Manufacturing Dissent
It's becoming easier to supply a ready-made conspiracy than to deny the existence OF conspiracies.
No one trusts the government, no on trusts the news, this is something even the most insufferable NYC champagne socialist will post on Bluesky, it’s a surprise to noone. Command of an overarching narrative as made possible by the technological innovations of the 20th century have been rendered inert by the innovations of the 21st, with political polarization being only the widest and most noticeable of hundreds of foundational cracks in the machine of the modern world.
The mainstream everything is having a crisis of legitimacy, so the unelected power structure is left with a difficult situation. Their consent-manufacturing apparati, most directly represented by the news media, are relying on airports for air-time. How does a cynical individual, agency, or class of society disburse criticism, and redirect energy away from them when ‘the official line’ on anything is taken to be the inverse of reality by a critical mass of the general populace?
One could say the emerging “conspiracy sphere” is just the lowest common denominator of slop-content to engage Facebook Boomers without any critical thinking skills. Even if the pattern of poorly-done conspiracy content is entirely emergent from market forces, that only further shows the prevailing attitude of the populace is a deep mistrust.
Everyone, especially the poorly-informed, know what they’re being told is fake and they want to be on the inside, with the hidden knowledge. Half of the AI-generated ads I am subjected to begin with some variation of “They are trying to ban this erection pill/watch/flashlight get it before this special loophole is gone!” An appeal to exclusivity.
The Dissident Right has a storied history of overlap with the “conspiracy sphere,” from Pizzagate and QAnon in 2016 to current adjacent scuffles like Candice Owens’ insistence on verifying Brigitte Macron’s biological sex. If that sounds like a pointless issue to delve, it is. It’s a revival of a much older internet “schitzo” theory insisting most, if not all, public personalities must be transsexual as a sort of illuminati shame-control ritual.
I have heard it argued in passing the infamous “flat earth” theory is an intentional psyop (psychological operation) to associate with and discredit more grounded theories about elite power and mass manipulation. Real questions about the impact of tap water fluoride, food dyes, corn fillers, and impacts of vaccine tech are lumped in with vast underground CIA tunnel kidnapping torture operations. The COVID pandemic may be the premier case-study in just this shouting-down of criticism under the label “conspiracy theorist.”
But with the collapse in public trust which has followed COVID, I get the impression figures like Owens and Alex Jones, even if not explicitly bankrolled by a three-letter agency, are leveraging their own social capital concerning the events of January 6th and other bona fides while their contemporary work muddies the waters around far more motivating questions like the failed Epstein releases etc.
That is the function I postulate this growing interest in “conspiracy” really serves. The power structure has given up the ground of being able to insist “everything is well, the experts are in control,” and are shifting to flooding the digital environment with tailored, directionless rabbit holes. QAnon, with it’s Nostradamus-level obscure references serving as a prime example of a containment mechanism, a soothing fable to dress over the very real bloc politics which are behind and underneath the official floorshow.
Perhaps as a more tame example, and more of an aside, I could not and cannot understand the Boomer fixation on alien disclosure, it’s a regular topic of discussion among the geezers in power but doesn’t seem to matter to the young at all. Maybe they’re so determined to study the stars for signs of other life so they don’t have to look down at the mess they’ve made of ours.
Great article, it reminds me of the disconnect between what people know and what people do. We live in this culture of weakness where the victim is the hero. All half way intelligent people know weaknesses is not a virtue. Yet they just keep applauding the demise of all things of worth, of morality itself. Where all morality is inverted in an attempt to enslave the strongest and most honorable. In an ultimate attempt to unsattle the warrior permanently and enslave all mankind. Our consent is required,we must never give it.