Anti-vaxxers, Flat-Earthers, and Conspiracy Theorists
By: Kaiser Augustus
Tags: Conspiracy Theories, Philosophy, Politics

Anti-vaxxers, Flat-Earthers, and Conspiracy Theorists

I understand that anti-vaxxer moms (many of them anyway) love their children, which is why they take the stances that they do. If they truly believe that vaccines harm their children, and because they love them so much that they are willing to go prevalent opinion, I think there’s something commendable in that. On the other hand, speaking realistically, there is something absolutely deranged about that love, a love that is resistant (so to speak) to evidence and reasoned discussion. And of course I am taking this opportunity once again to denounce capitalism, which has given credence to this type of paranoid non-belief.

I consider this, including flat-earth theories and general paranoia regarding the news, under the category of “paranoid non-belief,” which broadly speaking is a refusal to accept the most prevalent narratives about our world as a result of paranoia regarding the current world order (that is, the global political-economic status quo). Interestingly, are these people not already embodying something that took place in philosophy during the 60s, peaking in the 90s? Before it was considered (paradoxically) too utopian and thus fell out of fashion for Marxism and psychoanalysis and neo-Hegelianism.

Azimuthal equidistant projection of the spherical Earth. (Wikipedia)

These beliefs are distinctly “post-industrial”: Paranoid non-believers already recognize intuitively that knowledge is based primarily on invisible power structures that are nonetheless manipulated by behind-the-scene actors — in a nutshell, the basis for postmodern philosophy, espoused by thinkers such as Foucault and Negri and Deleuze and the late Sartre. These thinkers took this basic belief and constructed detailed theories regarding our world, informed by rational, empirical, and philosophical reality, which is something that the ordinary paranoid non-believer does not do, relying instead on intuition and therefore applying this basic belief to basically everything they encounter.

The complication is that this basic belief is absolutely true. Is the media not, in fact, manipulated by big corporations with vested interests in keeping you entertained rather than telling the truth? And do they not lie if it serves their interests? Is it not true that only a chosen few are given the privileges that eventually lead to power, whether in government or in the private sector? And is it not true that the government and the private sector in many if not most countries are so entwined that many governments now are plutocratic oligarchies, filled with bureaucratic capitalists and confused ideologues? This is why paranoid non-belief will not be going away any time soon. The fact is beneath their destructive ignorance is a grain of truth that cannot be effaced.

We will go one step further. Is this insight not the very insight that also allows us to conduct transformative change? The moment that one, for example, wants to make meaningful reforms, one must first understand realistically that society is a web of interrelated and complex relationships of power, under which even the narratives regarding our identity and our worldviews are subjugated. Without this understanding, any political effort is doomed to fail and doomed to be manipulated by this very mechanism.

Anti-EU pamphlets handed out in Austria. (Wikipedia)

We are more than ever susceptible to such thing because we live in an age where meta-narratives are being challenged on a daily basis, as a result of the election of Trump and the discontent with the EU (and Brexit) and the prevalence of the Internet, with which any fanciful whimsy is transformed immediately into knowledge so long as someone — literally anyone — is willing to believe. Knowledge has never been so easy to construct at a time when people are, first, not willing to believe the long-standing neo-liberal meta-narrative about globalization and “benign capitalism,” and second, as a result, very willing to find an alternative world view that will explain the tumult that they experience all around them.

And so — the most important question — what is to be done? So far I find that commentators insist on combating “fake news” with facts, with — as it were — “the real news.” The problem with this is that they are not taking the basic true insight that allows paranoid non-belief to persist. Instead, we must give them what they want. We must give them the alternative they seek. We must not only counter their untruths with the true, but rather show them that these truths are interrelated, forming a coherent and legitimate world view that takes into account their negative experiences regarding capitalism, neo-liberalism, and globalization. This rules out trying to merely repeat to them the narrative that we are all presented about the neo-liberal order — which in any case is the very reason we find ourselves in this current predicament. This means that, so long as we continue with our current vision of the world, which necessarily hides and disavows certain truths (especially about the power of the government and corporations), this problem will not cease.

LGBT Solidarity Rally in front of the Stonewall Inn. (Wikipedia)

Thus, we take yet another step further: The only way to solve this problem is to project a new world, to find an alternative to where we are now. The paranoid non-believers are correct about one thing — the problem is that they are wrong about everything else. And this is because they feel a palpable incongruence with their experience of the world and the world purported by the media and other people, an incongruence that in any case manifests in the mess of our politics today and one that many times in the last few years has threatened to consume us. This incongruence is factual in nature and cannot be countered by facts, because ultimately their beliefs are in fact predicated on an unarticulated and fundamental experience regarding the world, not merely a body of knowledge to be refuted, even if they eventually express this experience through ridiculous and false claims regarding different aspects of our world.

Paranoid non-belief in our societies is a symptom of a greater illness, one that may very well kill us throughout the destruction of our planet if we do not find a cure very soon. And that cure is moving on from our world order and finding a new one, a transparent (that is to say, democratic) one that does not depend on hidden agendas and corporate interests and exploitation.