Politics After The Pandemic
Politics After The Pandemic
Conspiracy Theory during the Covid-19 Pandemic
One feature of post-pandemic politics is controversy over “conspiracy theory”. What makes a theory a conspiracy theory? Why are they so popular? Who deploys the phrase and to what end? Providing an accessible tour through the social science of power and ideology, Lagalisse and Drążkiewicz offer a mini-series on “conspiracy theory” as a form of social critique that indexes broad mistrust in institutions and the state, and why scholars of the Global North treat paranoia about corruption differently when it’s found at home. Together they explore the differences between “conspiracy theory” of state power and accepted “social theory” of the same, and what the social sciences can tell us about the possibility of an all-knowing elite.
This second episode presents a comparative study of “conspiracy theory” in Poland, Ireland and the U.S.A.
Find more about Politics After the Pandemic at The Sociological Review.
Credits:
Executive Producer & Host: Erica Lagalisse
Guest: Elżbieta Drążkiewicz
Sound Engineer: Clara-Swan Kennedy
Illustrator: Laura Arlotti
Musicians: Excerpts from AV materials submitted to the Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic publishing platform and research archive:
- "The Lightwell (Boşluk)", by Begüm Özden Fırat, Sound mix: Sair Sinan Kestelli (Independent film, Turkey, 2020), published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, Dec. 2020.
- "Know place like home: The 82.3m2 Project" — Dan Lovesey, autistic musician who crafted soundscape of domestic recordings during lockdown, published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, 31 August, 2020.
- “Walking Through Lockdown – An Exercise in Care” by Kim Harding, who took soundscape recordings of South London during lockdown, published at Solidarity and Care During the Covid-19 Pandemic, July 22, 2022.
Additional open source audio elements from freesound.org users Halima Ahkdar and Graham Makes.
Erica Lagalisse’s book is Occult Features of Anarchism (2019, PM Press). You can watch her Public Lecture at the London School of Economics or her festival appearance as the debunker of “conspiracy theory” David Dyke
Elżbieta Drążkiewicz’s book is Institutionalised Dreams: The Art of Managing Foreign Aid (Begrhahahn, 2020). You can also read her essay, co-authored with Lisa Sobo, “Rights, responsibilities and revelations: COVID-19 conspiracy theories and the state.” in Viral Loads: Anthropologies of urgency in the time of COVID-19 (UCL, 2021).
Find extended reading lists and learn more about Politics After the Pandemic at The Sociological Review
You're listening to Politics After the Pandemic, where we think transnationally with social scientists and political activists about recent cultural shifts in their relation to Covid-19, capitalism and other structures of oppression, and how social movements educators and researchers might respond. I'm Erica Lagalisse, and anthropologist of social movements and your host as we continue in this episode to talk with Ela Drążkiewicz, fellow anthropologist and researcher of conspiracy theory. We've been talking about what it means to approach the idea of conspiracy theory as social scientists. In the last episode, we went over questions of definition. What is conspiracy theory anyway? Now we're going to hear from Ela about her research of conspiracy theory during the Covid-19 pandemic specifically – which we can also read about in her co authored study, titled "Rights, Responsibilities and Revelations: Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories and the State" which is found in the book "Viral Loads: Anthropologies of Urgency in the time of Covid-19", published by UCL press last year in 2021. Together with Alisa Sobo, you've done a great comparative study of conspiracy theory activity in Ireland, Poland and the United States in this paper, and you can see in this study that, that conspiracy theories are different in different places – because of different histories of state and state power and relationships between the citizens and the state and the comparative study. You know, it's great it also it's another classic anthropological method that highlights the importance of placing context right, and shows us how even seemingly similar conspiratorial ideas can vary in important historically particular ways. Maybe we should run through those case studies now.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Sure. So what we were interested in is this in moment in Covid pandemic history, where there is concern coming from the public and governments and health authorities that there is this proliferation of conspiracy theories. And it's almost at the level of moral panic that everybody's believing in conspiracy theories, what is going on as if it was some sort of novelty. So we were interested in this, what is going on? And we wanted, we looked at different – though similar –conspiracy theories, in spaces where we have long research interests. And in those places, like in other locations, people express belief that the state is lying to us – states or the government's state is plotting something – Covid does not exist, and the state is lying, right? And we wanted to – and you can look at it. If you are not anthropologists, and think, you know, people everywhere, believe in conspiracy theories, like the world is mad, right? But then we wanted to understand as anthropologists, what are the localised meanings of those conspiracy theories? Why in those places, people express those views. And in each place, there was a different history behind the same sentence. So everywhere people say – the state is lying to us. Some people, not all people, of course – but for instance, in Ireland, their concern was that state here was the state... when the state started to introduce restrictions and new regulation, the reason why people were saying this, the, were making those assumptions that state is lying to us – because a very unique moment in Irish history. Just before pandemic hit Ireland, there were elections, which were three way elections and three parties, each party got 30% – more or less – of votes. So it's a it's a big, big issue now – how do we divide power? And then pandemic comes and there are new rules established, which means the party that should be outgoing party remains in power and the decision is made that they will stay in power until things calm down – and they will worry later and they will restart discussions about forming new government later – so they were they position in power was prolonged. And in this context, people are starting to be suspicious. How did that happen? How is that possible? You were just voting against those people. 