and i we couldn't read your show is called spectrum if you would like any information on the chrono marash or any other science topic you should really check out our podcast you can get it wherever you can get your podcast you can also find us at. one time science. this information is going viral the pandemic has given a boost to conspiracy theories like those propagated by q one on its claim that satan worshipping pedophile elites are running our lives launched 3 years ago in the us she went on is spreading to germany as well it's adherence joined forces with coded deniers and right wing extremists at recent protests in front of the right stark some q. and on supporters on both sides of the atlantic have been linked to violence our title today she went on how dangerous are conspiracy theorists.

on the. planet. welcome to to the point and here are our guests félix huisman is a freelance journalist who has a focus on the far right and he says the dangers of far right ideologies were ignored too long we shouldn't make that mistake again with q. and on it's great to have with us you often goes and he's a sociologist with germany's konrad adenauer foundation and he says the belief in conspiracy theories is a mass phenomenon that is part of our society. and also great to welcome trees along she works as an investigative journalist at online magazine advice and she thinks needy has responsibility in framing q. and a on is crucial for its containment. so let me start out by asking you to hose. about

a study that you recently published that shows that fully a 3rd of those surveyed believe the world is being steered by secret forces why what's behind that. well conspiracy believe in conspiracy theories is quite widespread in societies in general also in germany. so we didn't expect exactly that level it's not a total surprise we asked people the sentence you said to judge whether it's safely true probably true probably wrong or surely wrong and we found that 11 percent say it's definitely true and another 90 percent say it's probably true which is quite a surprise to us so what's so what is driving that is it fear or is it anxiety mistrust what would you say is behind that. it's some kind of

distrust in some sources we have to keep in mind that. that can be very is motivations and ideas people have very different ideas if what kind of actors or organisations are behind these secret forces is and what they actually plan or do whatever so. conspiracy theory is usually. live by being in precise so they integrate a lot and then people who follow that follow that only partly by some things reject others so it's very diffuse and also the people who tend to believe it are also diffuse they they often not absolutely sure about every element but have a kind of feeling there is something going on and that can be

a strategy to deal with insecurity with a very open risky situation they exist when you say in your opening statement that we shouldn't underestimate q. and dangers spell it out for us if you would please what is the danger here well if you look at the united states there have been some murders perpetrated by q nonbelievers there was the murder of a mob underboss in staten island in new york by a young man who said that he believed this mob underboss was a secret deep state agent and he was about to arrest him because dead was his mission given to him by donald trump you might debate whether. mental mental health issues might be a big underlying issue here as well but conspiracy theories posed this danger of motivating people to commit violent acts even of of terrorism.

the f.b.i. classify it she cannot as a possible risk for domestic terrorism last year in 2019 what about a risk to democracy as a whole we just heard about the level of mistrust that many adherents. theories show is that something that you think is growing because of these kind of websites and posts yes definitely if you if you look at what. followers belief what the followers of other conspiracy theories deeply believe and you cannot really have a rational discourse with a lot of those people if they are said to believe that there is global. pedophiles torturing and killing children to drink their blood and stay young forever which is basically one main narrative. that is completely not based in

reality a people believe that and it's hard to argue with them because especially as a journalist everything you say. is only. it is only giving giving them fuel because you're a part of the deep state elite then as well to resort to say that we need to talk about how media frames q. and on so tell us how would you frame it how would you describe what this movement is about and where it's taking us yeah i i would say that one of the most important aspects of that is that you we shouldn't get too tangled up in like the weeds of the actual belief and the belief system because we we feed it just like felix said . the problem is that a lot of the cuban supporters and here and we're basically begging reporters to ask

trump about what he thinks about cuba and on and as we know wherever something is involved that and aggrandize us a moral back the potential to aggrandize them he replied you know i think they like me and so of course this in this in this in this fanning on of the narrative we forget that we have to frame that as the real world consequences that happen and take place and also not our only real consequences but also was benefiting from this exact really kind of crude let's talk about who's benefiting from this the 3 founders of q and on in november 27th teen apparently have made very good money as their posts have risen in the hierarchy of online websites is that what's really going on here is this simply a commercial business model at least for some of those who are steering it wouldn't say so i mean also the media that is basically the platform carrying these things

are profiting off of it because it's the business model to be focused on the tensioning attention seeking media and attention keeping users so you know the the face by. and you chip algorithms they propel people down into these rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and it starts with just like my conspiracy theories like weaved and you're in there and then it starts to go deeper and one of the central and i think the most dangerous aspects off q and on is that it is set out made as like this d.i.y. scavenger hunt that you are supposed to puzzle together and you know you're part of a community and electing community and on the fringes of that are all kinds of economy i want to ration dies and when amazon come back to that gaming meant in just a moment but let us 1st take a closer look at the protests against corona restrictions here in germany which

