An Analysis of the Proliferation of Covid-19

“COVID-19 'VACCINE' IS A LITERAL INTRACELLULAR

HIJACKING NANOTECHNOLOGY VIRUS”:

AN ANALYSIS OF THE PROLIFERATION OF COVID-19

CONSPIRACY THEORIES ON R/CONSPIRACY

By Anthony Trygub

A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in Sociology

in conformity with the requirements for the

Degree of Master of Arts

Queen’s University

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

August, 2021

Conspiracy theorists are often portrayed in the media, popular culture, and academia as buffoons and idiots, paranoid, extremist, and even violent. While instances of such traits within some conspiracy theorists is certainly possible, and without downplaying the risks of conspiratorial thinking during a global pandemic, I would argue that the conspiracy community at large is not inherently dangerous. This research will not provide an answer as to who conspiracy theorists are, but can instead provide a glimpse into the feelings and motivations of conspiracy theorists and offer some perspective on why an individual might invest themselves into conspiracy theories. Many conspiracy theorists are scared for their jobs, their rights, and even their lives, feeling as though the monumental institutions they once entrusted to help them are now operating against them.

These feelings can be exacerbated in an unfamiliar and unprecedented situation such as a global pandemic, and when most people turned to their social institutions to safeguard them, conspiracy theorists felt as though they were at the mercy of powerful, hostile forces. Although conspiracy theorists are often very wrong about their assessment of their own situation, learning how to regain and re-establish the trust of these estranged populations in social institutions in the context of the pandemic may just be a plain necessity, as the pandemic demonstrated the importance of social cohesion and solidarity for ensuring the health and safety of the population. Upon analysis, the majority of the conspiracy theories on r/conspiracy could be grouped into three thematic categories: negotiating class struggle, negotiating state powers, and negotiating nationalism. The topics of the theories which comprise these three overarching themes vary greatly, but they tend to blame the pandemic or problems that arose as a result of the pandemic on the wealthy, the state, or international disputes.

ii Table of Contents

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………..ii

List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………………..v

Introduction ...... 1

Literature Review ...... 7 Cognitivist approaches to conspiracy theories ...... 7 Constructivist approaches to conspiracy theories ...... 15 Conceptualizing Talk on r/conspiracy...... 21

Methods...... 23 Data collection...... 23 Data Analysis ...... 24 Overview of Conspiracy Theories Related to COVID-19 ...... 26 The Mainstream Media in Relation to the Coronavirus ...... 29 5G Networks and the Coronavirus ...... 31

Negotiating Class Struggle ...... 33 The Financial Sector Benefiting from the Pandemic ...... 33 Corporations Benefiting from Coronavirus...... 37 The Pandemic as a ‘Deep State’ Plot ...... 41

Negotiating State Powers...... 51 Public Health and Medical Institutions in Relation to the Coronavirus...... 51 Increasing Federal Powers as a Reaction to Coronavirus ...... 57 The Police Brutality and Black Lives Matter Protests in Relation to the Coronavirus...... 60

Negotiating Nationalism ...... 69 Justifying Anti-Chinese US Nationalism ...... 69 The Coronavirus as an Act of American Imperialism...... 76

Conclusions ...... 79

iii References ...... 88

Appendix ...... 92

List of Tables

Table 1: COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory Topics Sorted by Popularity……………………...27

Introduction

During the course of 2020 and 2021 the global community experienced unprecedented shifts in daily life and ways of living due to the onset of COVID-19. Many people were terrified and uncertain of what actions or precautions they should be taking to protect themselves and others, and although the bulk of society appeared to be willing to accept the advice of their governments and medical institutions, concerns remained that parts of the population were resisting directives from centralized authorities. In this respect, conspiracy theories about the pandemic emerged as a particular area of concern for public health. While the conspiratorial community does not comprise a significant portion of the population, research shows that the community tends to disregard the recommendations of medical institutions and healthcare professionals (Jolley and Douglas 2014;

Oliver and Wood 2014). Some in the conspiracy community actively endanger themselves and their audience through the spread of misinformation related to the pandemic and their disregard for state directives meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19. It is not often that a single person has the power to significantly impact their social surroundings, but in the case of the pandemic, any person infected with the Coronavirus who ignores self-isolation and quarantine protocols can have a detrimental and potentially lethal impact on their community. Hence, increased attention has been drawn to the sources of the conspiracy community’s mistrust and disbelief of authority, in an effort to curb disinformation stemming from the conspiracy community and to assist in creating a distribution method of legitimate information which the community will find credible.

Research on conspiracy theories and theorists is varied, sometimes even contradictory. Ex- isting approaches to studying conspiracy theories can be roughly divided into ‘cognitivist’ and

‘constructivist’ approaches. Cognitivist approaches to conspiracy theories understand them as

cognitive problems rooted in erroneous information and a lack of education. This strand of research is often descriptive and based on large-scale surveys, illuminating demographic and other characteristics of conspiracy theorists. For example, Imhoff et al. (2018) found that a conspiracy mentality is associated with lower ratings of credibility assigned to powerful (expert) sources and higher ratings of credibility given to powerless (non-expert) sources. This research shows some of the factors in determining what information theorists deem to be trustworthy. Other cognitivist research provides insight into conspiracy theorist demographics, although with conflicting results and sometimes based on problematic assumptions. For example, while some say that race matters, others find that it does not (see e.g. Douglas et al. 2019; Uscinski and Parent 2014). Some cognitivist scholars allege that the conspiracy mentality in an individual is the result of an innate paranoia, with the potential to lead to violence and extremist behaviour (Robins and Post 1997; Pipes

1997). Overall, this line of research tends to ask more questions about who conspiracy theorists are rather than why they believe in conspiracy theories.

By contrast, constructivist approaches view conspiracy theorists and theories as a manifestation of institutional mistrust by ordinary people, understanding the source of this mistrust to be rooted in social problems rather than cognitive problems and the theorists themselves. Conspiracy theories, in this conceptualization, are attempts by ordinary people to make sense of a complex and highly unequal world. For example, scholars like Knight (2000) and Olmstead (2009) argue that the American public’s increasing mistrust in political and economic institutions is rooted in actual historical wrongdoings and the experience of stark inequalities, and that both popular culture and the American political theatre may also play a role. Wynne’s (1992) research shows that the conspiracy mentality can arise in regular citizens who experience betrayal and injustices from government institutions, demonstrating the importance of institutional behaviours. The ethnographic

studies by Harambam and Aupers (2015) similarly finds that conspiracy theorists are concerned citizens who have grown disillusioned with social institutions and become overly critical of official information which is presented as objectively correct, as they had negative experiences accepting institutional information at face value. This thesis primarily adopts the constructivist approach, studying the discursive content of the theories to understand conspiracy theorists’ sentiments and beliefs in an attempt to unearth the social problems which motivate them.

Motivated by the proliferation of COVID-19 conspiracy theories, the aim of this research is to explore the social problems which drive the proliferation of Coronavirus-related conspiracy theories. To do so, I analyzed discussions of Coronavirus conspiracy theories in the online forum of r/conspiracy and the emotions associated with them. The Reddit community of r/conspiracy is a key forum for individuals with conspiratorial worldviews to locate one another and virtually gather to discuss their theories and beliefs (Klein et al. 2019). From March 2020 to August 2020, submissions to r/conspiracy were gathered and subsequently analyzed, providing a window into the evolving feelings and beliefs of conspiracy theorists during the initial months of the pandemic.

After coding approximately 9,000 of the 90,000+ submissions, there was enough content to have a good grasp of the overarching issues and problems which conspiracy theorists were observing in regard to the pandemic, which theorists attempted to rationalize and negotiate by creating numerous conspiracy theories relating to COVID-19. Upon analysis, the majority of the conspiracy theories could be grouped into three thematic categories: negotiating class struggle, negotiating state powers, and negotiating nationalism. The topics of the theories which comprise these three overarching themes vary greatly, but they tend to blame the pandemic or problems that arose as a result of the pandemic on the wealthy, the state, or international disputes.

The Negotiating Class Struggle chapter focuses on the conspiracy theories which accused wealthy groups and individuals to have either started the pandemic or exploited it for profit. Fi- nancial institutions, corporations, the ‘deep state’, and powerful, wealthy individuals were the primary culprits for these theories. These theorists appeared to be using an almost Marxist lens to discuss the pandemic and the groups they perceived to be involved, postulating that the pandemic was a part of a conspiracy to unfairly enrich the wealthy while the lower classes were financially immobilized by the pandemic. Their justifications for why these groups would be engaged in such a conspiracy often referenced historical precedent, with theorists identifying the 2008 financial crisis as a pivotal source for their current feelings of distrust and betrayal towards financial institutions and corporations. This usage of historical misdoings by conspiracy theorists to explain and justify the reasons for current conspiracies is a common trend which was consistently observed throughout all the theory topics.

The Negotiating State Powers chapter focuses on theorists questioning the intentions and actions of the state and its institutions during the pandemic. Theorists believed that medical institutions and the justice system were operating to suppress the rights of the public, and that the US government was implementing the pandemic lockdowns as the first stage of martial law. Theorists expressed fear that there were ‘sinister forces’ within the government which sought to overturn the democratic values of government (mostly the United States), with theorists within this topic category often expressing strong libertarian values. There were also theories that the widespread racial justice protests in the US were orchestrated by the state in order to spread the Coronavirus amongst the historic numbers of protesting racial minorities. Theories about the US overstepping their bounds often referenced historic incidences of the state engaging in targeted acts of oppression,

with the Tuskegee Syphilis Study being prominently mentioned as a justification for believing that the government would engage in heinous conspiracies in the context of the pandemic.

The Negotiating Nationalism chapter explores theories which blamed nations for the pandemic, with China and the US receiving particular attention from conspiracy theorists. Nationalist sentiments were prevalent in these theories, with many theorists accusing China of either creating the Coronavirus or purposefully releasing the virus in order to bolster their global power while other nations were weakened by the pandemic. The so-called ‘trade war’ that President Trump had declared against China was referenced especially often, as theorists believed that the Chinese government caused the pandemic as retaliation against American economic sanctions. Conversely, other theorists blamed the US for causing the pandemic, believing that Trump was attempting to frame China for creating COVID-19 in order to tarnish their international reputation and weaken their economy. Theorists who believed that the US was responsible for the pandemic invoked historic examples of American imperialism and the aggressive measures the American government has taken in the past to consolidate its influence over foreign nations. Racist and Sinophobic sentiments were common throughout the theories which blamed China for the Coronavirus outbreak, with many theorists conflating the supposed intentions of the Chinese government with that of

Chinese persons throughout the world. Feelings of anger and suspicion were prevalent within these nationalist conspiracy theories, as theorists felt as though their lives and values were under attack by foreign entities.

Another important finding was that conspiracy theorists place great value in the opinions of their peers. Theorists consistently sought the approval of their fellow theorists and seemed to hold their advice in higher esteem than that of medical experts and scientists. Curiously, they were not opposed to science as a whole, however, the source of the information was of particular

importance. Theorists viewed scientific data from institutional sources as less credible and less trustworthy than scientific data from non-institutional sources, making it clear that the common conception of conspiracy theorists being ‘anti-science’ is not entirely correct. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that they are ‘anti-institutionalized science’. This is an important distinction, as my findings suggest that conspiracy theorists may be persuaded with scientific data, provided that they view the source as their peer rather than an authority figure.

Conspiracy theorists are often portrayed in the media, popular culture, and academia as buffoons and idiots, paranoid, extremist, and even violent. While instances of such traits within some conspiracy theorists is certainly possible, and without downplaying the risks of conspiratorial thinking during a global pandemic, I would argue that the conspiracy community at large is not inherently dangerous. This research will not provide an answer as to who conspiracy theorists are, but can instead provide a glimpse into the feelings and motivations of conspiracy theorists and offer some perspective on why an individual might invest themselves into conspiracy theories.

Many conspiracy theorists are scared for their jobs, their rights, and even their lives, feeling as though the monumental institutions they once entrusted to help them are now operating against them. These feelings can be exacerbated in an unfamiliar and unprecedented situation such as a global pandemic, and when most people turned to their social institutions to safeguard them, conspiracy theorists felt as though they were at the mercy of powerful, hostile forces. Although conspiracy theorists are often very wrong about their assessment of their own situation, learning how to regain and re-establish the trust of these estranged populations in social institutions in the context of the pandemic may just be a plain necessity, as the pandemic demonstrated the importance of social cohesion and solidarity for ensuring the health and safety of the population.

Literature Review

This chapter draws on academic research and theories related to conspiracy theories, conspiracy theorists, and the digital communities in which they exchange their theories. I draw my research from the two primary approaches to studying conspiracy theories and theorists, approaches which can be characterized as ‘cognitivist,’ and the approach which can be characterized as ‘constructivist’. The cognitivist approach to conspiracy theorists understands conspiracy theories as a cognitive problem rooted in erroneous information and a lack of education. Viewing their ideation and propagation as a danger to society, cognitivist scholars raise questions as to how the proliferation of conspiracy theories can be prevented in order to avoid potential public harm. The constructivist approach views conspiracy theorists and theories as a manifestation of institutional mistrust by ordinary people, understanding the source of the problem to be rooted in social problems rather than cognitive problems and the theorists themselves. This thesis largely adopts the constructivist approach, studying the discursive content of the theories to understand theorists’ sentiments and beliefs in an attempt to unearth the social problems which drive conspiracy theories. This literature review will be divided between these two scholarly approaches, beginning with the cognitivist approach.

Cognitivist approaches to conspiracy theories

Empirical studies in this tradition have examined a range of potential factors which may account for people to invest in conspiracy theories, ranging from political beliefs and socioeconomic conditions to innate psychological traits such as paranoia. Some of these studies conduct empirical research to reach their conclusions, while others engage with historical and theoretical material.

While none of these studies present a complete overview of the conspiracy community, as it almost

certainly varies between cultures and nations, various aspects from each of these studies can be used to inform us of the potential motivations for individuals to invest in conspiracy theories.

For example, Imhoff and Bruder (2014) argue that a conspiracy mentality can be understood as a generalized political attitude, akin to other political attitudes like right-wing authoritar- ianism. Defining a conspiracy mentality as a “monological belief system associated with disliking powerful societal groups and perceiving them as responsible for political and economic events with negative implications”, Imhoff and Bruder conducted five studies amongst approximately

2,000 German respondents to determine if the conspiracy mentality was a distinct political attitude

(2014: 27). Their findings confirmed their hypothesis that the conspiracy mentality was a distinct generalized political attitude, theorizing that powerless groups were more likely to blame powerful groups for societal problems in order to boost “personal and collective self-esteem” as well as to

“cope with a negative social identity” (Imhoff and Bruder 2014: 39). Continuing this research,

Imhoff et al. (2018) conducted a study to determine how a ‘conspiracy mentality’ affects epistemic trust in sources of historical knowledge, using the same definition for a conspiracy mentality as the 2013 study. By conducting four studies with approximately 1,100 German respondents, Imhoff et al. (2018) found that a conspiracy mentality was associated with lower ratings of credibility assigned to powerful (expert) sources and higher ratings of credibility given to powerless (non- expert) sources. This research suggests that theorists have a shared tendency to distrust experts, and that this mistrust leads to a broader belief in conspiracy theories overall.

Other studies have examined the demographics of conspiracy theorists, sometimes with conflicting findings. A compilation of conspiracy theory literature by Douglas et al. (2019) tries to provide a broader understanding of who theorists are and what attributes they tend to possess.

Their literature review finds that higher levels of conspiracy thinking correlate with lower levels

of education and lower levels of income; and that conspiracy believers are more likely to be male, unmarried, unemployed, a member of an ethnic minority group (Douglas et al. 2019). However, these findings conflict with the research of Uscinski and Parent (2014). Uscinski and Parent (2014) used a US study to group respondents into 3 categories of conspiratorial thinking (high, medium, and low), based on the number of conspiracy-related statements they endorsed. They find that although higher levels of conspiratorial beliefs are correlated with lower levels of education and income, those with high levels of conspiratorial thinking do not have notable differences in marital status, gender, employment, or political ideology, in comparison to those with medium and low levels of conspiratorial dispositions (Uscinski and Parent 2014). Their findings also contradict

Douglas et al.’s (2019) findings in terms of racial differences: whites are the most prominent in the high conspiratorial predisposition category by four percent, when compared to Hispanics and

Black Americans (Uscinski and Parent 2014: 83). This does not mean that whites are significantly more inclined to conspiracy thinking, as “when we look at the high and medium categories together, 89 percent of Hispanics and 86 percent of Blacks fall into either the medium or high category compared to 72 percent of whites” (Uscinski and Parent 2014: 83). They also found that older generations of Black Americans are more likely to have high levels of conspiratorial thinking than young Black Americans (Uscinski and Parent 2014). The authors theorize that this is due to older generations experiencing more discrimination than the younger generations, and that as further strides are made towards racial justice the level of conspiratorial beliefs will continue to decrease in new generations of Black Americans (Uscinski and Parent 2014). Uscinski and Parent also found that occupation may matter, because those with high levels of conspiracy thinking “are less likely to have jobs in the financial industry, military, and public administration”, which are also the institutions which theorists tend to discuss the most (Uscinski and Parent 2014: 102).