60% people voted against that party – and now they're staying in power. So it is not very surprising or irrational that people started to caught up with theories. Of course, not everyone ends up with a theory of suspicion of conspiracy. That we as anthropologists can have some understanding and sympathy for people theorising, right. Sometimes the people end up with– you know – with bad answers to good questions. And at the same time, for instance, in Poland, it was time of elections when pandemic hit. And there was different situation because Polish government was very reluctant to introduce restrictions – they lasted very short time. And then government announced "ah, pandemic is over, let's go to the elections". And people started to be very suspicious and say, they started saying – hey, the government is lying to us –because they thought that government is hiding the truth about the numbers about that they weren't downplaying Covid for their own political advantage.
Erica Lagalisse:I like how in both cases, the situation is affected by electoral politics, but in one case, the state is assumed to be expanding, exaggerating numbers in order to stay in power and in the other case, the state is assumed to be downplaying numbers to stay in power.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Exactly. And then you have also to complicate matters more in Poland, you have also the situation where there are super right wing groups –altright groups – which are not happy even with the which are so right wing that even current right wing government is not right wing enough for them. And when the current government announces, everything is fine. Americans are discovering a vaccine and they promise – Donald Trump promised – they will give us the vaccine first. Those super right wing groups are saying, Oh, no, no, no, no, this is the capitalist imperialist state using us as in the trials – we are once again used by, by the Empire. And we are the victims. Once again, we hear those, those representatives of those nationalist groups.
Erica Lagalisse:Because they're looking back to World War Two, right? – that sort of cultural history and feeling of being a battleground, or used as cannon fodder in the wars between other nations, right?
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Yes, this war and the previous war and before it
Erica Lagalisse:Every other war, yeah.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Every other war, Polish Nationalists see themselves as victims there. So, so you can see how other – in one moment, you can have different people endorsing conspiracy theories for different reasons. But when you look at the surface, all of them seem like saying the same thing. The government is lying to us. But they do so for different reasons. And this connects us to United States, right. That Donald Trump supposedly promised Polish government those vaccines. So with Elisa Sobo, we moved to, to look at the research conducted by her in the United States,
Erica Lagalisse:Before going to the United States I like, I wanna say, I like how there's academics who say things like can you cite this – When it comes to Eastern Europe, a culture of suspicion is justified given the high number of actual conspiracies experienced in the last century– as if there's no actual conspiracies elsewhere in the world of politics. Like, I just, I noticed that I find how it seems in many ways even academic discourse about conspiracy theory is cultural – like betraying a lot about where the scholar thinks democracy is supposed to be happening. Like conspiracy theorising is legitimate in the Global South or in Eastern Europe, where there are obviously things like power relations and corruption – but among you know, properly developed civilised, liberal democracies, even to suggest the notion is considered insane.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Yeah, this is something that that I also wrote about in my own paper on HPV vaccination in Ireland. And exactly this, something that I find troubling in anthropological research of conspiracy theories. I think we, what we are good as as anthropologist is that we are actually bringing case studies from Global East, Global South – because actually most of what we Know about conspiracy theories in as academic community is based on the research conducted in and for, on the United States. And so very little what we know about conspiracy theories is based on Europe – only recently, last 10 years, some research started to be produced on Europe – most of what we know is based on the United States. So anthropologists are quite good with bringing new different case studies, different examples. However, I did find, I do agree with you – there is this pattern in writing about conspiracy theories that the further from anthropologist office, the more forgiving of conspiratorial mind people are. So like, so when we are talking about conspiracy theories – I don't know in Timor-Leste, in Mongolia, in, in different locations around the world – in African locations, in South American locations – then anthropologists have this empathy and understanding of, hey, people are oppressed, have been oppressed for centuries. And conspiracy theory is kind of a weapon of the weak. This is a way for people to make sense of the really complex realities, and we cannot be angry or, you know, ask them that they come up with those stories and narratives which are not correct, right. But the closer to anthropologist home, the less inclined anthropologists are to be forgiving of the half truths.
