CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND DISINFORMATION

Skilled propagandists know that sharing disinformation is best when it is packed with other information that is convincing and in which we pay no doubt. Packed together, disinformation are much easier to be swallowed, as our critical senses are weakened when they recognize some established factual information that they receive almost automatically. The modern man in one day receives information that our ancestors received over the course of a few years. The sharp vigilance and critical re-examination of everything we read and see is really hard. In this way the manipulators very often bring us out of shape and misuse the mechanisms of our perception and consciousness.

Providing context for the disinformation is one of the key steps for their successful dissemination. This context can often be created by the environment in which we live, the culture that we belong to, or the political groups we are inclined to and tend to trust. If certain social stereotypes, prejudices or conspiracy theories are gradually incorporated into these social groups, then the disinformation is much easier to grow and spread on such a fertile ground. That is why the building of a context, or cultivating fertile ground for disinformation campaigns is a key step in the whole process of propaganda. The purpose of this process is to weaken the critical mind, rationality and belief in the positive norms of the community in which we live. A frightened and insecure individual, who feels threatened by the others and lurked by dangers at every corner, is far more susceptible to manipulation and propaganda. For him, the world is insecure and filled with terrifying dangers and supernatural forces that follow us at every step. Such an individual desperately seeks a group or a collective to protect him at all costs.

History teaches us that creating such individuals is part of propaganda strategies.

In March 1475, a local priest named Bernardin held a worship service in the town of Trento in northern Italy, claiming that behind the killing of a missing child in their town stood the local Jewish community. According to him, this was done during the Easter celebrations (pasqua) by the Jewish community for which the child was sacrificed and after which its blood was drunk. This heinous rumor was quickly spread among the inhabitants, and the local High Priest in Trento, Johannes Hinderbach, saw it as an opportunity to consolidate his authority and position of power. He decided to have the missing child proclaimed as a saint, Saint Simon of Trento, attributing to him dozens of miraculous powers, and blamed the entire Jewish community for his death. Afterwards in the persecutions against the local Jewish people a dozen of them were burnt alive, and these events triggered similar persecutions in other parts of Italy as well. Pope Sixtus IV recognized the background of these tragic events and tried to intervene at Hinderbach, but was rejected. The campaigns against the Jewish community continued even stronger than before. The anti-Semitism spread throughout the whole region, and was particularly aided by the pre-existing prejudices towards the Jewish people. This case is one of the first examples of political abuse of disinformation in conjunction with a conspiracy theory of alleged Jewish cannibalism. Hinderbach’s political power grew to the point that he often not only opposed the Pope, but worked completely independently of him.

Following the emergence of the press in Europe in the 17th century, the spread of disinformation through the newspapers was a common tactic in the political fight, especially in the developed trade cities in Italy. But a much more dangerous form of spreading disinformation and conspiracy theories were the “pamphlets”. Usually, they were handwritten or printed on sheets that were hung or distributed in the more frequented public places. The pamphlets were disturbing and filled with scary content, stories and “news” about witches, sea monsters and other supernatural acts. The spread of fear, panic and other conspiratorial disinformation was done mostly for political reasons and in order to control the masses.

The great earthquake in Lisbon of 1755, which happened on a religious holiday, caused a real storm not only in the local community but also in the wider area because of the religious connotations that were dominant in the earthquake reporting. The religious leaders there interpreted the earthquake as a punishment for the locals who lived shamelessly and abandoned their faith. According to them, the survivors were rescued because they regularly prayed to one of their saints, but there was a serious conflict about which one of those saints was truly responsible for the survivors’ salvation. The conflict of the religious leaders in the region was so widespread that it involved even Voltaire, one of the leaders of the Enlightenment movement at the time.

Even the societies with a long democratic tradition and famous historical figures haven’t managed to stay immune to the challenges of the fight with the conspiratorial disinformation. The famous researcher, innovator, statesman and ambassador Benjamin Franklin, while working in journalism in Boston, Massachusetts, fabricated news from the New York suburbia in the newspaper “Independent Chronicle“. The newspaper reported that the US troops found bags of over 700 sculls of white local inhabitants, including women and children. They were allegedly massacred by the Indians, who even left a greeting message to the British King George for whom “these bags of sculls were intended as a gift.” This disinformation strongly influenced the following events of the American fight for independence from Britain, but also for the total exile of the indigenous peoples from the North American east coast.

The conspiracy theories for political and military purposes continued also in the 19th and 20th century. Anti-Semitic persecutions in Ukraine and Russia in the late 19th and early 20th century were prompted by the massive proliferation of the writings known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Протоколы сионских мудрецов, рус.) in which they wrote about the plan about the ruling of the Jewish people with the world. Particularly famous are the propaganda stories in the British press during the World War One about the so-called. “Corpse utilization factories”, or military factories in which the Germans allegedly produced chemicals for their machines and weapons from the corpses of the fallen soldiers of their enemies. According to the later testimonies by the British intelligence chief John Charters at the time, it was exactly him who put this story and conspiracy theory in the newspapers in order to get also China involved in the war against Germany. Unfortunately, the tragic impact of this story continued long after the war. The Nazi leaders often used this case in their speeches in order to inflame hatred towards the British and to justify the plans to occupy Britain in World War Two.

From this historical overview, it is clear that the abuse of the conspiratorial disinformation and various conspiracy theories has had a profound impact on the course of history and the arousal of numerous armed conflicts around the world. The danger of them is even greater today, especially in the age of the connected digital world where every information can reach within a few seconds to nearly 5 billion internet-connected population on this planet. Unfortunately, disinformation today has a devastating, almost nuclear potential, much like conventional and unconventional weapons. Whether we are entering an era when mankind has to compromise and adopt various world conventions to protect them also from disinformation, remains to be seen.

Sead Dzigal,

December, 2019.