Among the Trolls (eBook)

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TRUE BELIEVERS

I spend a lot of time down rabbit holes – the secret worlds inhabited by people with polarized beliefs where fiction trumps fact. How did they end up down there? The descent often starts with real fear, a legitimate question, a worry. Once you begin to tumble, it’s very hard to stop. Your view of the world fundamentally shifts. Everything is part of a sinister plot and everyone is against you.

Over the centuries, disasters, floods, poisonous algae, wars, famine – you name it – have been explained by conspiracy theories and folk tales. It’s an understandable way to make sense of catastrophe when conclusive explanations are scarce. Only, back then social media wasn’t around to amplify these ideas to millions and connect those looking for answers, who are then drawn to alternative explanations.

The Covid-19 pandemic seemed to suck in more believers than ever before, and we shouldn’t really be surprised at all. Psychologists have pointed to catastrophe as a key trigger for conspiracy theories – professor of social psychology Dr Karen Douglas states that they ‘tend to prosper in times of crisis as people look for ways to cope with difficult and uncertain circumstances’.4

As the pandemic progressed, fault lines began to emerge. Not necessarily between political parties, but rather between people who believe and trust in the fundamentals of democracy, in health officials and doctors, in institutions, and those who don’t. There are lots of reasons to distrust the powerful – politicians and governments – but this went beyond that. For some, there was a total loss of faith in what we rely on to coexist in a functioning society where we can speak freely and all agree on the objective truth.

As the pandemic eased, the fault lines deepened. Those who had become embroiled in this world didn’t turn around and admit to having lost sight of the truth. They didn’t untangle their legitimate concerns and questions from the extreme conspiracy theories declaring that Covid-19 was a hoax. Instead, they doubled down. That’s why I want to start with the pandemic, and the anti-vaccine conspiracy theories that proliferated.

An important question is undoubtedly why people believe conspiracy theories in the first place – and that was at the forefront of my mind when I covered two different protests during the pandemic: an anti-lockdown march in Sussex and a so-called freedom rally in Devon.

* * * *

The sunny coastline of Brighton is decorated with a gaggle of conspiracy-believing Santas. The people gathered together are dressed up in whatever festive attire they could get their hands on, many with Father Christmas hats. It’s a chilly December morning in 2020, and Covid-19 cases are rising in the UK. Having paraded through Brighton’s Lanes alongside this bunch, I’ve returned to its original starting point, the Peace Statue in Hove. The group begins to disband, still decorated with tinsel and Christmas decorations.

You’d be forgiven for thinking this was an eccentric weekend running club or maybe an idiosyncratic tour group. It’s only when you get closer that you catch sight of the posters some of them are holding, and see this is a rally opposing Covid-19 restrictions and the prospect of vaccines.

As we mill around, I am drawn towards the familiar outline of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who adorns a poster just to my right, alongside a sinister-looking image of a vaccine. Gates’s eyes are wild and blood spurts from the syringe he’s holding. In the past few months, Gates has become the bogeyman for the Covid-19 conspiracy movement, and at rallies like this he’s a prominent feature on several posters.

Folklore professor Timothy Tangherlini, who has looked into the link between witchcraft folk tales and these conspiratorial ideologies, describes Gates as a ‘great villain’ for the anti-vaccine movement.5 After all, Gates has huge influence across the world in both technology and health. He’s not just the founder of one of the biggest technology corporations in the world – although he’s no longer Microsoft’s owner – he is also the founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a multinational charitable organization that focuses predominantly on healthcare and poverty. Power and money – especially when an individual is not elected or easily held accountable – often leads to valid questions. But this goes far beyond questions about, for example, Gates’s approach to some of the pharmaceutical companies and their decisions around vaccine patents. The extreme claims at the heart of Conspiracyland undermine reasonable discussion.

In Brighton it isn’t just Gates’s face on display. There are banners reading ‘Covid is a HOAX’ and referring to the ‘Scamdemic’. They appear alongside more measured criticism of politicians and vaccine passports, but it’s all very much muddled together.

Starting just weeks into the first lockdown, rallies like this became a regular weekend activity. They were initially organized on Facebook by grass-roots groups that sprang up to oppose Covid-19 restrictions. There are a whole mix of them, with different leaders that organize rallies all around the country – from Brighton to Newcastle.

Ostensibly, these groups are about opposing restrictions, but this has quickly snowballed into conspiracy theories about sinister global plots to harm people involving the pandemic. When the major social media sites cracked down on the disinformation – including attempts to organize large events contrary to the health guidance at the time – many of these groups’ members went what you might call ‘underground’. They joined large channels on Telegram, where there just isn’t much moderation (though when I spoke to Telegram they said calls to violence are expressly forbidden on the platform, that moderators proactively patrol public-facing parts of the app and accept user reports in order to remove calls to violence, and that users are encouraged to report calls to violence using the in-app reporting feature). Still, Telegram was where a lot of the logistical planning for this rally happened.

I strike up a conversation with the man holding that Bill Gates poster. I’m here with BBC Panorama, I explain, gesturing towards the team weaving between protesters with a camera. Only minutes ago, they shouted at us to leave. Threats and hostility have been a pretty common response to any mention of the BBC at rallies like this one. It’s for that reason that the politeness some show comes as a surprise.

My chatter with this man – who I’ll call Denis – and his friend is initially relatively mundane. He’s unsure about revealing too much about who he is to me. After all, I work for what he would call the mainstream media, which he doesn’t trust very much. We talk a bit about how he likes to walk with friends in the sunshine, our mutual frustration that life isn’t going to be back to normal for Christmas – and then I start to question the sign. His allegation is that Bill Gates was somehow involved in creating this pandemic, because he plans to depopulate the planet by injecting them with a killer vaccine. Pretty extreme, as the conspiracies go.

I quiz Denis on this. Why would Bill Gates want to do that? How would that benefit him? What would it achieve? Instead of launching into a complex conversation about sinister global cabals and efforts to make obscene amounts of money through genocide, Denis opts for something simpler.

‘You believe all people are good,’ he explains. ‘I believe almost everyone is bad.’

This simple loss of faith in systems, humanity and the people in power comes up over and over again. In my experience, it often underpins belief in these conspiracy theories.

With that, our conversation dwindles to a close and he tells me that I’m far too nice and normal to be working for the BBC.

Although we didn’t chat for long it seems that Denis’s lack of faith in humanity is so deeply held that it’s apparent it didn’t start with Covid-19. The pandemic has just ignited and brought to the fore his deepest fears. But, rather than quelling those worries, these conspiracy theories are exacerbating them.

More than two years later, in April 2023, I find myself at an almost identical rally against the conspiracies these people believe are unfolding. Only, by this time, there are no lockdowns or Covid-19 restrictions in place. I’m also not by the coast in Brighton. Instead, I’m in Devon, in a town called Totnes. I’ve swapped the beach for a pretty square, in this town known for the way it embraces alternative cultures. Its unashamed sense of self was apparent the minute I set foot in it – I’m here for a new podcast, investigating what has happened to the UK’s conspiracy theory movement.

In Totnes I meet a protester who reminds me a lot of Denis. She’s what I imagine the Denis of the future will be like – someone whose views have now taken over their life and reached new extremes. Her name is Natalie, and she’s laying out posters when I spot her. One features a large pair of red eyes – symbolic of how we’re being ‘monitored forever’, as she later tells me. She’s wearing a black cap embroidered with bright white writing that reads ‘WAKE UP DEVON’. It’s the kind of slogan favoured by conspiracy...