Maybe it’s because the facts were just so incredibly obvious and so on. But – and I think, you know, something like 9/11 conspiracy theory, it did actually die, effectively. There are still, kind of, residual elements, and they all, kind of, band together looking for the next thing, maybe, in, kind of, QAnon. And I think that was, actually, as a result of significant work doing debunking. I mean, there’s been quite – the BBC, for example, had a series in the mid-2000s when it would take, or towards the end of the first decade, when it would take a popular conspiracy theory, suggest that it was making a programme about, you know, that might suggest it was true, and debunk it every single time. And it was really – they were really quite good, actually, because they drew people in who might be, kind of, inclined towards this, and then actually took them down.

The question on replacement theory. Replacement theory, as far as I – I mean, I don’t – this is not a definitive answer, but as – I think it’s related – I mean, firstly, it doesn’t happen outside of a racial context. So you have to have some, kind of, racial notion of the importance of race, really, to think of replacement theory in any substantial way anyway. It was certainly a theory, which American far right people, and I think it’s happened in Germany as well, suggested that the Jews were trying to mongrelise races, in order to weaken them. And that is essentially a, kind of, the early relative of replacement theory, bring these people in to, kind of, replace us. ‘Cause we’re not going to be literally replaced, we’re going to be demographically replaced by these people coming in and breeding. And that’s essentially the same as the mongrelisation argument, which goes right the way back to the 20s and 30s and so on, so back to then.

I’ve very often heard the notion, “No conspiracy if no deceit,” which is a bit like saying, “I think no fairy stories if history was well enough written.” But conspiracy theories are incredibly attractive. I mean, when we read thrillers, we read essentially books with impossible, largely impossible plots, composed of dark conspiracies, etc., because they explain things. The power of the conspiracy theory partly is it says there’s an agency to things that are happening. You see this pandemic, looks like a virus, it isn’t, the Chinese released it upon us, they, kind of, cooked it up. Therefore, it’s not out of control, it’s in somebody’s control, even if the controller is a dark controller rather than a light controller, because after all, if you have a dark controller, that posits the possibility of a controller of light who might turn things back the other way. And interestingly, with QAnon, that is exactly what they believe.

They believe there are these dark forces, you know, kind of, paedophiles who want to run the world, etc., but that Donald Trump is there to turn it back, and there’s a secret light conspiracy to turn it back. So, it’s the one occasion I can think when there’s actually a, kind of, the posing of a light – of conspiracy of light as well as a conspiracy of dark. But no, you could have no deceit at all by government, and you would still have loads and loads and loads of conspiracy theories, because they don’t deceit to do it.

I just want to do one thing quickly about the regulating the algorithms. We don’t want to get into a situation whereby government regulates algorithms, on the whole. That can lead you to an entirely different – I’m sure the Chinese Government is actively looking at the business of regulating algorithms so that people see only what they want them to see and outlaw what they don’t want them to see. We need a very much bigger discussion about how everybody constructs algorithms and so on, but I really don’t think – unless there is a degree of, kind of, destructiveness and anti-socialness that results from such algorithms, then, in that case, I don’t think we want to have governments regulating them.

Hans Kundnani

Thanks, David, for coming to that point at the end. I think we need a whole other hour to discuss regulation of social media. In fact, we’ve had many panel discussions on that and I’m sure we will have more. I think the great replacement goes back to Renaud Camus, the French writer who wrote a book of that name in 2011, I think. I think you were talking about an earlier, sort of, pre-history almost, right?

David Aaronovitch

Well, no, but the idea has a pre-history long before that. I mean, yeah, he’s just a, kind of, if you like, he’s just the iteration. I’d be very surprised if he didn’t have some, kind of, folk memory or folk knowledge of those sorts of accusations. It’s quite – as I said, it’s embodied in, kind of, racial notions that they are being let in to take over from us racially. It seems to me essentially the same accusation.

Hans Kundnani

Yeah, yeah. Alright, well, I’m afraid we’re out of time. Thank you very much all for your questions and comments and thank you for coming and above all thank you to all three of our panellists: David Aaronovitch, Sarah Boseley and Patrick Schröder. I hope to see you again at Chatham House soon. Thank you again for coming and have a good evening.