Speaker 1: I think if you cast your mind back and you
Speaker 1: think about what it was like at the start of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, this is this time where the whole world changed.
Speaker 2: Good evening, and thanks for joining us.
Speaker 3: The World Health Organization has now confirmed what many epidemiologists
Speaker 3: have been saying for weeks. The coronavirus is a pandemic.
Speaker 1: There was a time of great uncertainty of like little information,
Speaker 1: and what information we had, there was not a lot
Speaker 1: of confidence in it, and so when people decided to
Speaker 1: grasp for understanding of it, we found that some people
Speaker 1: went towards these fringe, extreme ideas of COVID conspiracies and
Speaker 1: conspiratorial thinking that gave them a kind of certainty and
Speaker 1: a simple understanding of the world at a time that
Speaker 1: really defied that.
Speaker 2: A quarter of the world's population is now living under
Speaker 2: some form of lockdown due to coronavirus. Than three billion
Speaker 2: people in almost seventy countries and territories have been asked
Speaker 2: to stay at home.
Speaker 4: We saw the protests in the streets, We saw narratives
Speaker 4: about a week control and secret, shadowy plots.
Speaker 1: But it's actually not a very weird thing. It's a
Speaker 1: very human and relatable thing. Which is they wanted to
Speaker 1: make sense of the stuff that was happening to them.
Speaker 5: During the COVID nineteen pandemic, we saw protesters take to
Speaker 5: the streets. They weren't just protesting lockdowns. They were rallying
Speaker 5: around a tangle of fears and conspiracies. Those threads fused
Speaker 5: into a broader worldview that pulled people down a pipeline
Speaker 5: and built a small industry of influencers. I'm Ruby Jones and.
Speaker 3: You're listening to seven AM today Conspiracy Nation authors Arial
Speaker 3: Bog and Cam Wilson on the conspiracy pipeline, how it works,
Speaker 3: who benefits, and where it's heading.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: It's Thursday, August fourteen, and this is part one of
Speaker 5: a two part episode. Ariel and Cam, thank you so
Speaker 5: much for joining me on seven AM.
Speaker 6: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: Great to be here.
Speaker 5: I want to talk about the protests movements that emerged
Speaker 5: from the COVID lockdowns in Australia, and in particular, there
Speaker 5: is one rally that you went to and witnessed, Ariel,
Speaker 5: which was the May twenty twenty three Rally for Freedom.
Speaker 5: Tell me about it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I went to this one and it was started
Speaker 6: at Sydney Town Hall, there's always protests there if you've
Speaker 6: been to Sydney, you know, for all different kinds of causes.
Speaker 6: But what was really distinct to me about this one
Speaker 6: was the cacophony of issues that were on display. Twenty
Speaker 6: twenty three, you know, a lot of those restrictions had
Speaker 6: been lifted. We were coming out of that period of
Speaker 6: staying at home, but yet these marches were and of
Speaker 6: pretty decent sizes what they call so as I turned
Speaker 6: up and like turned onto George Street, I could see
Speaker 6: posters about vaccines. I could see posters about fifteen minute cities,
Speaker 6: which is a kind of conspiratorial understanding of a town
Speaker 6: planning idea that claims it's a way to lock us
Speaker 6: down and put us under government control instead of being
Speaker 6: about walkable cities. I could see t shirts with the
Speaker 6: line exposed the twenty eight on it that refers to
Speaker 6: a conspiracy theory that spread widely in Australia about a
Speaker 6: list of twenty eight elite pedophiles, including a prime minister.
Speaker 6: I saw things about the Russia Ukraine War. You know,
Speaker 6: it really showed to me how so many of these
Speaker 6: ideas had kind of merged and were able to share
Speaker 6: space even if people didn't show up for the exact
Speaker 6: same reason. They shared a common sentiment, and the idea
Speaker 6: was that there was something really wrong in the world.