Erica Lagalisse:We as anthropologists love subalterns elsewhere.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Yes. So, so when I, when we are talking about right wing populism in Hungary, that's, you know – the tone is very different. When we are talking about right wing populism in Italy, in UK – suddenly, this is about danger. It's, it's a threat to democracy, right. And I think it is the issues here that we do not, that first like... there are some scholars who explicitly say that they do not, that for them, the goal is not being a judge of veracity of people's claims. And this is just a theoretical exercise when they study conspiracy theories in learning about knowledge – different forms of knowledge, right. But I find it difficult because just like people in the West experience consequences of conspiratorial thinking – in populism, in polarisation, in conflict in the States – so do people who experience or witness are conspiratorial beliefs in the East or South. So, so that's for me like the this ignorance for the consequences that conspiracy theories might cause – or not cause –but you know, might, might create everywhere around the world.
Erica Lagalisse:Yeah, theres a certain indulgence, there's a certain paternalism... peoples capacity for a rationality perhaps. Where the sort of colonial mentality around people's capacity for rationality and their, being linked to their closeness to the Metropole or something.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:And I like, and I think because so much of discourse on conspiracy theories is very vague – when people use that term it's, this very often confuse it with fake news, with misinformation – it's very hard to to say exactly what conspiracy theory is, right? Why one, some theories are labelled as conspiracy theories and others are not, right it's very fluid definition very often.
Erica Lagalisse:I got something I want to say about that about class actually – and we're gonna get to that. Let's do America first though.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:So, so I think America is here a very good case and like Ireland actually because both are the West, because having – though for me what was interesting in the study we did with Elisa – is exactly that we brought East and West together. So that prevents us from de-normalising or normalising and trying to find what those spaces have in common. And again, we started with this in interest in why, what is behind the claims that the government is lying to us. And in the United States, what we found out – most based on work by Elisa in the United States – is that here pandemic hit at the very difficult time, of the effort for American history – where the American dream was slowly dying. This idea that people have control over their lives, that everything is possible, that you know you – if you work hard, you will achieve your dream – was already decaying for, for a long while. So people were exhausted, frustrated that you know, there is some atmosphere in there about that, of this frustration, and sadness. And then pandemic hits and everybody's told stay at home, close your business. And for people that translates into this narrative, that, that there is a purpose to it – they want to, "they" – the hidden powers – want to kill our American dream. This is a plot against America, this is a plot against United States, this is a plot against American dream, to, to kill it. That this pandemic was invented exactly so that we cannot fulfil our dream and control our lives and achieve our, our goals and you know, be prosperous. So you have three different locations, three different societies, where people say, the government is lying to us. But the meaning behind this varies and is quite different for different people.