have thrown together a motley crew of demonstrators including adherence to q one on. i trust conspiracy theories more than i trust the government. part of what everyone is waiting for the 2nd wave i've never seen the 1st one. protests against the government's corona regulations 10 foil hats abound but not a mask in sight a rather peculiar mixture of different groups converged here in berlin they seemed harmless at 1st. but there were also extremists among them who waved flags of the former german and even tried to force their way into the german parliament building . brought to you by the letter q thank you anon movement was brandishing their symbol they made a name for themselves by suspecting dark forces behind the past us election campaign the demonstration was the perfect opportunity to spread their ideology by begin to put down changes are being maybe behind the scenes that should come into effect in the next year or 2 i'll just do the time is coming up and it will all

begin this fall because then the banks will crash and they'll receive even more money. because what makes some people so receptive to conspiracy theory. say your survey concludes that even before corona before the crisis such beliefs that we just heard there in that report were in fact widespread in germany so does the fact that we're now seeing q and on symbols at such protests really amount to a higher level of threat and danger. we don't know whether due to the corona crisis the belief and conspiracy theories increase that is clear up to now. but surely not all conspiracy theories are the same. and specific problem and threat of q. and on is that the bedi which you always have a conspiracy theory i mean because prince spirit is theories like

a fairy tale you have the goodies and the baddies and you have the cure in ascend to. children in or princess thread that are all these elements. so. this specific and chewing on is that the bed is the state institutions in whole and that is a specific problem compared to some others where i don't know the nasal faked moon landing or whatever so that does make a difference but yes it's widespread and one reason is simply beyond this crisis experience so even before that if you believe in conspiracy theory you are smarter than the others so you are better than them and you can teach them how or it's a power and it also makes it more difficult to get back to say oh no i was wrong is

that even more difficult but now i know that felix whose money has been at some of the protests and so i wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the alliance that we're seeing there between anti vacs are people who are simply skeptical of covert restrictions and then right wing extremists and supporters of q. and not what do they have in common. in large parts the belief in conspiracy theories not all believe really absurd and crazy conspiracy theories like that a lot of them believe in and have extreme conspiracy theories for example that bill gates and the bill and melinda gates foundation are posed to to poison the world with vaccines that is incredibly widespread in these protests it is the believe in conspiracy theories and the deep mistrust in the government and in what

a lot of them those protesters consider society's elites and where's that coming from. from a lot of different places also politically you have people there who would consider themselves at least rather left leaning who say anti-war i've been in peace protests in the last couple of years you have people there who at least look like hippies who are connected. as a terrorist and a conspiracist world view as well and then you have a far right extremists you have what's called the iceberg a movement in germany which are the ones that we saw in the report storming the steps of the right exactly people who believe that germany is still not a sovereign state and is still occupied by the allied forces since world war 2 and you had people in front of the american and the russian embassy begging for a peace treaty for germany to be signed and

a lot of d's conspiracy theories germany not being a sovereign state are now intertwined with q and on before a lot of those people were very anti-american but now with donald trump in charge as a president and as dissed savior figure in the queue non-belief day turned to donald trump to set us free and i want to talk about that in just a minute but 1st let's a quick comparison of the numbers here in germany and the u.s. to reason lucker from what i've read germany may have the most q. and a on supporters of any country 2nd only to the u.s. well yeah. it. the way that these supporters are calming to life is hard to gauge and hard to count i think because they organize in fringe groups in an often fringe on lang groups and these numbers can be greatly excel aerated and not all of the people who read into these groups like one of the

biggest telegram groups i think has 120000 members and also. a woman called tamara k. who ordered like to stay on the steps of the. in this demonstration that happened just recently and to corona demonstration protests was a member of this group and very active member of this group and also to a nonbeliever but. i would say that this is already a phenomenon that is that has gone global and cannot be contained we have gone past that basically and they're both spread their i like q. and on armies in several countries and iran and japan and finland and. the narrative will spread i think because. the underlying current of this or the underlying bias is a projection bias and this is what draws people to conspiracy theory thinking that

because the world becomes so difficult and so hard to understand there is something bigger and for us so you're going to. explain this to me if you would please because cuban on central thesis at least in its early phases was very u.s. centric and even very trump centric with this idea that the president is a messianic figure fighting become the dark cobol of child abusing elitists so how does that translate into a global and german movement. i'm afraid are called explain that. it's. well i think one aspect is that you don't have to accept every bit and piece of the theory you can you know believe some parts reject others so it's fuzzy enough to absorb people