Speaker 6: And you know, that's not a unique feeling. A lot
Speaker 6: of us feel like that. But they had decided the
Speaker 6: blame was on a sort of shadowy force that was
Speaker 6: out there trying to put us under the thumb to
Speaker 6: control our lives against the common good.
Speaker 5: Can we talk a little bit more about that kind
Speaker 5: of cacophony of issues that you mentioned so far, g vaccines,
Speaker 5: child abuse, rings, How these ideas that do seem disconnected
Speaker 5: and random, how they come together into this kind of
Speaker 5: overarching belief system.
Speaker 1: Many of the people there believe completely different things, and
Speaker 1: it's almost bizarre to see the different kinds of people
Speaker 1: and their array of grievances that sometimes, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, actually all couldn't be true at the same time,
Speaker 1: like it actually wouldn't make sense. And yet that's not
Speaker 1: a problem for these movements. Like you might believe that
Speaker 1: nine to eleven was done by Massad, or you might
Speaker 1: believe it was done by another group of people, but actually,
Speaker 1: you know, you can kind of be and up because
Speaker 1: what you agree on is this idea that you're not
Speaker 1: getting the whole truth, that there are these bad forces,
Speaker 1: and that you're on the right side of history. People
Speaker 1: have all kinds of reasons ultimately that they get into
Speaker 1: these groups and start to espouse these beliefs. But we
Speaker 1: understand that these are all kind of influenced by these
Speaker 1: broader societal factors, like, for example, the Internet has been
Speaker 1: such a big force in bringing these people with disparate
Speaker 1: views together, So ultimately you end up with this really
Speaker 1: like connected group of people united by the same kind
Speaker 1: of energy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and on the one hand, it's obviously a pretty
Speaker 5: bleak way of looking at the world, but just having
Speaker 5: access to that belief system provide comfort to people who
Speaker 5: believe in it.
Speaker 6: I think it can certainly like it is a way
Speaker 6: to put a kind of simple US verse them, enemies
Speaker 6: versus good guys narrative around really complex events the COVID
Speaker 6: nineteen pandemic. As can was saying, you know, this evolving
Speaker 6: situation where the science was not one hundred percent firm.
Speaker 6: We're gaining understanding every day, but I think it's important
Speaker 6: to say here, like there are real conspiracies. You know,
Speaker 6: if you just take any kind of look at Australian politics.
Speaker 6: You see the revolving door of lobbyists. You see how
Speaker 6: power and money operates. So we're not denying that at all.
Speaker 6: What we're talking about here is a kind of dedication
Speaker 6: to us verse them narrative despite all available evidence and
Speaker 6: an unwillingness to accept, you know, counter claims. And there's
Speaker 6: some really interesting sort of work on this. There's an
Speaker 6: academic in the United States, Joseph Kushinsky, who's framed this
Speaker 6: is an understanding of power. He argues that conspiracy theories
Speaker 6: are a way to comprehend power, our institutions, the global
Speaker 6: sort of community of nations, a very complex ecosystem. Some
Speaker 6: of us might turn to these narratives as a way
Speaker 6: to kind of understand what is happening in the.
Speaker 5: World coming up, how online communities replace real ones and
Speaker 5: the people left behind. You've been speaking to people who
Speaker 5: have family members, partners, loved ones who have gone down
Speaker 5: various conspiracy rabbit holes. Can you tell me about Danielle
Speaker 5: and Emily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I spoke to Danielle, who I found through a subreddit,
Speaker 1: an online community space dedicated to people who had lost
Speaker 1: loved ones to conspiracy theories and She was someone who
Speaker 1: had been in a long term relationship with another woman, Emily,
Speaker 1: that'd been together for I believe more than a decade
Speaker 1: before the pandemic. Emily was already quite a nervous, anxious person.