Erica Lagalisse:Yeah, you talk about disappointment and the American dream and the 2008 market crash as one cause for the popularity of conspiracy theories. And this does make a lot of sense. As I was doing fieldwork among anarchists activists during this period, though, I noticed something else that also fits within this idea of a perceived rupture in the social contract – which is the effect of the politics around 911, okay. So in my city in Montreal, anyway – it was around 2007 – the people calling themselves "truthers" started popping up at Left activist events that I was always that – and they weren't particularly welcome. I write about this elsewhere – but nonetheless, they were there and their favourite topic, and their favourite topic of conversation was how – 911, the attacks on the World Trade centres in New York that day – were an inside job right. And many popular amateur documentaries on YouTube at this time – in its first generation of cultural production – were also organised around the question 911, like, Loose Change, Zeitgeist. And the enemy in these narratives was was not satanic Democrats, or a globalist plot against America and they did not always highlight the role of lizards, or Jews. Or focus on such trivial coincidences positioned as special codes the way we saw with QAnon. My point is these theories weren't quite as fantastical. And, and it does depend on the documentary. And I reviewed a lot of them in my research though and a lot of them focused sort of more loosely on a plot of government's financial organisations and oilman against the little people – all seemingly, generally inspired by what many agree were less than satisfactory official inquiries into 911. You know, and everyone, including Noam Chomsky said that these truthers were misguided, asking the wrong questions and in many respects, I agree. My question is, though, if the questions conspiracy theorists are asking now seem to have gotten even more misguided– is this not possibly partially due to so many of us disregarding and ridiculing so much public mistrust of authority that was generated during this time? Like, I realised, Elisa is the one who lives in the United States and does most of the research there and I wonder what she'd have to say? But like – I don't know–like, even if one thinks that 911, like even if one thinks that 911 being an inside job is a completely ridiculous idea. If so many people were wondering about it, this itself should signal like a severe lack of trust, right, or a severe rupture in the social contract. It seems to me that this has to be at least a factor.
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:I think the trust is a very important issue and definitely, there is a lot of research – especially done in psychology actually – around the questions of trust, whether low or high levels of trust correlate with certain beliefs? Is it about the trust? Who are... the question is also who do we trust? Is it the big government or local government? Or are these Doctor authorities? Who is she – like medical authorities that we see on TV? Or rather, are we trusting our GPs? So there is a lot of research concerning that. And I think questions about trust are important. But I think they resonate a lot with this Western centric idea of political organisation – that democracy, democracy is built on trust – and citizens have to trust politicians. And if citizens trust politicians, things will be okay, right? I think as we learn more about the world, we see that very often politicians give us reasons not to be trusted. I think this is the side effect of free media, media that we learn more and more about things that going on behind the closed doors. So people lose that trust. But also, I think what is important is to think about trust as a relational issue. If you, if I trust you, you have to trust me, this is a kind of relationship – constantly negotiated – and something that happens between people. And it's not given once and for all. And I think it is specifically, like it is very well seen in medical conspiracy theories and the issues – we can talk about Covid and Covid vaccine and whether people trust doctors or not – but I think doctors also have to have some trust in patients. And trust that when patients are asking questions, it is not malicious, or because they want to undermine the authority – but people have concerns that this is coming from, from a certain position, from a certain reason, from a certain history. So... but also I think what is important – going back to the, the Western centric idea of the trust, and the politic organisation – is, I think what Matthew Kerry writes very well in his work on mistrust – very well that more than often trust is luxury, rather than a norm. And so many societies around the world live in a constant situation of mistrust, and they have to deal with it. And they have to find ways to overcome this mistrust – or build the social relations within the mistrust field. And I think if we realise that, then we can see that conspiracy theories then are less abnormality, but are just part of this world of mistrust – and maybe in the Western world, a moment of trust was just a moment. And now we can see how that dream, that, that ideal is crumbling.
Erica Lagalisse:Yeah. Like, why should we trust politicians in the first place, right?
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:And I think this is also something that we know – from the research done by historians – that conspiracy theories were part of the European history for a very long time, right? They were normal, they were normal way of explaining how world works up until the 1950s.
Erica Lagalisse:In some way, yeah, in some ways, you know, all politics is conspiracy, so it would make sense you'd have conspiracy theory about you know– as long as you have politics, you're gonna have conspiracy – and then you're gonna have conspiracy theory. And what do you think happened in 1950 to change this?