Curiously, this trend is not seen for the healthcare industry, which was more than 12% more likely to employ those with high levels of conspiratorial predispositions than those with medium and low levels of conspiratorial predispositions, despite conspiracy theories on the healthcare industry being a prominent topic of discussion (Uscinski and Parent 2014: 102).

Another strand of empirical research has focused not so much on who conspiracy theorists are, but how conspiracy theories proliferate in online spaces. Vicario et al. (2016) conducted a study to understand how misinformation spreads online by analyzing 32 Facebook pages dedicated to conspiracy theories and 35 pages dedicated to science news. They found that the acceptance of a news article is strongly based on whether it coheres with the user’s system of beliefs, regardless of the validity of the source (Vicario et al. 2016). They also found that conspiracy theories experience increased longevity and a steady growth of interest in their communities compared to science news, with science news quickly achieving a high level of diffusion in the community but then experiencing a decline in community interest (Vicario et al. 2016). This research suggests the importance of framing information presented to conspiracy communities in a framework familiar to them, as they are very likely to reject news presented in a traditional manner. This study also shows the importance of curbing misinformative theories quickly, as the theory is likely to grow and gain traction over time.

A study by Karlsen et al. (2017) looked at online political ‘echo chambers’ and how discourse and debate between individuals from ideologically polarized groups could sway an individual's values and ideology. They discovered that although a majority of online debaters claimed to have often engaged in debates with individuals holding opposing values, contradictory arguments saw debaters emerging with stronger convictions in their original beliefs than prior to the debate (Karlsen et al. 2017). One-sided confirming and contradicting arguments had stronger

effects on ideology reinforcement than two-sided neutral arguments, suggesting that entering ideologically polarized communities with a sympathetic and open mindset may be conducive to changing opinions (Karlsen et al. 2017). Mensah et al.’s (2019) analysis of persuasive techniques used on Reddit’s r/changemyview community identified several impactful methods of persuasion used by respondents. Discourse using language similar to that of the initial debater was found to increase the likelihood of persuasion, and debaters who engaged broadly with respondents were more likely to be persuaded, whereas users who engaged in protracted arguments with individual respondents were significantly less likely to change their opinions (Mensah et al. 2019). These persuasive techniques could potentially be used to enhance the effectiveness of online discourse intended to prevent the creation and spread of misinformation.

A language analysis of r/conspiracy users by Klein at al. (2019) set out to determine whether involvement in the community could influence the development of a conspiratorial mindset in individuals without existing conspiratorial beliefs. They found that the bulk of community members exhibited signs of a pre-existing conspiratorial mindset, with the existing members demonstrating homophily with new users rather than attempts at assimilation (Klein at al. 2019).

Klein et al.’s (2019) study thus suggests that the prevalence of deep-seated ideologies and beliefs matters in the formation of the conspiratorial mindset. Other research has examined the consequences of people’s investment into conspiracy theories. For example, Jolley and Douglas’ (2014) study on anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and their effect on vaccination intentions found that a belief in anti-vaccination conspiracies reduced intentions to vaccinate, as well as increasing distrust of medical institutions and perceptions of vaccines as harmful. Oliver and Wood’s (2014) study of medical conspiracies found that individuals who endorse them are more likely to avoid traditional medicine, disregard the advice of healthcare professionals, and seek alternative

treatments for ailments. This is not due to a lack of concern for their health, but because they distrust the intentions of medical professionals and institutions (Oliver and Wood 2014). These studies illustrate the lack of faith the conspiracy community harbors towards the mainstream healthcare industry (Jolley and Douglas 2014; Oliver and Wood 2014)

Cognitivist approaches to conspiracy theories view conspiracy theorists as misguided and hyper-focused on finding evidence which will prove the legitimacy of their theories, “indiscrimi- nately accept[ing] any argument that points to conspiracy” while disregarding contradictory evidence (Pipes 1997: 41). Thus Barkun (2003: 7) argues that despite the quantity and quality of evidence presented in a counterargument to a conspiracy theory, theorists will never be dissuaded due to “belief in a conspiracy theory ultimately [being] a matter of faith rather than proof”. Con- spiracy theorists are practicing ‘bad science’ from this cognitivist perspective, and “are therefore not just wrong... they are the pathological Other of modern science” (Harambam 2020: 14). Some of the scholars in this tradition thus assert that there is a real threat from these ‘paranoid individuals’ who see conspiracies where others don’t, with Robins and Post (1997) drawing parallels between contemporary conspiracy theorists and historical figures who were notoriously paranoid, such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. Robins and Post even argue that Hitler’s famously paranoid personality, rather than anti-Semitism, was the primary cause of his conspiracy theories regarding the Jewish community (1997).

Pipes (1997) also views conspiracy theorists as potentially dangerous, arguing that conspiracism has led to extremism, violence, mass murder, and a myriad of other atrocities in the last two centuries. Effectively a historical analysis of prominent conspiracies throughout Europe and the West, Pipes discusses how a common thread of anti-Semitism underlies many of these conspiracies and why he believes many pivotal Western events were a direct result of conspiracism.

According to Pipes, The Crusades, The French Revolution, both World Wars, the American Rev- olution, and the Russian Revolution, were all caused by conspiracy theories which were a result of a paranoid style of thinking amongst their belligerents/propagators (Pipes 1997). However,

Pipes’ attribution of blame for these massive conflicts to be largely on the shoulders of paranoid conspiracy theorists is a simplistic interpretation of the complex situations which lead to the conflicts, and even disingenuous. For example, Pipes speaks of the Russian Revolution and the formation of the USSR as “Lenin… us[ing] [an] alleged capitalists’ conspiracy for his own purposes”

(Pipes 1997: 452), glossing over the fact that there were very real capitalist entities which sought to ensure the defeat of the Bolsheviks and the destruction of the USSR. While there is no doubt that the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories propagated by Hitler played an important role in the rise of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, using this example to broadly claim that “Conspiracism ex- acerbates political conflicts by inducing hostility to the other… [with] violence often result[ing]”

(Pipes 1997: 457), unjustly minimizes the violent social conflicts and inequalities which underlie wars.

Challenging the traditional cognitivist scholarship which states that conspiracy beliefs are caused by an innate sense of paranoia, Prooijen, Krouwel and Pollet theorized that belief in conspiracy theories could be correlated to radical political ideology. Prooijen, Krouwel and Pollet

(2015) tested this hypothesis by conducting four different digital surveys between almost 500

American and 2300 Dutch participants, asking respondents to self-report where they fell on the political spectrum using a seven-point scale from liberal to conservative. They were then asked various questions (different between the four surveys) to ascertain the strength of their conspiratorial beliefs, questions such as; “The financial crisis is the result of a conspiracy between bankers and corrupt politicians”, “Do you believe that politicians have a vested interest in changing the

facts about global warming?”, “The political arena was infiltrated by oil companies when making the decision to go to war against Iraq”, and others (Prooijen et al. 2015: 571, 573). To test the correlation of paranoia, political extremism, and conspiracy beliefs, respondents were assessed for paranoia using the Fenigstein and Vanable paranoia scale (Prooijen et al. 2015: 571). While there was a positive correlation between paranoia and conspiracy beliefs, there was no relationship between paranoia and extreme political beliefs. The findings were consistent with the hypothesis, with extreme political inclinations correlating with stronger agreement of conspiracy theories. Re- spondents were also asked; “With the correct policies, most societal problems can be solved very easily”, in an effort to assess if political extremism or conspiracy beliefs are correlated with a belief that simple political solutions can solve complex problems (Prooijen et al. 2015: 573). The results showed that the respondents on the far right and the far left of the political spectrum strongly agreed with the statement when compared to politically moderate respondents, and that “belief in simple political solutions was significantly correlated with conspiracy beliefs” (Prooijen et al.

2015: 574). While this research does not disprove the notion that paranoia and a belief in conspiracy theories are correlated, the lack of a relationship between political extremism and paranoia quells the fears of Pipes that the next Hitler or Stalin will arise from an innately paranoid individual. There is no evidence of causation between conspiracy theories and political extremism, or vice versa, but it is curious to see such a strong correlation between conspiracy beliefs and the belief that proper government policies can solve most societal problems. Considering the mass of research which shows that conspiracy theorists greatly distrust social institutions and the government, it is possible that theorists still have faith that the integrity of the social institutions can be restored provided that the ‘proper’ individuals and policies are in place.

Pathologizing conspiracy theorists as paranoid, illogical, and inherently dangerous does little to illuminate our understanding of why conspiracy theorists think the way that they do. How- ever, it is important to acknowledge the danger that conspiracy theories do pose. While claiming that conspiracy theories are likely to lead to violence does not hold up to scrutiny, the misinformation proliferated through conspiracy theories can have a significant detrimental effect on the implementation of public policy if a significant portion of the population subscribes to the theories.

Particularly in a situation such as a pandemic, ensuring that the public truly understands the stakes and the necessity to comply with government policy is imperative to prevent unnecessary turmoil and death.

Constructivist approaches to conspiracy theories

Constructivist approaches tend to decenter cognitive causes and pay more attention to the social causes of conspiracy theories. A now classic study of public understandings of science, Wynne’s

(1992) study on English sheep farmers found that their conspiracy theories regarding distrust of scientific and state institutions was rooted in historical relations of mistrust caused by failures of the state towards the farmers, and their subsequent failure to admit wrongdoing. The historical failings of scientists and the state led the farmers to lose trust and faith in the credibility of the institutions. According to Wynne, this situation was compounded by a lack of institutional knowledge – knowledge about how science and the state work – and in this sense the farmers’ conspiracy theories could be understood as attempts to make sense of a complicated situation, becoming more willing to believe conspiracy theories than the word of scientists or the government

(Wynne 1992). Since farmers’ conspiracy theories were importantly rooted in social relations,

Wynne (1992) concludes that it is not enough to merely provide people ‘the right information’,

instead pointing to the fact that the underlying problems these farmers experience are moral and normative in nature, as well as tied to social identities. Wynne’s (1992) research thus suggests that mistrust in authorities, and science specifically, can stem from the historical injustices against certain communities.

However, mistrust in science may also be produced strategically. In their book Merchants of Doubt, Oreskes and Conway (2010) discuss how the recent rise in scientific skepticism amongst the general public can be linked to private corporations sowing doubt about scientific reports which negatively impacted their industries. The book begins with a detailed analysis of the tobacco industry’s veiled efforts to undermine the credibility of scientific studies which found that tobacco use was linked to lung cancer rates, with the corporations creating the Tobacco Industry Research

Committee (TIRC) “to fund alternative research to cast doubt upon the tobacco-cancer link”

(Oreskes and Conway 2010: 33). The TIRC used the non-absolute nature of the conclusions of the reports to cast doubt upon the legitimacy of the results, despite a margin of error being present within any scientific findings. By fabricating a controversy about the trustworthiness of the science and exploiting the general public’s ignorance of proper scientific procedures, the TIRC was able to successfully sow doubt on the integrity of science which would remain within the public consciousness for years to come (Oreskes and Conway 2010). Oreskes and Conway posit that the

TIRC’s tactics to successfully dispute largely agreed-upon scientific results laid the foundations for corporations and staunch free-market supporters to fight against science-based policy and regulation, predominantly seen in opposition to environmental protection efforts. Private corporations and anti-environmentalists fought against the regulation of acid rain, ozone protection, and anti- global warming legislation using the same tactics as the tobacco industry, sowing persistent doubt amongst the public about environmental issues and the integrity of science and scientists

themselves (Oreskes and Conway 2010). This book raises questions about the role of tobacco and fossil fuel corporations’ multi-decade campaigns to sow doubt about scientists and scientific institutions, and if their long-term impact can be understood as the creation of contemporary mistrust for science in the context of COVID-19.

Historical approaches furthermore demonstrate that conspiracy theories may be part of longer trajectories of conspiratorial thinking, and they can be understood as responses to the dynamics of political and economic power of the times. Olmsted’s (2009) history of conspiracy theories shows how conspiracy theories have been actively propagated in the USA since the 1910s, constantly taking new forms and accusations in response to the dominant power dynamics of a particular time period. Olmstead (2009) recounts how conspiracy theories about the banking and munitions industries wielding undue influence within the US government were prominent in the early 20th century, transitioning in the 1930s and 40s into wild theories of widespread fascist influences within the federal government. The 1950s and 60s saw conspiracy theories which were largely fixated on communist agents within the US government comprising a type of ‘deep state,’ and the 1970s and 80s had a myriad of conspiracies theorizing that many elected officials were corrupt and working against the public's interests, which was largely sparked by the Watergate scandal (Olmstead 2009). With the shocking revelations of Watergate proving that the President of the United States could be corrupted, more and more Americans accepted the idea that there could be a ‘shadow government’ ruling over America, a seemingly preferable alternative to knowing that their elected officials could be evil (Olmstead 2009). According to Olmsted, this is the mindset that many Americans have today, with the 9/11 attacks sparking a new slew of theories as to how a ‘deep state’ would benefit from such a tragedy. Olmstead’s research is instructive to show

understand how many of the Coronavirus conspiracy theories can be understood as a continuation of America’s historical obsession with conspiracy theories.

In a similar vein, Knight’s (2000) work on conspiracy culture in America analyzes the long history of the betrayals and misdoings of the American government towards the public and the role it has played in forming contemporary conspiracy culture. Knight (2000) argues that the shocking late 20th century revelations that US government agencies such as the CIA and the FBI were conducting secretive, often illegal activities, created a new public perception of government operation.

While there was significant public outrage regarding these secret actions, a sentiment of necessity for secrecy began to arise in the public consciousness as “this mirror world of secret power... fas- cinated as much as it… frightened the American public” (Knight 2000: 29). Knight sees the “official obsession with secrecy fuel[ing] the popular fixation on conspiratorial secrets at the heart of government”, with Hollywood further incensing the conspiratorial fixation by producing political thrillers and TV shows like The X-Files (Knight 2000: 29). The idea that the American government utilizes extra-legal methods and deception to achieve its goals became commonplace as a result of real-world scandals like Iran-Contra and Watergate, in conjunction with Hollywood’s fictional depictions of shady officials and political conspiracies (Knight 2000: 25). As a result, Knight argues, the popularization of conspiracy theories and conspiratorial beliefs stems from these factors, rather than the abstract and ill-defined ‘paranoid personality’ trait that cognitivist scholars have blamed for conspiracy theory proliferation (Knight 2000). Thus, Knight’s work draws attention to the role popular culture may play for people’s disposition to invest in conspiracy theories, rather than an innate predisposition to paranoia.

Similarly focusing attention on popular culture, Jameson (1988) argues that this culture of paranoia is cultivated and reproduced by contemporary media and art forms, which are an

operationalized form of ‘late capitalism’. An ardent Marxist, Jameson sees capitalism as an all- encompassing, global system which is practically impossible to conceptualize for the vast majority of the population. Jameson argues that where once one's lived experience used to be an accurate and relevant interpretation of the ‘real world’, this is no longer the case due to globalization and the increasingly complex networks which make up reality. Due to this loss of ‘cognitive mapping’, which would normally help individuals to understand their own social and economic standing, those without the necessary capital to navigate the globalized world feel lost. Jameson understands the mass-produced media of paranoia as a vocalization of many individual’s attempts at cognitive mapping, and “conspiracy [a]s the poor person's cognitive mapping in the postmodern age; it is a degraded figure of the total logic of late capital, a desperate attempt to represent the latter's system, whose failure is marked by its slippage into sheer theme and content.” (Jameson 1988: 356). Jame- son thus understands conspiracy theories as part of class struggle: as the attempts of the lower class to cognitively map their socioeconomic surroundings and engage with an absolute and all-encompassing capitalist society.

In another attempt to challenge cognitivist approaches, Harambam and Aupers (2015: 470) conducted an ethnographic study of the “Dutch conspiracy milieu” to gain a greater understanding of the motivations behind individuals conspiracy beliefs. Harambam and Aupers (2015) interviewed 20 self-identified “skeptics” who were active participants in the Dutch conspiracy milieu, locating and recruiting them through in-person events and virtual forums related to conspiracy theories. Through their in-person, semi-structured interviews with these conspiracy theorists, Ha- rambam and Aupers (2015: 476) found a common theme of the respondents being “overly critical about modern science” but not wholly dismissive of science. Frustrated at the construction of knowledge as only being legitimate if those who are propagating it have the necessary ‘expert’

credentials, the theorists have grown to distrust and critique the delivery of information from ‘experts’ which is presented as being objectively correct (Harambam and Aupers 2015). This criticism of ‘expert’ knowledge corresponds with Imhoff et al.’s 2018 study on conspiracy theorists epistemic trust for historical information as presented by ‘experts’ vs ‘non-experts’, finding that those with a conspiracy mentality were more trusting of the ‘non-expert’ sources. These different allo- cations of trust are clearly visible within the r/conspiracy community as well and will be discussed within the findings section.

Finally, studying conspiracy theories may usefully draw on work which has foregrounded feelings and emotions as a point of entry to understand ‘irrational’ conspiracy theories. Although not originally developed for the analysis of conspiracy theories, Arlie Hochschild’s (2016) concept of the ‘deep story’ is useful to analyze conspiracy theorists’ ideologies, feelings, and worldviews.