Speaker 1: She had early life trauma that had predisposed her to
Speaker 1: being that kind of way, but when COVID happened just
Speaker 1: supercharged it, and so it drastically changed her behavior over
Speaker 1: just a few months. You know, she started worrying about
Speaker 1: vaccine genocides. She started begging her partner to start storing
Speaker 1: stuff in the house and preparing for a doomsday. They
Speaker 1: got chickens as a way of kind of future proofing
Speaker 1: themselves against anything that would happen to food supplies. And
Speaker 1: while she did have some kind of work that did
Speaker 1: keep her someone to touch the outside world, it really
Speaker 1: didn't do much to shake this group on her. She
Speaker 1: would spend hours and hours every day just ingesting enormous
Speaker 1: amounts of conspiracy content through social media that was, on
Speaker 1: one hand, you know, kind of like giving her the answer,
Speaker 1: you know, it was telling her what was going on,
Speaker 1: explaining it, But the other hand was completely freaking around.
Speaker 1: It was telling her everything was going wrong, that everyone
Speaker 1: she knew was under thread that was going to die.
Speaker 1: And then as time went on, this really had an
Speaker 1: enormous strain in their relationship. There's this heartbreaking moment that
Speaker 1: Danielle told me where she was, like it was her
Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday around then, and they decided to travel across Australia.
Speaker 1: Danielle would remember they would stop in the middle of
Speaker 1: nowhere and Emily would like jump on top of the
Speaker 1: car or go find hills and trees to get on
Speaker 1: top of to try and find just some internet connection
Speaker 1: so that she could stay attached to the latest theories
Speaker 1: coming from these conspiracy theory influencers who she was connected to.
Speaker 1: Emily even started to share these transphobic and homophobic views
Speaker 1: despite herself being in a gay relationship. Ultimately, this change
Speaker 1: and her loved one took such a toll Danielle couldn't
Speaker 1: handle it anymore. You know. They tried together, they went
Speaker 1: to therapy, but the long term relationship broke down as
Speaker 1: a result of it.
Speaker 5: And so it sounds like Emily was consuming content twenty
Speaker 5: four to seven. So can we talk about what it
Speaker 5: was that she was watching and listening to and the
Speaker 5: people who were actually producing that content and was motivating them.
Speaker 1: Yes, so like many of them, she was in a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of different online communities. Some are just like
Speaker 1: you know, other people with similar beliefs, and some are
Speaker 1: more led by figures at the top who are kind
Speaker 1: of more dedicated to this and published content on it.
Speaker 7: Evening Australia, Riccardo Bozi, National Leader of Australia one, well,
Speaker 7: it's been a busy couple of weeks and where and
Speaker 7: the warf of the world continues.
Speaker 1: You know. One example is a guy called Ricardo Bozi,
Speaker 1: who is a SAS guy who at one point during
Speaker 1: the pandemic said that all doctors and nurses should be hung.
Speaker 7: The loads of individuals that run this country for the
Speaker 7: time being an offer months longer have persuaded too many
Speaker 7: of us that we have to kill our kids.
Speaker 1: And he was one of those people that Emily was
Speaker 1: really locked into.
Speaker 7: So if the wars are coming, it's because the globalists
Speaker 7: want the war. They wanted a trigger the world control
Speaker 7: and they tried global cooling in the seventies, then they
Speaker 7: tried global warming, They tried all sorts of nonsense and
Speaker 7: they finally got the pandemicandemic.
Speaker 1: And so you had, you know, at the same time
Speaker 1: as Danielle was, you know, waiting for updates on COVID
Speaker 1: numbers like all of us, Emily was simultaneously in on
Speaker 1: platforms like telegram and other fringe spaces where they were
Speaker 1: getting this completely alternate reality that was helping transform her
Speaker 1: into someone that daniel didn't recognize.
Speaker 5: And so how cynical are you now about these influences.
Speaker 5: Do you think that they all believe what they're saying
Speaker 5: or is there a kind of cohort who manipulating people
Speaker 5: for profit.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to know exactly what people believe. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you have suspicions, but ultimately we can see that there
Speaker 1: are incentive structures that make it possible for these figures
Speaker 1: with influence to keep doing it. You know, they make
Speaker 1: money off it, or at the very least they get attention.
