One of the podcasts I listen to is called “My Momma Told Me,” it’s a comedy series hosted by Langston Kerman and David Gborie, focusing on conspiracies specific to the African-American community. A phrase I picked up from the show is hotep, a showy fraud who is constantly spinning off their own ideas of the truth as a counterpoint to establishment wisdom, forbidden knowledge that is ultimately misleading, an evil doppelganger of Black empowerment.
Armed with this knowledge, it’s not hard to understand how Donald Trump could lead a multiracial coalition of jackasses, loudmouths, and self-important, self-righteous pricks all the way to the White House. An unfortunate truth in America is for everyone who wants to help their neighbor, there are those who would gladly trample over anyone else if it seems as though they might stand to benefit, and others who gladly convince themselves they aren’t while in the process of doing so.
The black community has cruelly been victim to a number of historical examples of things that could otherwise could be seen as conspiracy theory; the Tuskegee experiment, ‘sundown towns,’ the origin of many police departments in the South from slave-catchers. It’s not hard to understand, given this environment, that rumors would spread easily in common social spaces like churches and barbershops. I formerly had a co-worker who believed many of these mistruths, for example, if you wanted a reliable investment you should put it crypto ‘because you know the financial institutions are all controlled by the Rothschilds,’ or that Bill Cosby was framed for drugging and raping women ‘because he was going to buy NBC, and the media companies can’t have a black man controlling a lever of power.’
I don’t delve into this subject to play armchair anthropologist, but because I feel these sorts of false stories only serve to reinforce narratives which keep people disempowered and lost, from closing the gap of knowledge and personal betterment. Conspiracy theories, urban legends, misinformation all play into the psychology of the stories we tell about ourselves, and the stories we tell about others. I often try to frame conspiracy theories to people in whether the weight of the truth implicated by them is punching up or punching down, because it tells a lot about who stands to benefit. If someone spreads a rumor that Haitians are slaughtering pets for their next meal, it will make it difficult for those asylum seekers to assimilate into their communities and harder for their neighbors to bridge trust with them. If someone spreads a rumor that a machine is controlling dangerous weather events (putting aside the ‘machine’ that is the two billion combustion engines that run daily on this planet), it will make it more difficult for communities and their leaders to work towards solutions to the existential threat of a worsening world for humanity.
The alt-right has tried to frame their extremist views as a ‘War on Woke,’ with a binary option of ‘yes/no,’ finding some marginalized target to prey on, they use it as a basis to mask their own extreme views which are polarizing and transgressive. You don’t have to scratch very deep under the surface into groups which foster these beliefs to learn about the Neo-Reactionary Movement, or “Dark Enlightenment,” which has some very top-down and cynical attitudes towards the role of modern global society (though oddly they seem to all be in favor of all of the technological advances those changes have brought us.) This is really a form of intellectual terrorism that is attempting to crystalize their opinions as ‘common sense’ instead of the gravity of the 32% being inflicted on the 31% who reject those ideas entirely and the 37% who could care less.
Into this twisted funhouse mirror of bad ideas, a miracle procedure for mothers who otherwise could not have a pregnancy (IVF) is claimed to be some monstrous baby garbage disposal. Vaccines become some needlessly crippling procedure rather than a centuries old practice welcomed by no less than George Washington. Possibly the fatal mistake of the Harris-Walz campaign was discarding that these notions are ‘weird,’ they are certainly not those held by the majority of people who hear about them. Naomi Klein, in her book, The Shock Doctrine, made the case that in order to carve up new public sector markets and devour them wholesale, the billionaire class create imaginary crises. What we are seeing now is that same playbook, but being used for something as inalienable as human rights.
What can we do in the face of this seeming hopelessness? Let me tell you a different story, Elon Musk isn’t the richest man the world, not by a long shot. We can’t confirm for certain, but we’ve found enough of it hidden away — the richest man in the world (or atleast one of them) is at war right now, at war because he wasn’t able to rip off and swindle anything else from his people, and had to go elsewhere to loot and steal anything that wasn’t nailed down. There are some folks who envy him and want the same model over here, but I think they’re underestimating how resourceful, engaged, and connected ordinary people are, people like you and me, enough of us to stand up in the face of wrong piled on top of wrong and not just look the other way or say, “Oh, that’s a fun story.”
Because as I’ve mentioned, some conspiracy theories are true, and the people who shrugged them off only did so because it didn’t affect them. And they are still doing real harm, both physically and mentally, to this day.