She developed the concept in her book Strangers in Their Own Land, in which she reports on a five-year ethnography of Louisiana residents, most of whom are members or sympathizers of the

Tea Party, an American far-right populist group. The goal of her research was to make sense of the ‘Great Paradox’, which she uses to refer to the seemingly illogical political views of people in

Republican states, who vote in favor of parties and candidates who enact policies which work against their constituents (ibid). This can include poor, sick, and uninsured individuals vehemently opposing Obamacare, or residents of heavily polluted areas opposing environmental quality regu- lations (ibid). Hochschild tries to understand why these individuals are so ardently working against their best interests by engaging in intensive discussions of their personal histories and political and social beliefs. The deep story emerges as Hochschild’s metaphorical construction of the ideology, feelings, and worldview of the white Southerners she interviewed, finding that due to decades of built-up distrust of the government they feel that their claim and ‘spot in line’ to the American

Dream has been unjustly stolen and given to minorities by the distant government (ibid). They feel betrayed by the very institutions which were supposed to assist them in their pursuit of happiness, belittled by the left-wing media and academia, and thus choose to throw their support behind corporations and politicians who pledge to remove government interference from their lives (ibid).

From their perspective, these groups are now the only ones who can be trusted to help them achieve the American Dream, since corporations offer them employment and the far-right politicians prom- ise them ‘freedom’ through the deregulation of government (ibid). According to Hochschild, these people thus feel like ‘strangers in their own land’ and are doing everything in their power to take back what they view as ‘rightfully theirs’.

From this deep story, the paradoxical worldview of the Louisiana residents becomes slightly more understandable, if terribly misguided. By acquiring an understanding of and illus- trating the self-perceived plight of this group, Hochschild hoped to open a path to reconciliation between these estranged Americans and their liberal, racially diverse countrymen and women.

Although this research is not an intensive, longitudinal ethnography of conspiracy theorists, a sense of their deep story can be gleaned from their discussions and submissions on r/conspiracy.

Conceptualizing Talk on r/conspiracy

I have used three main elements found in the literature concerning conspiracy theorists and theories to guide my research. The first element is attention to historical events, especially wrongdoings, as a significant source to explain institutional mistrust. Observing and experiencing historical misdoings on the part of the government and societal institutions is often the fundamental ‘evidence’ that conspiracy theorists use to claim that the same institutions are engaged in a contemporary

conspiracy, as seen in Wynne and Olmstead’s work. The second important element is that conspiracy theorists appear to lack knowledge about the institutions they criticize, which is potentially attributable to low rates of employment within these institutions, as seen in the demographic study of conspiracy theorists by Uscinski and Parent (2014). The final guiding insight from the literature are emotions as an analytical entry point into making sense of what is driving seemingly irrational actions: what Hochschild (2016) calls the “deep story”: the story which feels true, but isn’t. Un- derstanding where these feelings of fear and distrust stem from are crucial in understanding the motivations of conspiracy theorists, as these emotionally charged feelings can easily sway the decision making of theorists. Factoring in the element of historical precedence, many theorists view institutions to be corrupt and working against the public, and subsequently apply these same views to the individuals who represent the institutions. As such, information distributed by these institutional ‘experts’ is inherently less likely to be accepted by theorists.

Methods

Data collection

In order to obtain a greater understanding of the beliefs and ideologies which drive conspiracy theorist’s creation and proliferation of conspiracy theories, locating a large and accessible community of theorists was necessary. The online forum of r/conspiracy on Reddit quickly emerged as an ideal candidate, possessing a large and active community of almost 1.2 million members whose primary purpose is the discussion and distribution of all forms of conspiracy theories. Using the Communalytic data collector,1 user post submissions to r/conspiracy were collected from

March 9th 2020 to August 11th 2020. These submissions were then coded and analyzed using a qualitative content analysis using the NVivo software, in an effort to gather the most prominent topics of discussion into coding categories to identify the fundamental beliefs and driving ideologies of this conspiracy community.

Of the entirety of the collected posts, roughly 8,000 – 9,000 of the 90,000+ submissions have been coded, a majority of which were unusable, being either duplicate submissions, non- coronavirus related, or simply gibberish. After this quantity of submissions had been manually coded and analyzed it was determined that theoretical saturation had been achieved, as no additional conspiracy theory categories were being created and all the newly analyzed submissions were attributable to the existing coding categories. The relevant submissions have been coded into the overarching ‘Coronavirus’ topic code, which contains 1,675 coded references within it. New codes have constantly been created as new aspects of conspiracy discussion have been revealed during the coding process, resulting in some codes possessing fewer references than they would

1 Gruzd and Mai (n.d.); https://Communalyzer.com.

have had they been featured in the coding process from the beginning. This analysis is not meant to provide an exhaustive count of each of the conspiracy theories discussed on r/conspiracy, but to use the analyzed submissions to observe any overarching themes and threads shared between them.

Because of this focus on the qualitative aspects of the discussions rather than the quantitative, any numerical figures provided should be understood as indicative of the general quantity of submission topics rather than definitive statistics of r/conspiracy discussions.

Data Analysis

This research utilized both a qualitative content analysis with grounded theory strategies for the coding process. A focused content analysis approach was used to identify conspiracy theories about the pandemic, after which the remaining submissions were subjected to open coding to clus- ter the different Coronavirus theories into various subtopics. As coding and analysis progressed, additional sub-codes were added as new COVID-19 theory topics arose on the forum. For example, the overarching ‘Coronavirus’ topic code features 24 sub-codes, several of which have sub-codes of their own. These overarching topic codes will be referred to as first stage codes, their respective sub-codes will be referred to as second stage codes, and the sub-codes of the second stage codes will be referred to as third stage codes.

The qualitative method of grounded theory was used to craft the theoretical approach of this research and to guide the coding analysis (Otkay 2012). Even upon the onset of data collection and data analysis, the sampling strategy and conceptual direction of this research was open and guided by observation and immersion of the r/conspiracy community. Once the first few weeks of submissions from r/conspiracy had been collected by late March 2020, it was evident that the

COVID-19 pandemic was an especially popular and relevant topic of discussion for the

r/conspiracy users. In accordance with grounded theory, the initial code of ‘Coronavirus’ was created based on these observations from the data, and further coding categories within the ‘Corona- virus’ topic were created based on continued observations.

The second stage codes located under the first stage ‘Coronavirus’ code included subjects such as ‘bioweapon’, ‘5G’, ‘relation to BLM protests’, ‘distraction’, ‘deep state/global elite/TPTB

(the powers that be)’, ‘economy’, and others. Some second stage codes such as ‘bioweapon’ featured third stage codes, with the ‘bioweapon’ code encompassing ‘created by America’, ‘created by China’, and ‘population culling’ as third stage codes. Coding for these second and third stage codes was not mutually exclusive, with the majority of coded submissions within a first stage code being attributable to multiple second stage and third stage codes. Although this study was initially meant to be analyzing the most prominent conspiracy theories on the forum, the topics of discussion on r/conspiracy came to focus almost exclusively on COVID-19 as the outbreak grew to become a global pandemic. This resulted in a complete change of direction and led to the focus of this research to be oriented around conspiracy theories related to COVID-19.

Secondary and third-stage code descriptions tended to be based on whatever the primary aspects of a conspiracy theory were, often an attribution of blame for the virus, a description of what the effects of the virus and the vaccine would be, or what groups were involved. Many posts featured a combination of these, but because a multitude of submissions would focus on just one of these aspects it was necessary to code them as separate second stage codes rather than list them as third stage codes within singular second stage codes. For example, although numerous theories claimed that COVID-19 was a Chinese bioweapon designed to facilitate a Chinese takeover of the global economy, other theories postulated that the pandemic would collapse the global economy and allow ‘the government’ (almost always referring to the USA) to drastically increase federal

power over citizens. Since the subject of the economy pertained to a large variety of conspiracies, it made sense to have a single all-encompassing second stage ‘economy’ code which could be shared between other codes, rather than having numerous third stage codes labelled ‘economy’.

This same principle applied to the creation of most of the second stage codes.

Of particular importance to this analysis was the fairly late addition of the second stage codes ‘looking for direction’, and ‘providing advice or guidance’. These codes focus on the tone that is featured on many of the submissions to r/conspiracy, and highlight the importance of the conspiratorial community itself to many of these users. Despite the late addition of these codes, they feature a large amount of coded references, indicating their relevance and applicability to much, if not most, of the discussion on r/conspiracy.

Overview of Conspiracy Theories Related to COVID-19

Most of these conspiracy theories do not provide firm explanations for their reasoning or logic.

This typology is not an attempt to validate or criticize these theories, but to showcase the various responses of the conspiracy community to the events of the world around them. The theory topics are grouped together by common themes, but it is important to note that the majority of the topics feature some overlap between each other with a single theory often referencing several topics, and thus some theory categories feature duplicate theories.

While there were a large variety of theories relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, the theory topics with the most discussion, the most relevance, and the most substance to dissect were chosen to be included within this thesis. The three chapters discussing the findings were grouped together by theories which shared overarching common themes.

Table 1: COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory Topics Sorted by Popularity

1. The Mainstream Media in Relation to the Coronavirus

2. The Economy’s Relation to the Coronavirus

3. Public Health and Medical Institutions in Relation to the Coronavirus

4. Increasing Federal Powers as a Reaction to Coronavirus

5. The Pandemic as a ‘Deep State’ Plot

6. Nationalist Reactions in Response to the Pandemic

7. Relation of 5G Networks to Coronavirus

8. Corporations Benefiting from Coronavirus

9. The Pandemic as a Distraction

10. The Police Brutality and Black Lives Matter Protests in Relation to the Coronavirus

The theory topics of financial institutions benefitting from the pandemic, corporations benefitting from the pandemic, and the pandemic as a ‘deep state’ plot, were placed into the Negotiating Class

Struggle chapter due to theorists expressing a feeling of class conflict in regard to the pandemic.

While the topics were individually distinct, theorists discussing these topics viewed the pandemic and the public and private sector response to it through an almost Marxist lens, fearing that the banks, corporations, and the ‘deep state’ were exploiting the pandemic in order to accrue more capital and oppress the lower class. Due to this underlying theme of class struggle between these three theory topics, the Negotiating Class Struggle chapter was created in order to discuss this common theme while analyzing the unique concepts of each theory topic.

The second chapter incorporates the theory topics of public health and medical institutions in relation to the Coronavirus, increasing federal powers as a reaction to Coronavirus, and the police brutality and Black Lives Matter protests in relation to the Coronavirus. Again, despite the topics being distinct from one another they maintained a common theme of theorists questioning

the intentions and powers of the state, broadly believing that the US government and its institutions were using the pandemic to increase their own powers and subsequently decreasing the rights of the general public. The methods for this subjugation of the population differ between the three theory topics, whether it be through the then-impending COVID vaccine, a declaration of perma- nent martial law under the guise of transmission prevention, or the fabrication of racial protests to eradicate racial minorities, but the underlying theme of state officials abusing their power in order to oppress the public remains consistent throughout the topics. These three topics garnered a significant amount of discussion and theorizing, and as such were grouped together to form the second chapter of Negotiating State Powers.

The final findings chapter consists of the popular conspiracy theory topics of justifying anti-Chinese US nationalism, and the Coronavirus as an act of American imperialism. Throughout the data collection period, theorists on r/conspiracy were speculating about the Chinese government’s involvement with the Coronavirus and what they stood to gain from the pandemic. Con- versely, there were theory discussions running in parallel which speculated that President Trump and the American government were responsible for the pandemic outbreak in an effort to frame

China and weaken their geopolitical rival. These two theory topics effectively discussed the same subject but from two opposite viewpoints, with the underlying focus on nationalism between the two topics. As a result, the third and final chapter of Negotiating Nationalism is dedicated to analyzing these discussions of Chinese and American nationalism in regard to the Coronavirus.

Several prominent theory topics which were observed over the course of the data collection and analysis were not suitable to be included within these three findings chapters. Despite the multitude of theorists speculating about the part which mainstream media (MSM) played in the pandemic, as well as the boundless theories on the role of 5G, neither of these theory topics fit

together with the larger conspiracy theory themes of class struggle, abuse of state powers, and nationalism. While there was a great deal of discussion and speculation about the MSM and how it factored into the pandemic, the MSM was rarely the focal point of any conspiracy theory, instead being discussed as a facilitating entity for the nefarious plots of the respective conspiracy culprits

(such as the ‘deep state’ or the government). As a result, the MSM was featured in practically every conspiracy theory discussion, rendering it impossible to have a focused discussion of the

MSM in relation to the Coronavirus without incorporating a discussion of every other conspiracy theory.

The 5G theory topic also saw a great deal of attention from conspiracy theorists, but suf- fered from a similar issue as the MSM theory topic. 5G paranoia was already rampant during the onset of the pandemic, and that paranoia briefly carried over into speculation of whether 5G networks were related to the Coronavirus outbreak and spread. As such, it featured prominently as a factor within other conspiracy theories along with being the focal point of several Coronavirus conspiracy theories, but the discussions around 5G quickly faltered as the pandemic progressed.

As such, the longitudinal dearth of conspiracy theories regarding 5G and the Coronavirus as well as the mass permeation of 5G into other theory topics made it difficult to incorporate the topic into the primary chapters. However, these two theory topics are still of interest despite their incongruity with the primary findings and deserve an overview. The next two sections will briefly discuss the

COVID-19 conspiracy theory topics regarding the MSM and 5G networks before continuing onto the primary analysis.

The Mainstream Media in Relation to the Coronavirus

Many theories referenced the Mainstream Media (MSM), but these theories pertain specifically to how the MSM covered the pandemic. Theorists often believed that the MSM was exaggerating, or fabricating, details about the pandemic in order to fearmonger and cause a public panic. There were several perceived reasons as to why the MSM would do this: scaring the public into comply- ing with all government directives, or as a diversion for one of the ‘distraction’ theories, such as

“Coronavirus is overblown by MSM to create fear to move markets to short the stock market” and

“All this misinformation just gives TPTB [The Powers That Be] an excuse to ‘police’ the internet”.2 Some theorists viewed the MSM’s incessant coverage of the Coronavirus outbreak in Euro- pean countries as a means to scare their viewers in order to push their ‘hidden agendas,’ with posts such as “CBS News Caught Using Footage from an Italian Hospital to Describe Conditions in NY” and “Same images being used for Coronavirus newsreels, one claiming to be Italy and one US” being used as evidence of a plot from the MSM.3 These theories questioned the portrayed severity of the pandemic in Europe, comparing and contrasting MSM footage to cast doubt onto the safety measures implemented in North America.

These theories convey a sense of fear, disappointment, and anger from theorists, who feel that the media is unnecessarily scaring the public through incessant discussion and coverage of the pandemic. While some theorists believe that the pandemic is being fabricated with assistance from the MSM, a majority of theorists still feel that Coronavirus is a serious concern, but nowhere near the level of severity the media is portraying it to be. These theorists feel angry as a result of this perceived sensationalism by the media, coupled with a sense of disappointment that the media would immorally capitalize on the public panic from the pandemic. Theorist’s feelings of fear

2 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 19, 2020; Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 19, 2020. 3 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020; Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020.

stemmed from concerns that a nefarious agenda, something potentially worse than the pandemic, was being obscured from public view by the MSM’s fixation on pandemic coverage.

5G Networks and the Coronavirus

States with the requisite capital are currently planning and building national 5G infrastructures.

Researchers and engineers foresaw the necessity of upgrading from 4G networks as early as 2014, as the inevitable increase in wireless devices and wireless network usage would be unsustainable without upgrades to network infrastructure (Andrews et al. 2014). However, in order to improve the cellular network capacity 5G networks require a shorter range which allows for the stronger signal strength (Andrews et al. 2014). This necessary densification of network towers and the cor- respondingly intensified signal strength has been a cause of concern amongst some members of the public, who fear that there may be unknown health impacts. There are several conspiracy theories which link 5G networks to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Some theories speculate that the 5G towers are responsible for the creation and the spread of the virus; “See what 5G transmitters are doing to the trees... imagine what 5G transmitters will do to our bodies”.4 Other theories postulate that the pandemic is a front, designed to prevent any public interference with the installation of 5G towers. Some theorists posted fake news headlines such as;“5G Forced Installation In Schools Nationwide During COVID-19 Lockdown”.5 Another popular thread of theories is that the purpose of the 5G networks is to enable greater surveillance and remove any semblance of privacy alongside new legislation; “the real reason we’re seeing the rollout of 5G infrastructure alongside the pandemic is because the surveillance systems that are

4 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020. 5 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020.

being developed in response to COVID-19...”.6 Continuing along concerns of increased surveillance, many theorists believe that 5G will enable nefarious entities to control people through im- planted nanotechnology/microchips; “I'm going with a nanotech virus that will be controlled by

5g and it has been oficially downloaded into all humans infected with COVID 19”.7

The underlying theme between many of the 5G & Coronavirus theories is the fear that 5G will facilitate perpetual surveillance of the public and/or enable complete control of the populace through microchips and AI: “COVID is some kind of excuse for the new world order/tracking everyone via microchips/the “elites” starving everyone of basic needs”.8 Some believe that an AI will directly control the actions of individuals, others believe that the constant surveillance will prevent any possibility of dissent; “the tracking system used to prevent contagious spread will be repurposed for government surveillance of dissidents.”9 What is important to note here is the fear of a loss of control and free will, demonstrating that these are tenets which conspiracists value greatly. These libertarian ideologies are expressed by theorists throughout many of the other conspiracy theory topics, reinforcing our understanding of the core values of conspiracy theorists.

