One
of the more unusual phenomena to appear recently within the ranks of the
Republican Party is the Qanon conspiracy theory. According to this theory, the chaos that has
been appearing in the White House is somehow a mask for Trump’s main
presidential strategy. In reality,
rather than opposing special counsel Robert Mueller, Trump is working to bring
down a global pedophile ring that includes a lot of famous people such as Barak
Obama, Hillary Clinton and the billionaire George Soros. In other words, it is Democrats that are
involved in this evil conspiracy.
Supposedly this theory was postulated on social media by an important
member of the American government. Some
people believe it is Trump who is doing the posting.
Anyway,
not only are the conspirators involved in a pedophile organization, but they
are also planning a coup. Among other
beliefs within this theory, there is the notion that certain Hollywood
personalities are pedophiles. In
addition, John Kennedy Jr. never really died in his plane crash, and he is now
working with Trump to bring down the pedophile cabal that wants to take over
the government. The theory is constantly
evolving, making one new preposterous claim after another. And this is just the latest conspiracy theory
to appear on the right wing fringes of the Republican Party. During the 2016 presidential election, the
email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager was hacked,
and the emails were revealed by Wikileaks.
The New York Times wrote about one of the emails which connected Podesta
with James Alefantis, the owner of the Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in the nation’s
capital. Speculation began to grow that
the pizzeria was the center of a child trafficking ring headed up by Clinton
and Podesta. The notion of this supposed
conspiracy was totally absurd, but that didn’t stop it from gaining traction
for a while on far-right websites.
So
what is generating these conspiracy theories today? In previous articles, there was discussion of
what I considered to one of the main causes of all the mass murders that are
occurring now. Modern technology is
creating living environments where the fields of experience are increasingly
frictionless and increasingly mediated.
Particularly, as our fields of experience are increasingly filled with
the screen reality of movies, television, video games computers, smartphones
and tablets and also virtual reality. There are fewer and fewer organic
experiential surfaces readily available that allow us to make, receive and
preserve organic imprints. As a result,
people are not able to have many rich vibrant life experiences, develop meaningful
life narratives or prepare for death with a personal surrogate immortality People living in our modern technological
societies experience both understimulation and overstimulation in the vacuum
and tension pocket fields of experience.
The vacuum of modern boxy architecture, frictionless car rides, smooth
asphalt and concrete surfaces on the ground as well as screen reality and
virtual reality. The tension pocket of
overpopulated cities, noise pollution, air pollution, fast-paced highways, loud
dirty construction sites. The tension pockets
lead to burn-out and jadedness. The vacuum environments lead to numbness. And as screen reality and virtual reality
occupy larger and larger spaces in our fields of experience, the vacuum
environments begin to dominate in our minds.
And we become more and more numb.
This
serves as a backdrop for the growth of conspiracy theories in a modern
technological society like the United States.
Whereas mass murders are a way to fight numbness and feel alive by externalizing
a lot of abrasive friction into the external world, creating what is usually a
one-man tension pocket, and committing a crime based on this numbness, a
conspiracy theory is a way of fighting numbness and feeling alive by
internalizing a lot of abrasive friction, sucking in a tension pocket rather
than expelling it, and becoming a victim rather than a victimizer. Rather than become the creator of a crime of numbness
where one commits random acts of aggression to feel alive, one becomes the
receiver of the aggression from an imagined focused crime of passion. And actually, whereas a random mass murder,
as opposed to a terrorist massacre, is usually committed by a lone gunman, a
believer in a conspiracy theory usually becomes a part of a group of people
that is able to coalesce through social media.
The imagined conspiracy which builds on an internalized tension pocket
in the believer’s head does have the additional benefit of pulling a person out
of his numbness through a secondary experiential pattern – the grounded
camaraderie that comes with socially enjoying connecting with like-minded
individuals.
Although
Trump does not officially give his blessings to some of these extreme
conspiracy theory groups, he does make enough provocative though vague
statements that can be interpreted as giving his support. Certainly, Trump has been very paranoid in
his reactions to the events and situations that occur around him. Trump is a perfect example of the fact that
mass murders and conspiracy theories are two sides of the same coin. Not that Trump is a mass murderer. But he mentioned once that he could shoot
someone on Fifth Avenue in New York and the support of his voters wouldn’t
diminish. He felt free enough to toy
with the idea of gratuitous murder. Just
as he has felt free enough to verbally attack both individuals and groups
constantly. And then there are all the
conspiracy statements he makes. Muller
and his team are supposedly carrying out a witch hunt in their investigation of
Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elections.
The Latin immigrants to the United States are supposedly members of the
Salvadoran gang MS-13. There was
supposedly a conspiracy to deprive Trump of an election by the majority of
Americans who voted for president. And
on it goes. Trump is a one-man antidote for
all the numb Americans who live empty directionless lives. He is not a formal part of the conspiracy
landscapes the way that Qanon is. But
his barrage of informal statements has acted as a trigger to the formation of
more formal right-wing extremists. And
his statements act to provoke fear in those of us who worry about what happens,
if someday, some of these conspiracy theorists act to defend themselves more
forcefully against these unnatural fears.
(c) 2018 Laurence Mesirow
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