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:In the 1950s what happened is that – during the cold war, after the war, during the Second World War– we could see how conspiracy theories led, were a big part of the, of the Nazism machinery, they were a big part of the regime that mobilised people to follow Hitler and to do – you know – they lead to those atrocities. And then the same thing happened on this Stateside, and we can see how communist regimes mobilised a lot of conspiratorial thinking to gain supporters – and they were... conspiracy theories have this mad, like this fantastic ability to, to push people's imagination – to gain followers, right? And then we have similar things happening even in the United States or in UK and other places where you, were authorities are mobilising conspiracy theories. So you have those big authorities – super empires – which are using conspiracy theories to push their agenda and fear against the enemy, right? And then you have scholars who are coming – Popper and others – who are coming in the 50s and saying... it's enough is enough, like this is madness. And they see the results of this kind of thinking, and they want to change the narrative, they want to – so they are bring – and this is this famous Hofstadter studies where he's talking about paranoid mind – and he's on purpose, chooses this very derogatory term – because he's so angry with what's going on, that he really wants to banish conspiracy theories from the public political discourse.
Erica Lagalisse:And he looked at it as an American phenomenon, doesn't he? He says the American paranoid psyche – and this, all of this discussion is, is again, are actually happening in America, isn't it?
Elżbieta Drazkiewitz:Right? And so this is what's happening in the 50s and 60s, and then the conspiracy theories start to be delegitimized. And they start in the Western world to be pushed from the centres to the fringes of political debate.
Erica Lagalisse:The essay that Ela and I are referring to here is "The Paranoid Style of American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter – a landmark tale of American pop culture immediately following the Kennedy assassination. I say landmark because if ever I try to submit a piece on conspiracy theory to an American magazine, they want me to lead with how I agree or disagree with this guy. When Americans get paranoid, they sure do it in American ways – like in sensational descriptions of globalist plots against America. But for people to think of conspiracy theory and government is arguably not new or uniquely American. Ela points to the atrocities of the Holocaust and their connection with the fear mongering construction of a Jewish conspiracy in many European contexts. Because yes, people specifically knowingly distributed propaganda scapegoating Jewish people for the existence of capitalism. Can we say these antisemitic propagandists were conspiring? Surely some of them knew what they were doing? What does it mean that – as Ela points out – in other times and places, it was taken for granted that some measure of conspiracy is involved in all politics, and that scholars may be more willing to indulge allegorical sensemaking in the Global South precisely because of a colonial paternalism that presumes the non western subject is less capable of rational analysis. Scholarship on Ancient Rome suggests that conspiracy was taken for granted as an element of all politics where it was well understood that rulers have conversations about their power and how to maintain it that are not shared publicly with their subjects. Does the category"conspiracy theory" function as an epithet in the Global North right now, precisely because in our liberal democracies, corruption supposedly does not exist? We continue to tackle the question of how the category"conspiracy theory" is used in the next episode – using a different kind of anthropological analysis. Instead of a comparative study – using conspiracy theory as an objective category of analysis – Ela and I are going to look at how the category conspiracy theory is used by others – what it means to others, how it is used in conversation, the social work it is made to do. In other words, we're going to look at conspiracy theory as an ethnographic category. Not a universal category, but a cultural category whose meaning is determined by those who use it. That's right, we're learning about anthropology as well as conspiracy theory here people. So, so we learned by looking at things as both objective and subjective categories – as well as using the category conspiracy theory to analyse people, we look at how people use it to analyse each other. Because that's another thing that's consistently true about conspiracy theory – is that the phrase is used objectively to disqualify amateur theories of power from respectable consideration. That's next time. Until then thank you for listening.
Clara-Swan Kennedy:Politics After the Pandemic is brought to you by the Sociological Review foundation in collaboration with the British Academy as part of this special section Solidarity and Care during the Covid19 pandemic Erica Lagalisse is an anthropologist and researcher at the London School of Economics and Loughborough University and author of the book "Occult Features of Anarchism".