6 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 16, 2020. 7 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 8 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020. 9 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020.

Negotiating Class Struggle

The Financial Sector Benefiting from the Pandemic

Going into 2020 the global economy and stock market were performing well, despite economists in September of 2019 predicting an economic downturn sometime in 2020.10 These concerns initially appeared to be unwarranted, as US stock markets were still performing well in February

2020.11 In late February, COVID-19’s rapid spread across the globe garnered the attention of trad- ers as travel industries began to cease operations, leading to the price of oil dropping significantly due to a lack of demand.12 As other industries began to be majorly affected by the Coronavirus’ spread, the stock market saw large drops in stock prices throughout March, culminating with the

Dow Jones experiencing its largest single-day drop ever on March 9th 2020.13 While stock markets recovered quickly from the initial shock, the same is not true for the dramatic labor market contraction following the first months of the pandemic: by April of 2020 the unemployment rate in the USA peaked at 14.7%14, a statistic only surpassed by unemployment rates during the Great

Depression.15

10 Elliot, Larry. 2019. “Global Recession a Serious Danger in 2020, UN Warns.” The Guardian. Retrieved July 28, 2020 (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/25/global-recession-a-serious-danger-in-2020-says-un). 11 Parker, Kevin. 2021. “The 2020 Stock Market Crash: Timeline, What Caused It and More.” Next Level Finance. Retrieved February 28, 2021 (https://nextlevel.finance/2020-stock-market-crash/). 12 Stevens, Pippa. 2020. “Oil Tumbles Deeper into Bear Market, Sinking to Lowest Level since Jan. 2019.” CNBC. Retrieved February 22, 2021 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/27/oil-drops-nearly-4percent-breaking-below-47-as- collapse-continues.html). 13 Pound, Jesse. 2020. “Here Are the Milestones and Firsts from the Markets' Historically Bad Day.” CNBC. Re- trieved February 24, 2021 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/09/here-are-the-milestones-and-firsts-from-the-markets- historically-bad-day.html). 14 Published by Statista Research Department and Jul 12. 2021. “U.S. Unemployment Rate: Adjusted, June 2021.” Statista. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/273909/seasonally-adjusted-monthly-unemployment-rate-in-the-us/). 15 Amadeo, Kimberly. 2021. “Compare Today's Unemployment with the Past.” The Balance. Retrieved March 28, 2021 (https://www.thebalance.com/unemployment-rate-by-year-3305506).

Conspiracy theorists came up with a variety of theories to make sense of the dramatic labor market shocks and stock market fluctuations following the onset of the pandemic. Discussions of the financial sector and the economy in relation to the pandemic are prevalent throughout many different conspiracy theories, but the theories I analyze in this section highlight the effects on the financial sector as the most important aspect of the pandemic. It is important to note, however, that forum contributors rarely made clear distinctions between the financial sector and labor markets, often lumping them together as ‘the economy’. The following conspiracy theories, even when speaking about ‘the economy’, were making references predominantly to the role of the financial sector.

A recurring set of conspiracy theories interpret the pandemic as a coverup for an intentionally engineered economic crash. For example, some posts in this strand of discussions claim that

“truth is, the higher governments and Health orgs knew about the virus from the start .Italy is a testing ground .the market was planned to crash in march”16; or raise questions like “What are the chances that an upcoming market crash is a planned event and Coronavirus will be used as a scape- goat?”.17 Thus, this set of theories suggest that powerful people planned a market crash, and that governments and supranational organizations let the pandemic happen to conceal this engineered recession. The idea of a planned market crash appears to be connected to economists’ warning of a potential global recession in 2020, which conspiracists then interpreted as engineered. It is possible that these fears and suspicions stem from conspiracists knowledge that the potential for a housing crash was known about within the financial sector prior to 2008, with financial executives choosing to ignore warning signs in favor of profits. This reading is supported by the fact that

16 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 17 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 9, 2020.

some conspiracy theorists are very clear in expressing their belief that there were similar hidden issues ongoing in the financial sector in late 2019 and early 2020, and that the individuals and corporations at fault sought to escape responsibility for the impending market crash by blaming it on the pandemic.

The connection to the Great Recession is much clearer in another, quite similar strand of the discussion which interprets the pandemic as engineered for the purpose of wealth accumulation on the taxpayer’s dime by large corporations and the financial sector. Such posts raise, for example, questions of whether “Caronavirus [is a] Trojan Horse for Another Whitehouse Backed

Bailout?”.18 ‘Another bailout’ here clearly refers to the massive wealth redistribution from taxpay- ers to large banks and corporations which occurred in the aftermath of the 2008 crash, violating in the eyes of many a basic sense of fairness. The ensuing recession led to great financial hardship for many middle-class and working-class Americans, many of whom lost their jobs and homes while simultaneously observing how the very banks who perpetrated the crash received billions of dollars in government bailouts. The course of the 2008 recession was likely in the minds of many conspiracy theorists, who feared that they were observing a repeat of the 2008 ‘betrayal’ as they saw the stock market tumble in March. We can thus understand a good portion of these discussions as conspiracy theorists drawing on these lessons from 2008, lashing out at the culprits from the previous recession, and hoping to draw attention to the seemingly inevitable scenario in which the general public would receive no help from their government while large businesses and corporations would be kept afloat on the taxpayer’s dime. These feelings of fear, resentment, and distrust are likely to have grown stronger months later, as the US government did little to mitigate the

18 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020.

economic consequences of the pandemic, leaving the public to fend for themselves while offering financial support for Wall Street and big businesses.19

Who do conspiracy theorists hold responsible for the economic recession? The suspected culprits range from the U.S. government, the Chinese government (more on anti-China conspiracy theories in the Chapter on “Negotiating Nationalism”), the ‘deep state’ (more on this in the section on “The Pandemic as a ‘Deep State’ Plot”), and global organizations. For example, conspiracy theorists observed a federal disregard for small businesses: “Many small businesses have applied but have not received SBA loans after weeks”.20 Conspiracy theorists also note that millions of people lost their jobs and businesses due to the pandemic, and instead of alleviating the fears of these people the federal government opted to safeguard and boost the finances of large businesses and Wall Street, thus leading to the fear that the government is siding with corporations to ensure the economic downfall of the middle and working classes. The perceived motivations of the actors conspiracy theorists blame can be summarized as follows: ensuring that the rich get richer and that the poor get poorer, with the destruction of small businesses and consolidation of the free market by large corporations leading to the eradication of the middle class and preventing upwards social mobility. Thus, what appears to be at stake here for conspiracy theorists, however erroneously grounded, is class struggle.

COVID-19 conspiracy theories about the financial sector are signaling a deep mistrust in the financial sector and governments, a mistrust which appears to be at least partially grounded in the mistakes made during the 2008 recession. Whether they believe the economic recession was

19 Holden, Emily and Daniel Strauss. “The Mystery of Which US Businesses Are Profiting from the Coronavirus Bailout.” The Guardian. Retrieved March 28, 2021 (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/09/us-con- gress-billions-coronavirus-aid-relief-package). 20 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 16, 2020.

planned or not, conspiracy theorists tend to agree that those in the financial sector and the government would rather see the public suffer than face the consequences for their financial misdoings.

And this, in fact happened during the Great Recession: the US government did prioritize banks over people, and banks did criminally deceive the public. Thus, while these Covid conspiracy theories are obviously factually wrong, they may stem from factual prior mistakes and betrayals of public trust by both the financial sector and the US government. We could see a manifestation of this resentment on another subreddit; r/wallstreetbets, which was the centerpiece of a day trading frenzy where many of its users expressed a greater interest in ‘sticking it to the man’ than in profiting off their purchased stocks. The ‘truth’ in these conspiracy theories is thus that they speak about a history of institutional mistrust that the US government created and which it has not man- aged to repair since 2008.21

Corporations Benefiting from Coronavirus

Large tech and retail corporations have benefited enormously from the pandemic, with many breaking their own sales records. Amazon reported that their revenue increased by 37% in Q3 of

2020, with $96.1 billion compared to $70 billion during the same period in 2019.22 Walmart saw steady increases to their already massive revenue throughout the pandemic, with increases from

2019 of 5.6% ($137.7 billion) and 5.2% ($134.7 billion) in Q2 and Q3, respectively.23 Google

21 Lonsdorf, Kat. 2021. “'The Game Is Rigged': How Fury Over The Great Recession Fueled The Reddit Trade.” NPR. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.npr.org/2021/02/09/965129433/the-game-is-rigged-how-fury-over-the- great-recession-fueled-the-reddit-trade). 22 Amazon. 2020. Q3 2020 Financial Results. 23 McCormick, Emily. 2020. “Stock Market News Live Updates: S&P 500 Rises to a Record Close as Stocks Regain Pandemic-Related Declines.” Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/stock - market-news-live-august-18-2020-222525471.html); Anon. 2021. “Walmart Inc. (WMT) Stock Historical Prices & Data.” Yahoo! Finance. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/wmt/history/).

reported a 14% increase to revenue in Q3 with $46.17 billion dollars, compared to 2019.24 Mi- crosoft reported $37.2 billion dollars of revenue in Q3 2020, a growth of 12% from 2019.25 Dan

Price, an American entrepreneur known for his commitment to ensure the salary of his employees by reducing his own salary, reported that during the pandemic the founder/CEOs of Amazon,

Walmart, Google, and Microsoft, each gained $91B, $38B, $37B, and $33B in wealth, respectively.26 Price also reported that American small businesses collectively lost over $200B over the course of the pandemic.

Discussions in the conspiracy forum respond to the financial gains made by these large corporations and their owners during the pandemic. Their theories propose that some corporations played a role in the onset of the pandemic, in order to incur profits and bankrupt their competition.

An oft-cited example is how Amazon became vital for consumer spending during quarantine, while small retail businesses were legally unable to operate: “Anyone else think it's weird Amazon went from evil empire to delivery heroes through all this?”27 Most of these theories do not claim that corporations such as Amazon, Costco, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Zoom, etc., have created Coro- navirus (although some theories do claim this: “This pandemic was created to promote Microsoft

Teams and to force people to work from home”28), but find it suspicious that these companies have profited from the pandemic. For example, as one forum contributor points out, “…12 months ago when pick up options at Walmart, Sams, Target and others have become popular and the timing

24 Elias, Jennifer. 2020. “Alphabet Stock Pops as Company Crushes Expectations.” CNBC. Retrieved March 2, 2021 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/29/alphabet-googl-earnings-q3-2020.html). 25 Wilhelm, Alex. 2020. “Microsoft Stock Flat despite Better-than-Expected Earnings, Strong Azure Growth.” TechCrunch. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/27/microsoft-stock-flat-despite-better-than- expected-earnings-strong-azure-growth/). 26 Dan Price, Twitter, Retrieved Nov 19, 2020. (https://twitter.com/DanPriceSeattle/status/1329560598108131333) 27 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 28 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020.

of it. Now, that could be the limiting ability of stores so we don’t “gather”. Seems suspicious in timing.”29

Some theories also discussed corporations such as Google exploiting the pandemic to increase their surveillance and tracking of their users, infringing on user privacy under the guise of public health concerns. However, it is unclear if conspiracy theorists are concerned that Google is tracking user data to effectively spy on behalf of the government, or if Google is gathering users confidential health information in order to further their own goals, as part of their monetization strategy. For example, some contributors pointed out that “Google is tracking your compliance with government quarantine mandates. Nothing to see here citizen”30; while others speculated that

“Google [is] using their “Rewards” app to find out if you are infected”.31

These theorists appear to be expressing suspicion and aggrievement when discussing how these massive corporations have been benefiting from the pandemic. They articulate concern about the effects of capital concentration, e.g., that businesses which aren’t one of the seemingly all- powerful corporations such as Walmart or Amazon, will cease to exist due to the financial difficulties caused by the pandemic, with small businesses being of particular concern to the theorists.

Meanwhile the major corporations only seem to have benefitted under the same conditions which have led their competitors into bankruptcy. Theorists then discuss that they find it strange that the pandemic can be so economically lopsided towards these immensely successful businesses. These feelings of suspicion and aggrievement are likely enflamed when theorists see reports that small businesses which have applied for loans are not receiving them (see “The Financial Sector

29 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 30 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020. 31 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020.

Benefiting from the Pandemic” section) while large corporations are receiving said loans, vindi- cating their beliefs of the federal governments favoritism of ‘big business’.

These theories comment on the immense success which companies such as Amazon and

Walmart have seen due to the pandemic, but the majority of theorists don’t seem to believe that these companies outright caused the pandemic. Due to the lack of blame for the pandemic being attributed to big companies, these discussions can largely be understood as observations rather than theories, with many of the theorists simply lamenting the fact that these corporations are attaining their wealth at the expense of small businesses. Afterall, free-market ideology encourages companies to take advantage of societal shifts to grow their profits. The question then arises why these topics are being discussed within this conspiracy community if they (for the most part) aren’t actually conspiracies. If the concerns are legitimate, conspiracists should feel vindicated in sharing their disdain in less ‘radical’ corners of Reddit. Although I cannot be certain that these same posters haven’t spread their message outside of r/conspiracy, it is curious that these community members feel that the safest place to voice their opposition to the incessant growth of massive corporations

– effectively a critique of capitalism – is within a conspiracy forum. It appears that forum contributors are concerned that the only audience who will be receptive to their ideas are fellow conspiracists on the r/conspiracy forum, regardless of how sound their ideas are. A possible reason they post their uneasiness about capital concentration to r/conspiracy could be due to the connection that some theorists have made between billionaire elites and the ‘deep state’, theorizing that the massive wealth accrued by the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates is being used to influence government policy and exert control over elected officials. Conspiracy theorists are fearful that those with money and power are using their influence to advance their own interests and increasing the class divide between the wealthy elites and the average citizen. While the already immense

wealth accumulated by these corporations continues to grow through pandemic profits, theorists watch uneasily as small businesses and regular citizens experience dire financial struggles. Re- gardless of what the reasoning is for these conspiracists to discuss this topic on the r/conspiracy forum, conspiracy theorists are vindicated of their monitoring of these massive capitalist entities, as the pandemic seems to have allowed these wealthy entities to increase their efforts on controlling their markets. Google increasing their surveillance of users is likely something which is already occurring, as they have some legitimacy in doing so in the name of public health via contact tracing, although the credibility of these accusations remains unknown.

The Pandemic as a ‘Deep State’ Plot

‘Deep state’ conspiracy theories have made headlines in recent years, with the QAnon conspiracy group garnering particular attention with their theories on President Trump’s secret war on “elite

Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media”32. Several elected officials in the US government have even endorsed the QAnon conspiracy group, with President Trump proclaiming his appreciation for the QAnon’s support, and Congresswoman Greene endorsing the group and deeming the proverbial Q to be a “patriot”.33 The ‘deep state’ is primarily mentioned in

Coronavirus conspiracy theories which try to make sense of the national disaster of the COVID-

19 pandemic and their (US) government’s failure to prevent it, primarily by theorizing how Amer- ica’s elite serve to benefit from it. These conspiracy theories about a sinister ‘deep state’ also refer

32 Wendling, Mike. 2021. “QAnon: What Is It and Where Did It Come from?” BBC News. Retrieved April 24, 2021 (https://www.bbc.com/news/53498434). 33 Breuninger. Kevin. 2020. “Trump Says He Appreciates Support from Followers of Unfounded QAnon Conspir- acy.” CNBC. Retrieved May 28, 2021 (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/19/trump-says-he-appreciates-qanon-support.html); Foran, Clare, Manu Raju, and Haley Byrd. 2020. “Top Republicans Embrace GOP Candidate Who Pro- moted QAnon Conspiracy Theory.” CNN. Retrieved May 28, 2021 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/politics/qanon-marjorie-taylor-greene-house-republicans/index.html).

to TPTB (The Powers That Be), the NWO (New World Order), the Illuminati, the 1%, or ‘the

Elite’. All of these terms are used synonymously by theorists to refer to the deep state, and this section will do so as well.

‘Deep state’ COVID-19 conspiracy theories are greatly varied, but they have a common theme of the pandemic increasing the power of political and economic elites and fulfilling their

‘vile goals’ while reducing the agency of the public – the ‘common man’. Forum contributors perceive this to be occurring in several different ways. For example, some suggest that the end goal may be increases in censorship: “All this misinformation just gives TPTB an excuse to “police’ the internet.”34; or “Below are 5+ NWO agendas being carried out due to the coronavirus epidemic. 1. Centralized Control of Information, i.e. Censorship and Narrative Control”.35 These concerns appear to be revolving around freedom of expression.

