The Alt-Right X-Files: Conspiracy Theories and Fake News
By: Sammy C
Tags: Conspiracy Theories, News, Politics, Alex Jones

A lot of us have heard a least one conspiracy theory such as that aliens exist (thanks Tom Delonge) or that 9/11 was an inside job (sorry, with the weight of the plane and office equipment, the steel beams could have totally melted) but many of us do not understand exactly what conspiracy theory means. According to Aaronovitch, these theories are “unnecessary assumptions of conspiracy where other explanations are more probable”.

“Space may be the final frontier but it’s made in a Hollywood basement” -Red Hot Chili Peppers

For example, to refute a popular theory that the moon landing was faked, it’s actually likely that we did land on the moon because it’s easier to put a man on the moon than convince the hundreds of people that would be involved in that type of forgery to keep quiet.

What this means is conspiracies are used to explain the world around us. So since some people believe we didn’t have the technology to make it to the moon in 1969, these people fabricated a story, that in their minds, made more sense to them. Sometimes conspiracies are used to make sense of tragedies because some people need a better answer than just some radicals were able to hijack a plane and kill thousands of people. 9/11 was such a tragedy that people coped through changing their understanding of the event, an event of this scale must have some deep rooted conspiracy behind it and can’t be the responsibility of a few men. However, these were the conspiracies of yesterday, no longer are conspiracies used to explain the world around us, now they are a vehicle for fake news and those who wish to undermine our trust in the upper echelons of society and the government.

Tom Delonge, former Blink-182 front man who quit the band to study aliens

I’ll be the first to say that conspiracy theories used to be fun. I remember growing up and checking out books on bigfoot and grey aliens, swearing up and down at least once a month that I had seen evidence of their existence. The X-Files also made conspiratorial thought fun but this is longer the case. Conspiracies have become the playground for far-right groups bellowing about the ‘leftist deep-state’ who are ‘destroying america’. These theories are no longer aimed at trying to understand the world around us, they are used to spread fear and misinformation. However, it is not just the theories themselves that are dangerous, its is the reach they are able to obtain through twitter, facebook, reddit, 4chan, various forum boards and so on. Moreover the internet has allowed people who at one point only had a local voice to reach a national audience with the perfect example being Alex Jones.

Donald Trump’s son was caught liking a tweet referring to the Parkland Shooting crisis actor conspiracy theory

By now most of us have heard of the volatile InfoWars host who screams about the government testing “gay bombs” that are “turning the freakin’ frogs gay” and popularized the phrase ‘feminazi’, obviously in reference to the feminist movement. Before the internet, his radical alternative right views would probably only reach the outskirts of his home state of Texas, if he was lucky, but now he can reach billions of people with just one website.

Alex Jones has since been banned from youtube but a few of his choice clips are still available

Although we like to laugh at his antics, his conspiratorial thought has begun to have some real world consequences, most notably his theories on the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting and “crisis actors”. The December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, CT to this day remains the deadliest school shooting in history, and although national tragedies have long been the subject of conspiracies, the Sandy Hook shooting and Jones theories stand out from the rest (I would say is the first marker of how conspiratorial thought is changing). Whereas the 9/11 conspiracies were formed in part of an attempt to rationalize such a brash act of violence against a civilian population, the Sandy Hook theory was used to spread mistrust in the government, especially in the case of gun control.

Alex Jones has also been banned from twitter, but he still has a large following that posts his content and his website still exists

Jones and many other Alt-right conspiracy theorists claim that the government employs crisis actors (people who act out a school shooting scenarios with no actual casualties) so Government can justify gun control and take away all their guns. And while conspiracy theories in the past either took years to fester or where perpetuated by people with a small reach (ie. The Lone Gunmen from the X-files), any random thought of conspiracy can now be shared by anyone, at anytime to billions of people.

Alex Jones claims his first amendment right when discussing these theories but that does not absolve him of consequences of violating the terms of a private company (twitter)

The Sandy Hook shooting (and other mass shootings) have received the same treatment from talking heads like Alex Jones but these theories have begun to bleed more into fake news. As I stated before, the Venn diagram of conspiracy thought vs. fake news is nearly circle, meaning the concepts behind and the people who share them nearly overlap.

Start your kids young on the danger of QAnon and Pizzagate

Confirmation Bias has a big role to play in the sharing of conspiratorial fake news. Someone who does not like Hillary Clinton may see the pizzagate story (which I could go into but you should probably research that rabbit whole for yourself, if you have the stomach) and as ridiculous as it sounds to us, their hate for her may trump their reason.

Now what can make conspiracy theories so dangerous is its inherent nature and close tie to fake news. Nancy L. Rosenblum author of A Lot of People Are Saying, states that “liberal democracy requires a minimum amount of mutual trust among citizens, and conspiracy destroys it”. The reasons Bigfoot, aliens and even 9/11 don’t pose the same threat as QAnon (similar to Pizzagate)and Pizzagate is because, for one, they weren’t relevant to the context of society and they did not have the same reach and support from talking heads like Alex Jones. I would argue that 9/11 conspiracies could have reached the same traction as these other theories but if they were to be true, the government responsible would have been the republican government under Bush (which would not fit into their anti-liberal rhetoric). And of course, conspiracy theories are not one sided and do exist on the far left side, too, but I would go so far as to say they have nowhere near the support or impact of the Alt-Right kind. The biggest conspiracy theory that has stemmed from the left is the Russian hacking scandal, which ironically, was true in some aspects. I myself am trying to be as unbiased as possible but the difference between conspiratorial thought on alt-right vs the left, well, obvious… to say the least.