want to spect is that also people in germany are interested in what happens in the us and that is then again linked to conspiracy theory that the us is actually steering the whole world. again it's not homogeneous it's not a fixed ideology where you find the big book explaining all your questions it's far beyond that it's just fuzzy and diffuse and i jump in there pretty quick i think this makes ideology we talked about the so-called iceberg a movement that has. yet formed with it into the queue and on movement and in germany as well and distance one part if you talk about this widespread narrative global pedophile elites murdering children if you look back in history especially in german history you had these anti-semitic narratives of jews murdering christian

children for yeah the protocols of the elders of zion you had these anti-semitic conspiracy theories and if you look at the early at mid 2000 you had this kind of state tannic panic that happened in the us before with these widespread narratives of ritualistic satanistic abuse and killing of children dead was never really proven but still extremely widespread and this is this is all coming together and she went on and so you know theresa talk about this is being a kind of almost like a video game but sometimes it sounds like it's almost a religion. some people compare it to religion some people call it a cult i'm not sure. that's completely right because you know you don't have these structures with you know it's mostly online so you don't have a have

a leader that is really keeping people in and preventing people from from from from getting out of the cult but it has cult cult like tendencies that's. just a conspiracy theory. president trump has not exactly tried to squelch the idea that he might be a messianic figure fighting. in fact he has said that q. and on supporters are good people who love the u.s. that's a quote that along with at least one of his sons he has retreated to a non post what impact does that have it gives a lot of confirmation and a lot of sense a lot of purpose to this entire movement whatever. who is seen as this messianic figure is saying about them and yeah the problem when with that being something close to a called or a religion as far as we just said is i think the problem is not only the tie in to

into politics but also that we've reached some kind of conspiracy singularity somehow all of the conspiracy theories have plopped together in and have been accelerated in this pandemic which is why the movement gained so much traction you have you feel believers and you have health community hippias and they all propel something like i'm completely misleading health advice that donald trump as well as sometimes spouting in this press conference is like drinking bleach and they all come together in this q. and a movement because of the i think extreme insecurity and mishandling of a mess of crisis that also falls together with the global uprising against you know racial injustice and police violence which looks like everything is going to crash

soon let's take a closer look at the links between q and on and attempted acts of violence on both sides of the atlantic could that threat rise in the face of unrest on american streets here's a look at a right wing militia in portland oregon. the american board of militia at target practice their leader peter diaz is on a mission he believes freedom in the u.s. is in danger and fears a coup against the government could be on the way. he and his troops patrol portland for weeks demonstrations against racism and police violence have rocked the city dia's wants to put a stop to them. police say back i understand that they're worried about the numbers growing but i would handle the situation differently if i had the manpower and equipment out there fortunately he didn't so he and his militia had to pull back.

violence is also on display in portland the situation has repeatedly escalated between black lives matter demonstrators and the militia like groups that repeat the q a non montra save our children. the number of militias in the nation is increasing and gun sales are as well is the u.s. on the verge of another civil war. exist none. another civil war in the us in part as a response to conspiracy theories is that too far far fetched yes i think so i think talking about the possibility of a civil war is vastly exaggerated but there is the possibility of violence especially if we look at november if trump is not reelected or a lot of these conspiracy theory believe is just chewing on followers their savior is gone their the lone fighter against a deep state is gone and that my it's

a motivates some people who already own firearms to take on the fight against themselves so that is a real danger you often go signs and symbols associated with q. and none were evoked by right wing terrorists here in germany as well in the attack on a politician in western germany in an attack on a synagogue and also on it sheesh a bar in how now would you say that conspiracy theories like those actually incite and cause violence directly. rather not. well not cause them directly but probably they make it more likely they are. effect around ideology which can be used by people. prone to. violence. therefore

yes also this ideological background is important this is specific to q. and a conspiracy theory while others do that at least less though there is no harm this conspiracy theory. to research facebook twitter and other social media sites claim that they're trying to crack down both on covert dissin from ation and on q. and on itself how good a job are they doing well the job they have been doing is says both have been like a little band-aid off like keep the cure itself. they're cracking down on several groups twitter for example has also contain the spread of topics connected to q. and on so they don't trend any more which i think is a good as a good measure but as long as social media is building their business model on time spent on the platform and also on propelling reactionary and

aggravating content and incentivizing that you are reacting to that content and then taking you down the rabbit hole even deeper that business model is trying to spread this misinformation even more and just very briefly if you would our way in the mainstream media at least at times inadvertently giving conspiracy theories a boost by driving more attention to them it depends on the framing in my opinion and we have to talk about that because they are a real danger to democracy and because they have a do human izing foundation they also can lead to violence we shouldn't just be caught up and exploring them even if you never it was a one sentence if you would our title asks how dangerous these theories are is the danger growing. maybe we'll know very little specially dangerous and cold or our societies feel this is one i would say yes it is growing

especially in the pandemic we see more and more people spreading these theories so yes thank you very much to all of you for being with us today and thanks to all of you for tuning in see you soon. the bum a. temperature

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