There are also theories which center more around quite existential concerns about free will and population control, for example theories about a microchip plot which would remove free will and enable complete surveillance. Theories of a purported microchip plot are sometimes linked to

5G conspiracy theories: “Decentralized AI running on every device. 5G. Not only a tool for surveillance but total control. If you take a chip, then it's over.”36 Hand-in-hand with the microchip theories are the theories of the deep state forcing the public to take vaccines, which would act as a

Trojan horse for remote-controlling the population. For example, some suggest that “the [NWO] wants all humans to be ‘vaccinated’ with digital tracking chips that will create a seamless monitoring system for the New World Order to manage the populations of the world with ease”.37 How

34 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 9, 2020. 35 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020. 36 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 37 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020.

would this new control system work? Some speculate the deep state would control the population through manipulation of the human genome: “they want to genetically modify us with the covid-

19 vaccine”38; while others think that the ‘micro-chip’ vaccines will serve as identification technology: “Mandated ID2020 Digital Nanochips Via Vaccine Coming?”.39 What do conspiracy theorists think is the end goal of these purported population control measures? Theories vary. Some fringe conspiracy theorists think that it is part of a larger racist eugenics project: “Bill Gates is targeting Africans for population control- lacing vaccines with secret sterilization”.40 Others suggest that the goal behind the takeover of the ‘deep state' is to further deprive regular (non-elite) people of possibilities to live a good life: “let’s assume COVID is some kind of excuse for the new world order/tracking everyone via microchips/the ‘elites’ starving everyone of basic needs, etc.”41

Though these theories are obviously fantastical concoctions, the common thread running through them is a feeling of powerlessness in the face of ruling elites.

Another popular discussion strand links theories about population control more overtly to class struggle. These discussions theorize how ‘the elite’ created or are using the pandemic to economically deprive and annihilate the elderly, the middle and working classes, and the poor. As one contributor points out, eugenics has a long history: “people don't think anything about the vaccine or “pandemic” is sketchy… Elites have always believed in the idea of eugenics, they have always sought power and control, and now they have technology to help them achieve more of it.”.42 Conspiracy theorists have varying ideas about what exactly ‘deep state’ eugenics strategies are. Some contributors speculate about the economics of purported eugenics strategies from a

38 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 11, 2020. 39 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 40 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 23, 2020 41 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020. 42 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 11, 2020.

production point of view: “They would design these viruses to target very specific parts of the population. They don’t want to hurt their labor force, that would hurt profits. But, if they can design a bunch of viruses that attack the ‘least profitable’ parts of the population…”.43 Others assume a more Malthusian scenario of resource scarcity which puts people in a competition with one another: “There's not enough of everything for everyone, so the middle class has to go. If I were a billionaire, I would get rid of the old and poor first, the young and middle class second.”44; and another theorist similarly notes that “If the population continue to growth at this rate, it's a proven fact that will be a disaster in few decades. …the [public] can't even buy toilet paper without killing each other in time of difficulties. I'm not a Gates fanboy or elite worshiper...just want to think for a moment from their point of view.”45 However erroneous their conspiracy theories are, the common thread here seems to be a recognition of dominant modes of determining social worth in

American society: the first theory reproduces the idea that labor market integration determines one’s social worth – only those who have a job are considered valuable members to society. The second theory, on the other hand, reproduces a social Darwinist idea in which weaker members of society (old, poor, and young) are considered worth less than stronger members of society – ‘the elite’.

Finally, there are the theories which hearken back to QAnon and believe that the pandemic was engineered to obscure the mass arrests of celebrities and influential figures for pedophilia. “Is

Covid-19 a coverup for arresting world elites in connection with pedophilia rings?”46 asks one forum contributor, while another speculates that “The virus is a smoke screen. A massive military

43 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 44 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 8, 2020. 45 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020. 46 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020.

operation is under way to invade the Vatican, AND REMOVE THE NETWORK OF PEDO-

PHILES from power, once and for all. Thank you President Trump! Savior of mankind.”.47 Sus- pected culprits which conspiracy theorists offer are often celebrities with little apparent connection: “Tom Hanks was arrested 48 hours ago for pedophilia…The next celebrity arrests will be

Celine Dion, Madonna, Charles Barkley, and Kevin Spacey. All will claim Corona virus infections”.48 ‘Deep state’ theories which focus on celebrities and pedophilia are somewhat confusing to interpret, but a possible explanation could be that theorists are engaging in virtue signalling and publicly shaming wealthy celebrities by associating their wealth and status with one of the most morally abhorrent labels achievable in Western society, that of a pedophile. Another plausible explanation could be that theorists are seeking ‘proof’ that the pandemic is a fabrication, as sub- scribers to QAnon conspiracy theories would certainly rather believe that the reviled ‘deep state’ is being dismantled under the guise of COVID-19 rather than accepting the sobering realities associated with a global pandemic.

While the vast majority of theories use the ‘deep state’ as a catchall boogeyman without specifying who ‘they’ are, membership tends to be ascribed to the exceptionally wealthy rather than politicians, as seen in posts such as: “Social distancing is a way for elite snobs to separate themselves from common sheep and create a caste system”49, and “If an American citizen acts criminally with a gun, they lose their right to own a gun. When a billionaire acts criminally with their wealth, he gets richer. It is time to disarm the billionaires.”.50 Plenty of theorists include politicians within the ‘deep state’ as well. However, theorists are divided on whether Trump is a

47 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 9, 2020. 48 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 49 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 50 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020.

member of the deep state or if he is in opposition to the deep state: “Is Trump a deep state actor or is he the real deal president of the people?”.51 While some assert that “Coronavirus [is] a Conspir- acy to Get Rid of Trump. Watch for Trump to catch it next.”52; others firmly place him as part of the ‘deep state’: “Trump will attempt to postpone elections under the guise of national security due to covid-19, this was the plan all along”.53 Despite the prevalence of theories which believe that government legislation will change to support the goals of the ‘deep state’, it is curious that there are so many theorists which claim that Trump and the deep state are in opposition to each other:

“Are “they” waiting until the right time to infect Trump with the coronavirus because he’s a security threat like JFK?”.54 This is in spite of the fact that Trump is a perfect archetype of a ‘deep state’ member, seeing that he is a prominent, wealthy, capitalist figure. Thus, an interesting paradox can be seen, with wealth often viewed as a larger indicator of membership within the deep state than an individual’s political power, yet their perceived goals would heavily rely on political power in order to be accomplished.

However, the focus of these theories is primarily on the exceptionally wealthy. Notable individuals associated with the deep state include Bill Gates, George Soros, and Jeffery Epstein.

“Bill Gates uses his wealth to propagate bioterrorism that is exploited to further erode civil liberties. Michael

Bloomberg uses his wealth to attempt to illegally repeal the Second Amendment via perpetually progressive infringe- ment. Soros uses his wealth to promote economic policies that are designed to economically impoverish the masses in the countries that they are trying subvert...”.55

51 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 52 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 9, 2020. 53 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020. 54 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 55 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020.

Wealth is inherently associated with power for conspiracy theorists, with many theorists implying that the vast economic capital of the elites is sufficient to achieve any of their perceived sinister goals. Bill Gates is the most oft mentioned of the wealthy elite, which is likely due to the almost household nature of recognition Gates’ name has in North America. Having founded the immensely successful Microsoft Corporation and holding the title of ‘wealthiest person in the world’ for many years, it is no surprise that conspiracists widely believe Gates to be a member of a global elite who use their enormous wealth to fulfill their dastardly desires. Bill Gates’ very public philanthropy and investment into vaccine production and research has ironically, only served to further conspiracy theories of Gates’ involvement with the pandemic: “…some of us don't trust Bill Gates and his lapdog the WHO…”56; “if Bill Gates is involved in it, it's **bad** for humanity...”.57 Fundamentally, theorists are clearly implying that being vastly wealthy facili- tates a complete bypass of the democratic process, outlining their fears that the democratic systems of the West are flawed and untrustworthy. In some ways, these conspiracy theories are thus com- menting on corruption: from the conspiracy theorists’ perspective, if their elected officials cannot be relied upon to resist financial corruption and fulfill the will of the electorate, then who can they possibly trust? This paints a very somber picture as conspiracy theorists appear to understand their democratic agency as citizens to be practically non-existent and constantly diminishing, thus re- sorting to speaking out on internet conspiracy forums in an attempt to galvanize their fellows into taking action against the threat of the ‘deep state.’

The feelings associated with theories on the deep state appear to be a mixture of resentment, anger, and fear at their perceived powerlessness in the face of a diffuse but overwhelmingly

56 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020. 57 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020.

powerful elite. The ‘deep state’ appears to be essentially an amalgamation of everything which conspiracy theorists are concerned about: powerful groups and individuals who operate in supreme secrecy to enforce their will upon the unsuspecting public. While the contours of the ‘deep state’ are exceptionally diffuse, the very idea that the ‘deep state’ exists is enough to draw out impas- sioned responses from theorists, who scour the internet for any ‘clues’ which can confirm their suspicions of the deep state’s crimes. The resentment and anger theorists feel towards the deep state seems to stem from the belief that their perceived manipulation and meddling exclusively benefits the interests of the elites, all at the expense of the average individual. In this, ‘deep state theories’ can perhaps be read as expressions of aggrieved entitlement to the American Dream – a good job, social worth and respectability, a voice in politics – a dream the ‘deep state’ is taking away from them. Conspiracy theorists seek fairness and equality for themselves and other ‘regular people’ (though it is unclear who exactly they include in ‘regular people’, e.g., women or racial minorities), feeling obligated to protect those members of the public who are unaware of the threats posed by the wealthy and politically influential ‘deep state’. Often underlying these feelings is a strong adherence to libertarian ideology, and in this, ‘deep state’ theories are quintessentially

American: theorists are fearful that their rights and freedoms – freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and free will – are being eroded in order to benefit the deep state, and thus are constantly vigilant to identify any attempts this ‘New World Order’ may be undertaking in order to achieve their nefarious goals.

While much of the underlying sentiment of aggrieved entitlement and simultaneous powerlessness is probably linked to longer processes of socio-economic change, the dramatic changes in how we live the pandemic brought about may have intensified aspects of these feelings. Perhaps these theories offer an appealing opportunity to conspiracy theorists to attribute intentionality to

problems which have complex causes. Conspiracy theorists may be indirectly negotiating the loss of employment due to COVID-19, or the inability to exercise their expected freedoms such as visiting friends or family. Not having a quick and easy solution to all the problems that arose with the sudden onset of pandemic might have exacerbated the feelings of helplessness some conspiracists had already felt and would have pushed some into conspiracy theory territory in order to find plausible causes and solutions to their immense problems. Theorizing and contributing to the r/conspiracy forum can perhaps be understood as a kind of performative activism, one of the last possible applications of theorists seemingly dwindling agency, and is likely to have served as a coping mechanism for many individuals during the difficult and uncertain time of the pandemic.

Finally, it is worth considering ‘deep state’ theories as part of a longer tradition of Ameri- can conspiracy theories (Olmsted 2009). While ‘deep state’ theories have recently reached the public conscious with QAnon’s theories of shadowy cabals in control of the government and the media, such theories are far from novel. QAnon may be the most vocal conspiracy group in recent years, but their specific theories and beliefs of a deep state comprise merely a fraction of the multitude of conspiracy theories which accuse the government of being controlled or influenced by nefarious entities. As Olmsted’s (2009) history of conspiracy theories shows, conspiracy theories of this variety have been actively propagated in the USA since the 1910s, constantly taking new forms and accusations pertinent to the time period. Conspiracy theories of the banking and munitions industries wielding undue influence within the US government were prominent in the early

20th century, transitioning in the 1930s and 40s into wild theories of widespread fascist influences within the government (Olmstead 2009). The 1950s and 60s saw conspiracy theories which were largely fixated on communist agents within the US government comprising a type of deep state, and the 1970s and 80s had a myriad of conspiracies theorizing that many elected officials were

corrupt and working against the public's interests, which was largely sparked by the Watergate scandal (Olmstead 2009). With the shocking revelations of Watergate proving that the President of the United States could be corrupted, more and more Americans accepted the idea that there could be a ‘shadow government’ ruling over America, a seemingly preferable alternative to knowing that their elected officials could be evil (Olmstead 2009). According to Olmsted (2009), this is the mindset that many Americans have today, with the 9/11 attacks providing a new slew of theories as to how a ‘deep state’ would benefit from such a tragedy. The COVID-19 pandemic continues this trend as conspiracy theorists try to make sense of this national disaster and their (US) government’s failure to prevent it, primarily by theorizing how America’s elite serve to benefit from it.

Negotiating State Powers

Public Health and Medical Institutions in Relation to the Coronavirus

With the onset of the pandemic in early March 2020, there was a great deal of uncertainty as to the severity of the novel Coronavirus, and what measures one should take to protect themselves and others. Official safety recommendations initially focused on the importance of ‘social distancing’ to stop the spread of the virus without mention of personal protective equipment (PPE), and a belief that the virus could only be spread by symptomatic carriers. Shortly thereafter in early April

2020, health officials began encouraging everyone to wear masks to decrease chances of infection, as it was discovered that non-symptomatic individuals infected with COVID-19 could spread the virus as well.58 This constantly evolving barrage of public health guidelines proved confusing to many members of the public, who were unsure of which sources to trust and whose information was the most reliable. This set of theories is directly related to advice given by medical professionals for the treatment of COVID-19, as well as the safety measures to prevent its spread.

A prominent strand within the discussion of public health questioned the medical evidence on the pandemic which was being conveyed to the global public by governments and the media.

Some theorists, for example, questioned the existence of the virus: “No deaths related to seasonal flu this year in the world ? Yeah, right. The whole coronavirus pandemic is bullshit.”.59 Others questioned the severity of the virus and the intentions behind medical recommendations: “The Flu

Kills 300,000-600,000 People Each Year, The Coronavirus Has Only Killed 16,000 And Is

58 Wetsman, Nicole. 2020. “Masks May Be Good, but the Messaging around Them Has Been Very Bad.” The Verge. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21206728/cloth -face-masks-white-house-coronavirus-covid-cdc-messaging). 59 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020.

Nearing Its Peak, Yet The Government Continues Escalating Quarantine Measures. Was The

Coronavirus Released Intentionally In Order For Governments To Seize Freed om And Prop- erty?”.60 Many conspiracy theorists clearly viewed their government’s attempts to prevent the spread of the virus via the implementation of a quarantine as a violation of their freedoms, and began to actively question the extent of the state’s powers in dictating the everyday behaviour of citizens. Yet others questioned the legitimacy of infection/death rates; “Can anyone of the 1.2 million members of this sub prove the Coronavirus has killed anyone in the west?”.61 Dubious of state reports and media stories, some conspiracy theorists felt that their fellow forum contributors on r/conspiracy were a more reliable source of information on the Coronavirus than official sources, displaying a similar disillusionment with state agencies as the theorists discussed in the previous chapter. An interesting aspect of these theories is that these conspiracy theorists are not disregarding science in its entirety, but are taking issue with the evidence purported to be indubi- tably correct. In other words, they aren’t anti-science, they appear to be anti-institutionalized science. At the same time, they criticize “science worshippers”, or the indisputability of science ‘experts’ and their findings (See Figure 1). They feel that they are being treated like incompetent fools

(“How Gullible do they Think we are? Mastercard and Bill Gates are Funding Fake Science to

'Debunk' Actual Cures”) 62, who are assumed to be incapable of understanding and interpreting science. Feeling deceived by the WHO and the CDC (“The CDC Confesses to Lying About

COVID-19 Death Numbers”), conspiracy theorists proceed to search for evidence provided by

60 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 61 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 13, 2020. 62 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020.

non-institutional experts and other sources they feel they can trust, which includes others within the conspiracy theory community.63

Questions about the misappropriation of data to deceive the public are rampant. Claims such as; “Statistics show beyond any doubt that there is no pandemic going on in Europe except in Italy. It’s official: this whole thing is a joke but no one in the government or the media is allowed to say this.”, show just how skeptical conspiracists were of the Coronavirus and its reported severity during the first weeks of the pandemic, specifically highlighting the statistical data as a point of contention.64 This is seen in other posts as well; “The stats are wrong and it is all just designed to be a media frenzy to push whatever agenda is coming”.65 Conspiracy theorists raise concerns that COVID-19 data is being falsified in an effort to fulfill a nefarious hidden agenda, believing that the general public is too complacent with their belief in scientific studies to dispute the seemingly inevitable tyranny of the state. Reports from the CDC, the WHO, and hospitals were generally discredited and declared false, with claims such as; “CDC guidelines on reporting COVID-19 deaths are making death tolls INACCURATE.”, often reoccurring. 66 The strong feelings of mistrust and deception associated with the official pandemic reports and statistics continue with the criticism of data collection methods, with conspiracists believing that the collection methods created biased and inaccurate statistics of the infections and death toll of the pandemic.

