From Congo to the Capitol, conspiracy theories are surging

IN LATE JULY, less than a week after the British government lifted most of its remaining covid-19 restrictions, several thousand people nonetheless gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square to protest against “lockdowns”. Among the speakers were Piers Corbyn (brother of a former Labour Party leader), a climate-change denier who thinks that covid-19 is a “hoax”; David Icke, an author who believes that the world’s most powerful people are secretly lizards; and Gillian McKeith, an advocate of colonic irrigation who argues that a good diet is enough to stop the virus. A former nurse (struck off for spreading misinformation) compared medical staff who have been distributing vaccines to Nazis, and suggested they be hanged.

Such demonstrations have become common not just in Britain, but all over the world. The pandemic has produced a tsunami of misinformation. In France a documentary alleging that covid-19 was invented by political elites as part of a conspiracy to bring about a “new world order” was watched 2.5m times in three days. In America the notion that covid is a hoax has spread alongside a collection of feverish theories known as “QAnon”, which hold that the government is run by a secret cabal of paedophiles and that Donald Trump is a saviour destined to defeat them.

This is, in short, a golden age of conspiracy theories...