Speaker 1: You know, they promote these ideas. They tell you to
Speaker 1: be fearful of everyone and everything, and the only person
Speaker 1: you should trust is them, and very often they directly
Speaker 1: even cash in on that by selling things, whether it's
Speaker 1: courses or supplements or something like that. So we try
Speaker 1: to be quite empathetic towards people who believe conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: because we actually think it's a very human and understandable
Speaker 1: thing to search for answers, even if they're not things
Speaker 1: that most of us would agree with. But the people
Speaker 1: who are responsible for encouraging people's beliefs, feeding those, regardless
Speaker 1: of whatever they actually think, we view them critically because
Speaker 1: ultimately they are feeding beliefs that end up changing these
Speaker 1: people lives and are often directly benefiting from it themselves.
Speaker 5: And we all know that COVID was a time of
Speaker 5: uncertainty and disruption, and it makes sense in a lot
Speaker 5: of ways that conspiracy theories. You know, people were more
Speaker 5: susceptible to believing them during that time. Has the effect
Speaker 5: of that been long lasting or do you think that
Speaker 5: people are now less susceptible because we're mostly out of
Speaker 5: that error.
Speaker 1: It's a great question.
Speaker 6: There was a lot of discussion about whether this anti lockdown,
Speaker 6: you know, quote unquote freedom movement might emerge as a
Speaker 6: political force in Australia.
Speaker 1: So in the.
Speaker 6: Twenty twenty two election, I can remember as reporting on that,
Speaker 6: we saw a lot of influences from that ecosystem promoting
Speaker 6: connections with some of the minor parties here in Australia,
Speaker 6: and so there was this open question about whether they
Speaker 6: would be able to get actual members of Parliament senators elected.
Speaker 6: Ultimately that didn't really bear out in kind of state
Speaker 6: or federal level. That's a bit different actually at the
Speaker 6: council level. In recent council elections in Victoria, New South Wales,
Speaker 6: we did see candidates get onto councils in various sort
Speaker 6: of regional areas in particular that do have ties to
Speaker 6: some of these pandemic era movements and have fringe beliefs
Speaker 6: about say vaccines or town planning. You know, when we
Speaker 6: look at some of the science around conspiratorial belief, you
Speaker 6: know there are limitations on a lot of these studies,
Speaker 6: but there is some correlation between perceptions of inequality and
Speaker 6: corruption and conspiratorial belief at the national level. I think,
Speaker 6: as all journalists on this program right now, we can
Speaker 6: safely say that transparency is lacking in government. If you've
Speaker 6: ever tried to FOI any government department, you'll come up
Speaker 6: against so many different barriers. I have turned a lot
Speaker 6: in this book to some work from Naomi Klein. She
Speaker 6: wrote a book on called Doppelganga, which it really sort
Speaker 6: of fits into this discussion, and she said that conspiracy
Speaker 6: theorists get the facts wrong, but the feelings right. So
Speaker 6: the feeling of living in a world with shadow lands,
Speaker 6: the feeling that every human misery is someone else's profit,
Speaker 6: the feeling of being exhausted by predation extraction, and the
Speaker 6: feeling that important truths are being hidden. Like, I don't
Speaker 6: disagree with that feeling at all, and I can see
Speaker 6: why people might turn to these ideas when faced with that.
Speaker 6: And that's the kind of question that we should be
Speaker 6: asking on a national level, how to address not the
Speaker 6: feeling that so much as the reality of how that happens.
Speaker 5: In the next episode, we look at how it can speak.
Speaker 5: Heirises can leap from the dark corners of message boards
Speaker 5: to mainstream politics and the devastating and deadly consequences of
Speaker 5: unchecked wise it's called from fringe to Parliament, and it's
Speaker 5: in your feed now