They also questioned the necessity of mandatory public health measures like social distancing and use of PPE; “Fauci told everyone in March not to wear masks. What has changed?”.67

This is a clear attempt to cast doubt upon the advice of the state’s health officials, without

63 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020. 64 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020. 65 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 66 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020. 67 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 11, 2020.

acknowledging the volatility of the rapidly evolving medical information regarding the Corona- virus in the early weeks of the pandemic. Yet others questioned the science behind public health measures; “There’s very little science behind “social distancing” at all.”.68 These theories accuse the government of abusing their power by hastily implementing social distancing measures without conducting initial research to determine its effectiveness. Another theorist states: “The Longer

Trump's CDC Pushes This Mask Mandate, The More I Regret Voting For Him.”, making it evident that the mandatory nature of the public health orders is enough to alienate some of the voter base of the Trump-lead state.69 Some conspiracy theories moralize mask-wearing mandates by interpreting it as child abuse: “The mandating of masks for young children is child abuse. If this continues, the damage to society will be irreparable.”.70 These theories clearly imply that the mask mandates are somehow more detrimental to young children than the contraction of the virus itself.

Theories like this serve as virtue signalling for the conspiracy theory community, moralizing masks and adding child abuse to the list of ill-founded reasons to defy the mask mandates of the state. Some of the feelings expressed in these statements is a sense of confusion, such as the discussion of the seemingly contradictory medical recommendations of Fauci and therefore the validity of the statements of America’s foremost Coronavirus expert. A feeling of injustice is also present, as seen in the discussions of public health mandates being viewed as tyrannical government actions.

A majority of these theories discussed the inevitable COVID-19 vaccine and the suspected harms that it would bring. Almost all mentions of the vaccine expressed a fear that it would be mandatory, as seen in posts such as this; “We have set the precedent for “in the interest of public

68 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 11, 2020. 69 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 23, 2020. 70 Reddit, r/conspiracy, July 13, 2020.

health.” Mandatory vaccines are coming.”.71 Theorists view the mandatory mask mandates as a guarantee that the state will take any measures necessary to safeguard public health, with a potentially mandatory vaccine being a cause of great concern for conspiracy theorists. Why does a vaccine cause so much trepidation for these theorists? Some simply do not believe the pandemic is real, and thus view a vaccine as an unnecessary toxin; “I need to know someone personally die from coronavirus before I take it too serious. This I know for sure, they are going to have to tie me down and force that vaccine into me before I take that thing.”.72 These sentiments speak to the deep concerns of theorists when it comes to the integrity of their rights and freedoms in the face of an increasingly powerful state.

Why do conspiracy theorists possess such a strong desire for scientists to be wrong? What is expressed in these types of theories is a deep fear of state powers overstepping their bounds and forcefully injecting people with the vaccine, regardless of their desire to receive it. The vaccine is emblematic of a deep fear of the state limiting the rights of the public, forcefully removing their right to choose and make decisions for themselves – a libertarian ideology. Regardless of whether conspiracists believe that the vaccine is dangerous or is a part of some other plot, the mere possibility that the state could mandate the reception of a vaccine is enough to sound alarm bells. Con- spiracy theorists feel that they must combat this perceived encroachment on their civil liberties at all costs, no matter if the vaccine is legitimate or not. This method of negotiating state power has the potential to jeopardize public health through the spread of vaccine misinformation, but the conspiracy theorists believe that this is necessary in order to protect the rights and freedoms of the public.

71 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 13, 2020. 72 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020.

Research has shown that medical conspiracy theories are amongst the most prevalent of theories, with Oliver and Wood finding that 49% of Americans agree with at least one medical conspiracy theory (2014). With such a substantial portion of the American public willing to endorse medical conspiracy theories, it is easy to see how a number of these same individuals are willing to cast doubt upon the medical health aspects of the pandemic as well. These theorists are more likely to avoid health and treatment advice offered by experts, seeking alternative treatments for their health issues (Oliver and Wood 2014). Considering the objectively invasive nature of the preventative measures which health experts and the government have implemented to combat the pandemic, even for individuals who aren’t directly afflicted by COVID-19, the rejection of masks and quarantine procedures can be seen as a logical progression for medical conspiracy theorists.

Additionally, a common trend amongst conspiracy theorists who doubted the existence or severity of COVID-19 was a lack of personal experience with the virus, with inquiries to the conspiracy community as to whether they knew anyone infected or killed by the virus. Due to the significant lack of institutional trust possessed by the conspiracy community, theorists are likely to question anything the government or MSM reports to them, and thus turn to their fellow theorists to ascertain the legitimacy of the pandemic. This intersection of medical conspiracy theorists and the theorists who are wary of the government encroaching on civil liberties creates a larger group of theorists who reject the health protocols of the government. Why would theorists want the science to be wrong? It’s partly because they don’t want the government which they perceive as tyrannical to be correct, but they also don’t view themselves as the antagonists in this saga. Many members of the r/conspiracy community express libertarian views, and as libertarians they want to be free and go about their lives without government oversight. The only way this can be accomplished is if they prove that they were on the ’right’ side all along. If the reported science is determined to

be false, then the theorists will be fully vindicated in their beliefs and their rejection of state mandated health and safety guidelines.

Increasing Federal Powers as a Reaction to Coronavirus

Many theorists had widespread concerns that federal governments worldwide were stoking public fear of the pandemic and exploiting it to increase their federal powers. The theorists often referenced the PATRIOT Act, the U.S. government’s controversial post 9/11 legislation, as evidence of how the federal government has previously infringed on the rights of its citizens after a crisis,

“Coronavirus, 9/11 's second phase?”.73 The sweeping surveillance measures that were introduced after the September 11th attacks are infamous for their invasiveness and disregard for the Consti- tution, with several provisions within the act being ruled unconstitutional, despite ironically being touted as a necessary measure to safeguard the rights and freedoms of Americans (Cavoukian

2003). A majority of these theorists appear to believe that similar legislation will further invasive surveillance: “What privacy reducing bill will result from the caronavirus fears?”, “Covid-19 being used as a smokescreen for a bill that would be a detriment to privacy”.74 These theorists expressed fears of 24-hour surveillance under the guise of contact tracing, believing that the state would manipulate the pandemic panic to legalize espionage of the population. Some theorists had specific ideas as to what such a legislation would entail; “The government is using Corvid19 as the perfect distraction to dismantle end to end encryption taking away the privacy of our messages.”.75 Some theorists claimed that private companies were already involved in illegally tracking citizens at the

73 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 74 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 9, 2020; Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 75 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020.

behest of the government; “The City of Toronto is obtaining cellphone data from wireless carriers to help it identify where people have assembled in groups”,76 “Google is tracking your compliance with government quarantine mandates. Nothing to see here citizen”.77 These theories all express clear concerns about the violation of citizen privacy, despite there being no evidence to suggest that these surveillance measures would be instated by the government to combat the pandemic.

This instinctual reflex of theorists to assume that the reaction of the state would be to begin spying on their own citizens is very revealing, indicating that conspiracists have powerful memories of the previous state surveillance measures taken in the wake of a disaster, and strive to prevent such measures from going unquestioned again.

Other theorists believed that Trump would exploit the pandemic to cancel the presidential elections and remain in office indefinitely; “I bet Trump will need to delay elections indefinitely because of the pandemic starting to arise”, “[the pandemic] allow[s] for a massive power grab by

Trump that ultimately results in canceling the presidential election and declaring martial law.”.78

These theories expressed concerns that the pandemic would allow Trump to invoke martial law and remove the most sacred of American freedoms, their right to vote. This vein of theories did not always implicate Trump as the perpetrator, the government at large was often accused of abusing the power afforded to them by the pandemic; “Would you accept $1,000 a month to suspend voting for four years?”.79 This set of theories sees the public losing their rights while the government, and sometimes the ‘deep state’, gain tyrannical control over citizens; “Our right to freedom of assembly? Gone. Our right to purchase weapons? Gone. Our right to freedom of movement?

76 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 77 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 1, 2020. 78 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 14, 2020, Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 79 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020.

Gone. The constitution is a bad joke at best, a tourist trap most likely, and a propaganda piece at worst.”.80 These theories express a sense of fear and betrayal, with theorists believing that the

Coronavirus is a continuation of the federal surveillance measures implemented following the hor- rific 9/11 attacks. Associating the pandemic with 9/11 leads conspiracists to fear the worst, mass loss of American lives, the continued legislated erosion of privacy, and the suspension or removal of rights from citizens. These feelings of fear and betrayal appear to originate from the federal actions taken in response to the 9/11 attacks rather than the attacks themselves, as these theorists seem attentive to the potential for massive societal change in response to a domestic catastrophe.

Once again this comes down to an institutional distrust on the part of the conspiracy theorists. In this case, there is an emphasis on the historical misdeeds of the government in reaction to world events. Everyone who lived through 9/11 understands how substantially Western society changed, particularly in regard to public safety measures and the corresponding increase of government surveillance. The controversial PATRIOT Act allowed for the drastic expansion of the

United States government's ability to surveil citizens, such as the right to demand user data from any company, conduct wiretaps without probable cause, and engage in “secret searches” without notifying the subject before or after the search (Cavoukian 2003). Many conspiracy theorists believe that the US government took advantage of the 9/11 attacks to implement the PATRIOT Act to infringe on civil rights and decrease the freedom of American citizens, and subsequently view the pandemic as a similar opportunity for the government to increase control over its citizens. This is not a baseless accusation considering that scholars, too, argue that Trump’s government has grown increasingly authoritarian (Norris and Inglehart 2019), and since authoritarian governments

80 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020.

benefit from increased digital surveillance of their populations by “knowing individual citizens' true anti‐regime sentiments”, these theories are not out of the question (Xu 2020). Wynne’s (1992) research can be used to further understand these theories, which demonstrated that if a government continuously makes errors without any attempt to acknowledge or fix those mistakes, the people affected would become disillusioned and distrustful of federal actions going forward.

The Police Brutality and Black Lives Matter Protests in Relation to the Coronavirus

On May 25th, 2020, in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, George Floyd, a Black man, was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer by kneeling on his neck for over eight minutes.

There was an immediate response from the outraged local community and the Black Lives Matter

(BLM) movement, whose protests to bring justice to George Floyd’s murder quickly galvanized metropolitan areas across the United States to join them in protest against racism and police brutality. The ensuing protests are believed to have been the largest demonstrations in US history, with the New York Times reporting that between 26 million and 15 million people protested in the

US from June 4-14.81 Despite the vast majority (93% according to Time) of the BLM protests being peaceful, many media outlets and government officials portrayed the protestors as violent rioters, with President Trump tweeting a statement calling the Black Lives Matter movement a

“symbol of hate”. 82 With these massive protests coinciding with a time period during which large

81 Buchanan, Larry, Quoctrung Bui, and Jugal K. Patel. 2020. “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History.” The New York Times. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.nytimes.com/interac- tive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html). 82 Mansoor, Sanya. 2020. “93% Of Black Lives Matter Protests Have Been Peaceful: Report.” Time. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/); Liptak, Kevin and Kristen Holmes. 2020. “Trump Calls Black Lives Matter a 'Symbol of Hate' as He Digs in on Race.” CNN. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/politics/donald-trump-black-lives-matter-confederate-race/index.html).

public gatherings were strictly prohibited, theorists began to speculate on the possible connections between the two social phenomenon.

Theorists were quick to draw connections between the police brutality protests and the ongoing pandemic, with a few different sets of theories to explain any possible relationship. Some theories propose that the murder of George Floyd was a racist conspiracy planned in order to spur racialized communities into protest, thus increasing their potential exposure to Coronavirus, with posts such as: “What if the George Floyd murder was concocted by ‘The Man’, to spark protests and spread Covid-19 among ‘Undesirables’”.83 This theory is invoking the idea that the ‘deep state’ murdered George Floyd in an attempt to proliferate COVID-19 amongst racialized communities by galvanizing them into mass protests, where social distancing is impossible. Other theories echo this sentiment of the ‘deep state’ targeting racialized communities; “Covid 19 wasn’t working, riots were plan B?”.84 These theories are also referencing the violence experienced by BLM protestors, with protestors reportedly being injured in 144 of the protests and at least nine protestors being killed across the protests.85 Interestingly, there is little to no mention of the violence experienced by journalists during their coverage of the BLM protests, despite over 100 journalists being arrested and with more than 200 recorded instances of physical attacks against journalists, largely committed by law enforcement.86 Theories discussing the relationship between the protests and the pandemic also referenced the higher casualty rates from COVID-19 experienced by

83 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020. 84 Reddit, r/conspiracy. June 1, 2020. 85 Erica Chenoweth, Jeremy Pressman. 2020. “Analysis | This Summer's Black Lives Matter Protesters Were Over- whelmingly Peaceful, Our Research Finds.” The Washington Post. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.washing- tonpost.com/politics/2020/10/16/this-summers-black-lives-matter-protesters-were-overwhelming-peaceful-our-research-finds/); Beckett, Lois. 2020. “At Least 25 Americans Were Killed during Protests and Political Unrest in 2020.” The Guardian. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/31/americans-killed- protests-political-unrest-acled). 86 Anon. 2020. “Press Freedom in Crisis.” U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Retrieved March 28, 2021 (https://pressfree- domtracker.us/george-floyd-protests/).

communities of color: “Throughout this COVID season, the MSM has been [reporting] that the coronavirus had been significantly deadlier among blacks and latinos. Wouldn't it be beneficial to someone that a lot of people of color are being exposed to the virus as we speak by being in close proximity while yelling, then bringing it home to grandma?”.87 The racial differences in COVID-

19 mortality rates are stark, with research showing that socioeconomic inequalities lead to higher mortality rates among Black and Latinx Americans. Studies conducted as recently as March 2021 find that socioeconomic inequalities lead Black Americans to be twice as likely to die from the

Coronavirus than White Americans (Pirtle 2021).88 Thus these conspiracy theories suggest that

‘someone’, likely referring to the proverbial ‘deep state’/ elites, is benefitting from racialized communities dying of COVID-19 because they pursue a racist genocidal agenda.

Reports and suspicions of agent provocateurs amongst the protesters were also prevalent in these discussions; “this guy obtained a $300 full respirator to go break AutoZone windows during the Covid19 respirator mask shortage. Obviously he is working for somebody and getting paid”.89 This theorist finds it implausible that a protestor would be able to acquire a inaccessible and expensive respirator only to conspicuously smash the windows of businesses, concluding that this must be the work of an agent provocateur who was hired to defame the BLM protests. Agent provocateurs are considered to be police or government affiliates who go undercover within peaceful protests to instigate violence and thus justify police crackdowns against the protestors. Other theorists corroborated these accusations; “Protestors find a stack of neatly stacked bricks near a storefront. The elites are trying to escalate things to declare marital [sic] law after the Plandemic

87 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020. 88 See also: Anon. 2021. “Color of Coronavirus: COVID-19 Deaths Analyzed by Race and Ethnicity.” APM Re- search Lab. Retrieved April 4, 2021 (https://www.apmresearchlab.org/covid/deaths-by-race). 89 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020.

Failed.”.90 This theorist believes that the ‘deep state’ concocted the pandemic to justify a declaration of martial law, and following the failure of their perceived goal the elites are attempting to volatilize the BLM protests by placing rudimentary weapons near protest areas. These concerns of the potential instatement of martial law were prominent throughout the theories discussing the relation between the pandemic and the protests; “We kept saying this quarantine was a sort of martial law. Now with the protests they're gonna have an actual martial law.”; “they want us locked up inside our homes. First with the virus, then once people got sick of that and shit started reopen- ing, George Floyd gets killed and there are riots everywhere, and I'd bet pretty soon they're gonna declare martial law”.91 These theorists seemed deeply troubled by the loss of their freedoms and the progressively excessive usage of state powers over the course of the pandemic, and saw the

BLM protests as a catalyst for authorities to justify further removals of their rights and freedoms.

This strain of theories also discussed the MSM’s shift from reporting on the progression of the pandemic to almost exclusively reporting on news of the protests and focusing on the instances of rioting, with little mention of the pandemic; “Why doesn’t CNN’s hosts ask why people are not social distancing while rioting ? I thought Covid 19 was going to kill millions, what now? Will most off the country now die off ?”.92 This theorist appears to be suggesting that the MSM is deliberately avoiding mention of the pandemic in relation to the protests in order to encourage the protests, and subsequently increase the likelihood of protestors being infected with the Corona- virus. Other theorists noticed this shift in messaging on Reddit as well; “Did you notice the #stay- home top menu item in the Reddit app disappeared when the BLM protests started?”.93 These

90 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020. 91 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020; Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020. 92 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020. 93 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 8, 2020.

theorists are skeptical as to why the MSM and Reddit have switched their focus from the pandemic to the BLM protests, concluding that the shift is either a part of the aforementioned ‘deep state’ plot to expose protestors to infection, or because the concern and danger of the pandemic was fabricated to begin with. Further theories accused the US government and the ‘deep state’ of encouraging the spread of the virus in racialized communities for the purpose of eradicating them;

“Plan C was the global virus pandemic lockdown and recession. Plan D is the race war and arson attacks on our major cities.”94 These theorists believe that a racist ‘deep state’ created the virus and the protests in order to carry out their ‘plan’ of declaring martial law and taking complete control of society, in addition to destroying the ‘undesirable’ racialized communities.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not every theorist seems to wholly oppose this plot, with some posts exhibiting overt racism:

“Black lives do not matter… to the powers that be. See, before Mr. Floyd died, no one could gather in large groups for fear of the CV being spread… Then Mr. Floyd dies. Perfect. Hey, tell all the poor blacks and dip shit whites...you know, the totally useless people in society that are nothing be a drain? Yeah, those guys. Tell them to riot now. Get them to gather in large groups… In order to spread COVID. In order to kill them. They are useless anyway.

They contribute nothing but crime stats anyway.”.95

While these posts are expressly racist, it remains unclear if these theorists are in opposition to or support the ‘deep state’ plot: “Funny how you don’t see any concern of the Chinese Virus when it comes to George Floyd and Black Lives Matter on Reddit or the MSM”.96 The r/conspiracy community appears to be comprised of a broad spectrum of ideological perspectives, whether they be open-minded, intolerant, conservative, liberal, authoritarian, libertarian, etc. While overtly

94 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020. 95 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 8, 2020. 96 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 8 2020.

racist sentiments are not as often expressed in the community as initially expected, they are still present within some theory submissions, which makes it even more curious that even the racists believe that the ‘deep state’ is racist. Despite the despicable racist messaging, it is evident from these posts that a variety of theorists think that the ‘deep state’ is responsible for the murder of

George Floyd, which they believe was committed in order to incite protests and increase the Black community’s exposure to the Coronavirus. The question of whether these racist theorists support this genocidal plot remains: would the racist supporters risk jeopardizing this plan by openly discussing it on r/conspiracy? Perhaps these theorists are gloating, not believing that their submission to r/conspiracy will have any effect on the success or failure of this diabolical plan. It is also possible that racist theorist’s hatred of authority usurps their hatred of racial minorities and would rather take action to ensure that the ‘deep state’ fails to achieve their purported goal of absolute control, despite their shared racist beliefs. All we can do is speculate as to why racist conspiracy theorists would expose this overtly racist plot when it aligns with their own beliefs, and it remains as a puzzling question.

Another set of theories saw the protests as a failure of the ‘deep state’ plan to oppress the public with the pandemic, and as the first stage of societal revolution:

“TBTB ARE FAILING… Realising corona was losing steam in America, the media started with the race war. Tried with the African-American Man jogging but people were not fully convinced. Tried a second time with

George Floyd and they succeeded in starting full blown civil war like riots like they wanted but it BACKFIRED. Big time. Instead of whites and blacks fighting each other on the ground, whites and blacks are fighting TOGETHER against the fake news media and the government.”.97

97 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020.

This strain of theories again believes that the Coronavirus was manufactured by the ‘deep state’ to gain control over society, and that the BLM protests were created by the ‘deep state’ in yet another attempt to seize power. Some theorists within this strain believe that the ‘deep state’ is employing agent provocateurs in order to ensure the ‘success’ of the protests, as discussed earlier in this section.

Despite theorists often using historical precedence as evidence of a government conspiracy

(as seen with references to the PATRIOT Act in the ‘Increasing Federal Powers’ section), there is a surprising lack of discussion about the US government’s historic oppression of the black community within theories about the BLM protests and the Pandemic. Racist, state-sanctioned events such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the CIA’s distribution of crack-cocaine in LA’s black neighborhoods are occasionally referenced on the conspiracy forum, but none of the COVID-BLM theories featured references to these events. Given the proclivity of conspiracy theorists to use past government transgressions as evidence of contemporary conspiracies, this seems unusual. A potential explanation for this might be found in the racial demographics of this group of theorists.

Although it is impossible to determine or verify the racial identities of the r/conspiracy members, some broad assumptions can be made based on the language used by theorists. The vast majority of the theories discussing the BLM protests refer to the protestors and communities of color as ‘the protestors’, ‘the rioters’, and ‘they’, while a minority of these theories use language like ‘us’ and

‘we’ when discussing the protests. Thus, it can be loosely inferred that the majority of these theorists do not identify themselves with the Black American community, a result which is corroborated by a 2016 poll which found that only 7% of American Reddit users identified as black.98 As

98 Published by Statista Research Department and Feb 25. 2016. “U.S. Reddit User Share by Ethnicity 2016.” Sta- tista. Retrieved March 5, 2021 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/517229/reddit-user-distribution-usa-ethnicity/).

a result, the majority of these theorists are unlikely to have a detailed knowledge of the historical injustices committed by the US government or an intimate understanding of the oppression the

Black American community experiences. These theorists are largely discussing the BLM movement and the protests from an outside perspective, which could explain why there are so many theories accusing the ‘deep state’ and the government of orchestrating the Floyd murder in order to spread COVID-19, rather than understanding the protests as a necessary measure to demand police accountability and raise awareness for racial justice. Theorists and the BLM movement may share a common antagonist in the forces of the state, but also may have different reasons for their respective skepticism and wariness of authorities.

The feelings associated with this strain of theories are a complex mix of anger, vindication, and confusion. Many theorists expressed how upset they were in regard to how the police were treating the Black community, with the murder of George Floyd and the brutal crackdowns on the protests drawing ire from the theorists. Theorists were also angry about the media coverage of the protests, ridiculing the media for their hypocritical transition from ceaselessly discussing the Coro- navirus to covering the ‘race riots’ without any mention of the pandemic. Theorists were confused and suspicious that there was seemingly no concern from the media for the health and safety of the Black American community as a result of the protests, referencing studies on the racial dispar- ities of Coronavirus deaths in America and the socioeconomic factors which result in a dispropor- tionate number of Black Americans dying from the virus. Interestingly, theorists also seemed to feel vindicated by these new developments in the pandemic ‘timeline’. While they weren’t glad about the reasons for the protests, theorists saw the reactions of the MSM and the U.S. government as proof that the Coronavirus was either not as severe as portrayed, or that it was merely a part of a grander plot. Many theorists saw the protests as an inevitable progression of the ‘deep state’s

plan to establish complete control over society, believing that a declaration of martial law and further societal restrictions would come as a result of the intense protests. Some theorists saw the change in media focus as confirmation that the Pandemic was a hoax, feeling vindicated in their original beliefs that the virus was not a serious concern. They saw the new media frenzy of a ‘race war’ as evidence that the ‘deep state’ had failed in their original mission to oppress the population through the Coronavirus, and that they were now trying to subjugate and eradicate the population through different methods.

Negotiating Nationalism

Justifying Anti-Chinese US Nationalism

A common element in many conspiracy theories was an implicit sense of U.S. nationalism, generally conveyed through a condemnation of China’s perceived actions and suspicions of China’s nefarious deeds. An interesting and distressing element which emerges from these discussions is the lack of distinction between the people of China and their government: theorists almost exclusively discuss China and ‘the Chinese’ as a monolith, despite making these distinctions clear when discussing the US government and the American public. There are a variety of theories and discussions which are incorporated underneath this topic, nearly all of which can be sorted between two theory strands. Those which directly blame China for the pandemic: “China created [COVID] and unleashed it on the world to test their ability to create and spread a biological weapon”; and theories which perceive China to be benefiting and taking advantage of the pandemic but not nec- essarily having caused it: “The Corona virus is great for China”.99 The theories which directly blame China for the pandemic are more prominent throughout the forum, and will be discussed first.

A popular strain of theories speculates that China created and released the Coronavirus as a bioweapon in order to draw attention away from the Hong Kong protests; “China engineered the

Corona virus to distract from the Hong Kong protests and to tighten it's grip on the city.”.100 The- orists make it clear through these theories that their perception of the Chinese government is that of a ruthless and coldblooded authoritarian state, which will resort to any means in order to

99 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 5, 2020; Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 9, 2020. 100 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 9, 2020.

accomplish their goals: “Coronavirus Created to Subdue Hong Kong | Chinese Intelligence Officer

LEAKS”.101 Theories regarding Hong Kong display a rare exception of theorist’s perceptions of

China, seemingly viewing the former UK territory in a more positive light than the rest of the country and discussing Hong Kong as if the city was an entity entirely autonomous from China.

This is almost certainly due to Hong Kong’s history of being a British territory until 1997 when it rejoined China, but was still perceived to be a ‘bastion of Western ideals’ despite residing within a communist state. American conspiracy theorists likely sympathize more with the Western values of Hong Kong, and view the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to exercise greater control over

Hong Kong as a threat to their own way of life.

Another popular topic within this strand of theories speculated that China created the Coro- navirus in order to retaliate against the U.S. for Trump’s trade war; “It’s obvious coronavirus was released by China. And Beijing / Wuhan were big players. Why? The trade deal.”.102 President

Trump had been very outspoken about reversing the United States’ trade deficit with China throughout his presidency, tweeting in 2018; “Trade wars are good, and easy to win”, as the US began to impose increased tariffs on Chinese imports.103 China responded accordingly, and the two nations levied increasingly larger import tariffs against one another until the onset of the pandemic, at which point both countries agreed to a slight reduction on tariffs to mitigate the damaging effects of the Coronavirus on international trade. Both countries continue to maintain high import tariffs in 2021, with the US imposing 19.3% tariffs on Chinese imports and China imposing tariffs of 20.3% on US imports, with these rates being more than six times higher than before the trade

101 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 102 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 16, 2020. 103 Hancock, Tom, James Mayger, and Jeff Black. 2021. “How China Won Trump’s Trade War and Got Americans to Foot the Bill.” Bloomberg.com. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01- 11/how-china-won-trump-s-good-and-easy-to-win-trade-war).

war commenced in 2018.104 Considering that the tariff rates were at 21.8% for US imports and

21% for Chinese imports in early 2020, the pandemic did little to stymy the trade war, contrary to theorist’s predictions.105 These theorists saw the pandemic as China’s retaliatory course of action against Trump’s highly propagandized trade war, expressing feelings of national pride and protec- tionism, and perceiving China as a weak antagonist state who is willing to do whatever it takes to win this so-called ‘war’: “China knows it CANNOT defeat America militarily as the USA is at present THE MOST POWERFUL country in the world. So use the virus...to cripple the economy and paralyze the nation and its Defense capabilities”.106

These same nationalistic sentiments are seen in other theories discussing China and the international economy, expressing beliefs that China created the pandemic in order to disrupt the global economy and become the world's dominant economic superpower; “What if China made

COVID19 in a lab and purposely broke it out to the public so the rest of the world's Economies

Collapse…”.107 These theories express a sense of fear and confidence in the Chinese government’s desire and willingness to create a pandemic in order to solve their problems. Many theorists touting these claims seemed unsurprised that the Chinese would commit such an act of global sabotage, generally only using the existence of an issue which China was involved with, such as the Hong

Kong protests or trade embargos, as a justification for why the Chinese would cause the pandemic.

These feelings of certainty that China would commit such a reprehensible crime likely stem from the active Western recounting of China’s checkered history of human rights violations, with events like the Tiananmen Square massacre engrained into the Western public conscious, in addition to

104 Bown, Chad. 2021. “US-China Trade War Tariffs: An Up-to-Date Chart.” PIIE. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/us-china-trade-war-tariffs-date-chart). 105 Ibid. 106 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020. 107 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020.

the intensification of anti-Asian racism throughout the pandemic, and the contemporary fear mongering which the United States engages in against China. Theorists feelings of fear about China’s willingness to unleash a plague upon the world were not alleviated by US government officials, with President Trump publicly blaming China for the pandemic by referring to the Coronavirus by racist names like the “kung flu”, the “Wuhan virus”, and the “Chinese virus”.108 The usage of these names by Trump resulted in a personification of the Coronavirus, associating the virus with Chi- nese nationality and ethnicity, and operating as a form of racist Othering. While many theorists distrust the government, the President’s allocation of blame on the Chinese people for the pandemic was certain to have some sway among theorists who were already feeling afraid and confi- dent of China’s capacity for villainy.

Another set of these theories claimed that the Coronavirus was released by China for population control, culling the elderly, the homeless, and individuals without access to healthcare;

“Coronavirus was developed as a Chinese bioweapon to kill their senior citizens so they can reduce the cost of their social programs that care for the elderly”.109 In addition to the racist, nationalistic implications within this theory, this theorist is also decrying the effectiveness of China’s social welfare programs, implying that the communist state is incapable of providing for their elderly and must resort to genocide in order to be effective. This disparaging of the Chinese welfare state further displays the nationalist sentiments found within this theory strain which are consistently repeated: “COVID-19 was manufactured to solve Chinas demographic problem”.110 The Chinese government is the primary culprit in these theories, with theorists conveying a feeling of

108 Viala-Gaudefroy, Jérôme and Dana Lindaman. 2021. “Donald Trump's 'Chinese Virus': the Politics of Naming.” The Conversation. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-chinese-virus-the-politics- of-naming-136796). 109 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020. 110 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 9, 2020.

superiority by saying that the foreign government is willing to go to any lengths in order to achieve their dastardly goals, regardless of whether their perceived motivations are to reduce the amount of people dependent on the welfare state, or to improve their economic standing.

Yet another set of theories discusses the murder of George Floyd and the BLM protests as a planned act of subterfuge on behalf of the Chinese government in order to divert attention away from China. Some of these theories discuss Floyd’s murder as a direct attack by the Chinese government: “Floyd had fentanyl and Meth in his system. What's the CCP angle in all this, since we know China produces fentanyl and we know how dangerous it is. This seems like a great way to take the spotlight off China for causing COVID.”.111 Despite the Coronavirus outbreak occurring months prior to the murder of George Floyd, conspiracy theorists were still crafting novel theories about the pandemic and potential Chinese involvement. Theorists speculated that China had directly murdered George Floyd in order to divert the attention of the mainstream media and the public onto the ensuing BLM protests, and away from discussions of China and COVID-19. Other theorists added to this sentiment with claims that the protests were an act of sabotage; “China is vying to become a world superpower, their influence is clear… The [pandemic and the] social unrest and protests have all been pre planned to destabilize our country.”.112 For these theorists the protests were a natural progression of China’s plot to conquer the United States, a plot which began with China releasing the Coronavirus to weaken America. These accusations of Chinese interference continue with discussions of “What if Chinese/Russian bots are using social media to promote

US protects, causing mass groups of people to gather together and make corona spread even worse in the us?”.113 Conspiracy theorists show here that they believe that China is actively attempting

111 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 1, 2020. 112 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 1, 2020. 113 Reddit, r/conspiracy, June 1, 2020.

to worsen the spread of COVID-19 through the protests, with this theory not even offering an explanation for why China would be committing such an action. Chinese xenophobia is seen throughout these discussions of the BLM protests, with another theorist accusing Mandarin speak- ers of being agent provocateurs: “Riot provocateurs speaking mandarin”.114 Anti-Chinese fear mongering theories like these showcase the nationalistic, racist, and xenophobic sentiments that are astonishingly prevalent throughout the r/conspiracy forum. The assumption that a Mandarin speaker is an agent provocateur of the Chinese government is emblematic of the perception that the Chinese government and its people are invariably and innately evil, with such dangerous lines of thinking contributing to the intensification of anti-Asian racism following the pandemic outbreak.

Theories of how China benefits from the Coronavirus are similar to the bioweapon theories, but trend around China taking advantage of the pandemic rather than causing it. The theories claim that China covered up vital information about the virus in order to increase the damage to other countries and give themselves an advantage, medically and economically; “Are China and WHO teaming against the world to make China a super-economy?”.115 These theorists harbor a great distrust for the World Health Organization, actively questioning any public health guidelines or medical advice they provide throughout the forum, but why the WHO would align with China is seldom explained. One theorist postulates that Chinese collusion with the World Health Organiza- tion is due to New Years celebrations; “WHO takes its orders from the Chinese government, who wanted to silence reports early on so they wouldn't have to cancel Chinese New years celebrations.

The largest day of international air travel in the whole year”.116 Curiously, these theories came

114 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020. 115 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020. 116 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 30, 2020.

weeks before Trump declared his disapproval with the WHO and cut the United States funding to the Organization.117 Although these theories do not directly accuse China of creating the Corona- virus, the nationalistic sentiment and antagonistic tone remains the same across both of these theory strands.

The emotional basis for these groups of theories can be attributed to a nationalist ideology in general and American exceptionalism in particular amongst the r/conspiracy community. The demographics of Reddit users by country show that an overwhelming 48.9% of Reddit users are from the US, with the UK and Canada accounting for the second and third largest groups of Reddit users at 7.7% and 7.52%, respectively.118 Nationalism is understood to be strengthened when under threat from a foreign power, with a state taking measures to “safeguard its own identity at the other’s expense... lead[ing] to increasing distrust, and potentially to violent conflict.” (Brittingham

2007:154). Examples of this can be seen with President Trump’s ‘trade war’ against China, as well as Trump explicitly blaming China for COVID-19 by publicly referring to it as the “Chinese Virus” and the “Kung Flu”.119 These tactics serve to demonize China while diverting the attention of

American citizens away from the US response to the pandemic, the effects of which materialize as these nationalistic, anti-Chinese set of conspiracy theories. The American public is unlikely to view the Chinese state in a positive light as a result of these efforts by the US government, and this vilifying sentiment is certain to have influenced some of these conspiracy theorists. More

117 Anon. 2020. “Coronavirus: Trump's WHO De-Funding 'as Dangerous as It Sounds'.” BBC News. Retrieved July 28, 2021 (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52291654). 118 Clement, J. 2021. “Reddit: Traffic by Country.” Statista. Retrieved July 30, 2021 (https://www.statista.com/statistics/325144/reddit-global-active-user-distribution/). 119 Frias, Lauren. 2020. “Trump Has a Penchant for Calling the Coronavirus the 'Chinese Virus' or 'Kung Flu.' Ex- perts on Asian Culture Said the Racist Implications of the Term Divert Attention from the Disastrous US Response.” Insider. Retrieved July 30, 2021 (https://www.insider.com/experts-trump-racist-names-for-coronavirus-distract- from-us-response-2020-7).

importantly however, the personification of the virus as a ‘Chinese virus’ has arguably fueled the spate of racist attacks against the Asian community throughout North America. Trump’s usage of these terms was a form of Othering, causing some people to baselessly shift the blame for the death and strife caused by the pandemic onto the Asian community, culminating in racist terrorist acts such as the Atlanta shootings in March 2021.

The Coronavirus as an Act of American Imperialism

A subset of conspiracy theories speculated that the Coronavirus was an American creation, with the majority of these theories believing that the US released the Coronavirus in Wuhan as an act of imperialism to weaken China. Such theories understood the pandemic as a tool in the China-

U.S. trade war. For example, these posts would claim that “Trump Had Coronavirus Planted In

Wuhan In An Attempt To "Win" His Trade War....”.120 These theories appear to be a rejection of

Trump’s nationalist economic policy, disparaging what they see as imperialistic attempts to subjugate China’s economy by raising import tariffs to prohibitively high rates. Other submissions had similar suspicions: “What if the coronavirus outbreak was planted in China by North Korea in participation with the US to not only destabilize China (think of the trade war the US is in with

China) but to allow for a massive power grab by Trump that ultimately results in canceling the presidential election and declaring martial law.”.121 This theorist goes beyond merely accusing

Trump of creating the Coronavirus in order to win his ‘trade war’, speculating that Trump’s pur- poseful release of COVID-19 would also lead to his eventual dictatorship over the United States.

These theorists clearly have a very negative perception of America’s leadership and their

120 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 3, 2020. 121 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 16, 2020.

imperialist tactics, believing that Trump would rather infect and kill millions of people with a global pandemic than concede in his trade war with China.

Another theorist echoes these theories, believing that the pandemic outbreak is an act of

American economic imperialism and anti-Chinese subterfuge:

“Bioligcal warfare is a way of spreading illnesses to a population you wish to conquer… So I think the play was that the US infected Iran and then Wuhan. They published the Chinese data first, that then gives them the excuse to try and get public opinion against China… As the whole world gets put into plandemic, majorities will most likely go through financial devistation world wide”122

This theorist believes that the US released the Coronavirus in Wuhan in an effort to frame

China for the pandemic, with the goal of sabotaging the Chinese economy and tarnishing their global reputation. Another theorist states that the Coronavirus and America’s economic sanctions against China are part of a coordinated American attack on the nation: “Coronavirus and ‘No

Weapon Left Behind’ - The American Hybrid War on China”.123 This theorist believes that the

Coronavirus outbreak is a planned progression of a hybrid war that the US is waging on China, a war which began with Trump’s declaration of a trade war with China. Many theorists saw Trump’s trade war as a single component of a larger American plot to weaken and conquer China, believing the pandemic to be merely another stage of this imperialist plot.

This relatively popular strain of theories serves as an indictment of America and the US governments foreign policy, with these theorists clearly believing that the US is willing to go to any lengths to achieve their perceived imperialist goals. It is important to note that there is no mention of the ‘deep state’ within these theories, theorists are directly accusing the US government

122 Reddit, r/conspiracy, May 26, 2020. 123 Reddit, r/conspiracy, April 8, 2020.

of attacking China through the release of the Coronavirus. In other theory strands the line between the ‘deep state’ and the US government is often blurred, as many theorists appear to consider the two entities to be synonymous when discussing America-oriented conspiracy theories. In this strand of theories, theorists are clearly expressing anti-imperialist sentiments as they portray Amer- ica as the ruthless aggressor against a victimized China. By positing these theories within a nationalist framework, the anti-imperialist theme these theorists are expressing becomes evident. A feeling of anger can thus be seen here, as theorists acknowledge America’s imperialist history (and present) and the lengths that the US government has gone to in order to attain and retain their status as a global superpower. A feeling of contempt can also be seen within these theories, as theorists believe that the American government is willing to commit an act as depraved as causing a global pandemic to achieve their imperialist goals. These theorists have no calls to action within their submissions, with the theories appearing to be purely for raising awareness and spreading doubt about America’s intentions.

Conclusions

As I have shown in the literature review, much of the scholarship on conspiracy theories is descriptive, focusing on identifying the demographics of conspiracy theorists; corrective, debunking the theories theorists propagate; or pathologizing, portraying them as uneducated, innately paranoid, and even dangerous individuals (Pipes 1997; Robins and Post 1997; Uscinski and Parent

2014; Douglas et al. 2019). While these studies may be useful in their own right, this analysis aligns more closely with the scholarship which looks to understand why conspiracy theorists view the world through a conspiratorial lens (Harambam and Aupers 2015; Wynne 1992; Knight 2000;

Olmstead 2009; Hochschild 2016). The explanations of constructivist scholars for this tend to be social in origin, with past negative experiences with social institutions and their representatives operating as a pivotal justification for theorists to harbor a contemporary distrust of those institutions.

My findings support the general claims by constructivist approaches that conspiracy theories are importantly rooted in social problems, as the theorists on r/conspiracy often reference previous ‘betrayals’ with respect to the social institutions they were theorizing about as a justification for why those same institutions would be ‘up to no good’ in regard to the pandemic. The historic injustices committed by social institutions are not taken lightly, and theorists expect the institutions to be supporting and working to benefit the public. Thus, theorists understand these institutional

‘betrayals’ to be the institutions reneging on the fragile social contract between the institution and the citizen. Each of the institutions about which theorists have suspicions have committed some act of injustice in recent memory, and although not every theorist will directly mention these events, they are often alluded to. For example, conspiracy theories with an underlying theme of

class struggle referenced the 2008 Housing Crash and the ensuing recession, theories concerning state powers referenced to the Tuskegee Syphilis study and the CIA’s drug peddling in LA. For theories related to pro-US nationalism, theorists would write posts with anti-communist sentiments which were eerily reminiscent of the Cold War era, while anti-US posts would discuss historic examples of American imperialism. This usage of historical injustices as evidence of contemporary conspiracies could also be understood as the result of an American culture of paranoia, which

Olmstead (2009) and Knight (2000) argue has been growing and cultivated throughout the 20th century through both politics and entertainment media. While Olmstead (2009) discusses how the

American political sphere exploited the public’s uncertainty and fears by propagating conspiracy theories to achieve their political goals, Knight (2000) observes how Hollywood and the American media aggravated the growing paranoia in the American public through mass production of content oriented around institutional conspiracies. But overall, my findings support claims that while conspiracy theories are erroneous, they are often based in social, political, and economic problems that are real, vast, and longstanding in nature.

The role of corporate campaigns in sowing doubt about science amongst the public may have played a role particularly in anti-medicine COVID-19 conspiracy theories, though it is hard to know with certainty. As Oreskes and Conway’s (2010) research shows, scientific research and studies which proved to be unprofitable or contradictory to the business practices of tobacco and fossil fuel corporations were heavily contested in the public sphere by their respective corporations, attacking the integrity of the studies and the scientists conducting the research, resulting in the growth of institutional distrust and doubt in scientific efficacy amongst the American public.

Oreskes and Conway’s (2010) analysis of various American capitalist interests (Big Tobacco, arms manufacturers, producers of fossil fuels, etc.) shows how these businesses actively falsified

evidence and misconstrued scientific data in order to deceive the public in an effort to shirk regulation and maintain their profits, concluding that these campaigns were instrumental in the creation of a contemporary scientifically skeptical American public. Indeed, an entire miniature industry of

‘bad faith’ science was created and supported for the sole purpose of supporting the erroneous arguments of these corporations (Oreskes and Conway 2010). Many of these manufactured skep- ticisms and doubts of science carried over into new generations of Americans. These skepticism’s, coupled with a culture of paranoia (Knight 2000), widespread belief of a corrupt political system

(Olmstead 2009), and accessibility to virtual communities of similar minded individuals from across the nation (Vicario et al. 2016), set the stage for a conspiracy culture unlike any other.

Despite my analysis showing that conspiracy theorists will distrust scientific data provided by institutions no matter how legitimate it is, Harambam and Aupers (2015) ethnographic study of

Dutch conspiracy theorists offers some reasons for optimism, finding that while theorists are very critical of science, they are not entirely dismissive of it. A 2018 study by Imhoff et al. supports this with their finding that the determinant factor in theorists perceiving information as credible is the source presenting the information, rather than the information itself. This, along with Prooijen,

Krouwel and Pollet’s research showing that conspiracy theorists still believe that the ‘proper’ government policies can solve most societal problems (2015), indicates that conspiracy theorists could be appealed to if institutional initiatives suit their interests and are presented in an amenable manner.

However, some of my findings raise questions about aspects of the literature on conspiracy theorists. Several studies from the cognitivist tradition, such as that of Pipes (1997), as well as

Robins and Post (1997), postulate that the conspiracy mentality stems from an innate sense of paranoia in some individuals. Other studies note that some racial minorities are more likely to

possess a conspiracy mentality, in particular the African American community, but do not offer much explanation as to why, thus suggesting that race and ethnicity are the causes of a conspiracy mentality rather than external social factors (including racism). While my results do not directly contradict this cognitivist scholarship, they certainly do not support notions of certain individuals endorsing conspiracy theories due to innate paranoia or racial characteristics. While theorists did not always discuss the origins of their conspiratorial beliefs, their reasons for endorsing a conspiracy theory stemmed from experiences and interactions, rather than pure intuition. A degree of paranoia is certainly present within many members of the r/conspiracy community, but claims that this paranoia is naturally occurring, completely disconnected from reality, and will lead to violence, appear to be more pathologizing than analytically useful. Although my research doesn't directly contradict this scholarship, the findings certainly complicate this approach as my findings suggest strong connections to longstanding social problems rather than individual cognitive problems. If we understand conspiracy theories to be the result of cognitive problems, we miss the opportunities to really address their causes when we treat it as innate rather than as social in origin, as social issues actually have potential solutions. The cognitivist tradition completely overlooks these social factors, and in this sense is perhaps more of a descriptive than an explanatory approach to studying conspiracy theorists, leading to pathologizing and minimal progress towards meaning- ful solutions.

Conspiracy theorists clearly place value in the opinions of their (anonymous) peers, a trend which was clearly visible throughout my analysis of the r/conspiracy community but has received little discussion in conspiracy theory scholarship. Many theorists expressed desires for the community to criticize or validate their theories, while other theorists were firm in their beliefs and were set on educating the conspiracy community. The ‘looking for direction’ code applied to many

of the theories, as a vast amount of the discussions saw a desire for community approval. Rather than making conclusive statements, these theorists were asking for community input, looking for interpretation and critique to help them make sense of the ongoing pandemic. These theorists were aware of the fact that they did not know everything, instead asking for direction and guidance from the individuals who they believed could be trusted. The ‘providing advice or guidance’ code had fewer references, but was comprised of theories from community members who had definitive notions of what really going on. Regardless of the validity of these theories, they were more likely to contain evidence, be well written, and provide information from ‘expert’ sources outside of the dominant institutions. These ‘guiding’ theorists do not reject critique, but make it clear that they believe their theories to be accurate and are provided with the best interests of the community in mind. For example, user ‘_QZ_’ introduces their submission by writing: “I am an expert in this area, but you do not need to believe me. I will provide links from other experts about this topic”, and then proceeds to suggest physical activities to remain healthy during quarantine, supplemented with academic evidence.124 Submissions of this nature appear to receive increased attention from community members, based on the amount of upvotes they receive.

This approach to introducing credible public health information may seem counter-intui- tive, but could be the key to understanding how to distribute accurate information successfully amongst the conspiracy community. As Imhoff et al. (2018) demonstrated through their study of epistemic trust in individuals with conspiratorial mindsets, conspiracy theorists are more likely to assign lower ratings of credibility to powerful sources, or experts in positions of power. As a result, individuals with a conspiracy mentality are more likely to assign increased ratings of credibility to

124 Reddit, r/conspiracy, March 23, 2020.

powerless sources (Imhoff et al. 2018). Although I initially interpreted this to mean that conspiracy theorists will discredit the knowledge of all experts, this does not appear to be the case. Many of the submissions coded under ‘providing advice or guidance’ do in fact refer to expert knowledge, but the crucial difference here is that these expert sources are not embedded within the hegemonic institutions which the theorists are so distrustful of, in other words these expert sources are perceived as powerless.

It is well understood that those with a conspiratorial mindset are distrustful of authorities and powerful institutions (Wynne 1992; Douglas et al. 2019; Imhoff et al. 2018; Jolley and Doug- las 2014; Oliver and Wood 2014), but based on this analysis they do appear willing to place more trust in powerless individuals and sources of knowledge, which is why they seek out like-minded individuals to discuss theories with and ask for guidance (Klein et al. 2019). Since they believe that they cannot rely on information provided by the government, the mainstream media, or other hegemonic institutions to be accurate, their list of sources of credible information are small. They believe that they can only truly trust themselves and the empirical knowledge and feelings they possess from personal observation, but the scope of that knowledge is small. As such, they need to acquire information from the next best option, individuals who think and feel as they do. Em- phasis on lateral trust and vertical mistrust may be one explanation why there were so many submissions in r/conspiracy which questioned the existence of the Coronavirus, and why there were so many requests asking community members if they personally knew anyone who was infected with the virus. When their only knowledge of the pandemic comes from untrustworthy sources, and they cannot verify the existence of the virus themselves, they turn to the only trustworthy source of information they have, powerless individuals like themselves.

My findings about the dynamics of trust and mistrust contributes to existing suggestions about engagement with conspiracy theorists. Karlsen et al. (2017) found that engaging in online debates with one-sided, contradictory arguments only served to reinforce the ideological positions of the debaters, thus suggesting that approaching online debates from a seemingly neutral and sympathetic standpoint would lead to greater receptiveness for different ideological perspectives.

In addition, Mensah et al. (2019) found that when engaged in debates with Redditors on r/changemyview, using language similar to that of the debater was more likely to result in persuasion than when debaters used dissimilar language. My research contributes to these suggestions by adding the possibility of approaching discussions with r/conspiracy members as a ‘powerless’ peer-expert to effectively relay public health information in a manner which conspiracy theorists will view as credible and persuasive.

This research has several limitations. Much of this analysis was conducted under the assumption that the majority of conspiracy theorists on r/conspiracy are from the United States, due to the available demographics of Reddit showing that a large majority of users are from the US and North America at large. However, there are no available demographics specifically for the r/conspiracy community, thus it is unknown what percentage of the community is American. The- orists would frequently discuss “the government” without specifying the nationality, and this analysis treated the majority of these unspecified nationalities as directed towards the American government. The assumption can be made that a large majority of the theorists are American due to their consistently possessive references to the American government and active discussion of

American issues, but this limitation should be acknowledged.

Another important limitation is that this research only analyzed the posts of r/conspiracy users, not their comments on individual posts. Despite the additional insights into conspiracy

theorists which could be gleaned from analyzing the comments on theory posts, it would have been a gargantuan coding effort which was simply unfeasible for myself alone. Following this, analyzing and coding every gathered submission would have also been beneficial to this research, but impractical for myself to do alone. Additionally, posts were analyzed in chronological order of submissions rather than popularity, in an effort to avoid selection bias. Another factor in the decision to not sort theories in terms of their popularity is that more popular submissions tend to be less controversial, often being more akin to agreeable observations rather than conspiracy theories.

However as a result, it is unknown what the reception to a post was nor the amount of interaction it received.

In conclusion, future research could focus on adjusting and improving the methodological approaches used when studying conspiracy theorists. The current methodological approaches may be quite flawed if we accept that theorists are unlikely to trust the academic researchers who engage in such studies, as they perceive the institutions which scholars belong to as untrustworthy and biased. Future research on conspiracy theorists could instead be conducted from a non-expert level of some manner, as the usual scholars who would engage in such research may be unable to gather accurate information. Another important conclusion is that although these theories themselves are erroneous, the problems they discuss are clearly genuine issues which the public has with institutions, corporations, and American imperialism. Delving even deeper into the origins of these issues and attaining an elaborate understanding of these social problems could be a fruitful avenue for pursuing further research into conspiracy theories and theorists. Future research could also investigate how receptive theorists are to receiving information from diverse sources, as there may be characteristics which are more convincing and trustworthy to theorists and thus offer institutions an avenue to reconcile their relations with the conspiracy community. The question of

whether conspiracy theories are really a form of sense-making for theorists should also be examined. Rather than interviewing theorists about why they believe what they do, researchers should ask them directly about their interests, who they distrust, and who they trust. This may be a more effective way to infer the social issues which cause these conspiracy theories, rather than examin- ing the end results.

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Appendix

Figure 1.

The Scientific Worshiper’s Method vs The Scientific Method

“Science worshiper’s method.” N.d. Reddit. Retrieved 27 July 2021 (https://gab.com/system/me- dia_attachments/files/058/802/780/original/fd45e04022511587.png?1602311432).