What makes a person wholeheartedly embrace a conspiracy theory?

POLITICS
Conspiracy Nation
Ariel Bogle, Cam Wilson
Ultimo Press, $36.99

Beginning with false stories that grew in the aftermath of the Port Arthur shootings, Conspiracy Nation is a broad-ranging and incisive investigation into the history and current state of conspiracy theories in Australia. It covers their origins, links with international movements, the impact of lockdown and social media on their uptake, and the ways in which they have both galvanised and destroyed Australian lives.

The book’s authors, Ariel Bogle and Cam Wilson, are journalists with a history of covering online extremism, internet culture and politics, and their astute yet compassionate interviews with true believers – along with sceptics, psychologists, church leaders, media and family members of those drawn in – offer a rich mix of understanding and analysis.

While each chapter focuses on a particular conspiracy – Port Arthur, QAnon, the Great Replacement, Expose the 28, the Freedom Movement, anti-vaccines and anti-fluoride, pseudolaw and sovereignty – it is the connections the authors systematically reveal effectively.

By anchoring conspiracies to place, from Christchurch to Grafton, Byron Bay to suburban Perth, the book highlights undercurrents at work, cultural shifts that keep people searching for answers that look well beyond what they are served up in their day-to-day lives, often ignoring science, laws and fact checks in the process.

So why do people become so deeply invested in conspiracy theories that they are willing to sacrifice everything – their families and friends, jobs, homes? While the range of interviewees reveals that an answer is complex, the book unveils common threads and the importance of an emotional attachment to ideas, interrogating deeply rooted fears and anxieties about the “other” and marginalised groups – First Nations, Jewish and Islamic people, the LGBTQIA+ community — and the need to protect white identity and culture from being “replaced”.

Also crucial is the way that financial instability and a feeling of helplessness fuels suspicions of government programs and processes, the banks, the police, big pharma, and large corporations taking power away from individuals.

The protection of children is at the forefront too, finding an outlet in an obsession with paedophiles, cover-ups, lists of perpetrators, and events and policies that connect young people with queer-friendly experiences.

In a discussion of COVID-19 restrictions, the book highlights how personal freedom became paramount, along with a focus on pseudolaw and sovereignty, challenging authorities and regulations. Taking a vaccine, drinking fluoridated water, staying in lockdown, having to drive with a licence were up for question – while also incorporating purity of the body and the “natural”, such as alternative therapies and wellness regimes.

One of the strongest chapters focuses on celebrity chef Pete Evans and his gradual fall from grace: from popular TV host of My Kitchen Rules and bestselling cookbook author to Trump’s champion. In 2020, he was fined for breaching therapeutic goods legislation by promoting a BioCharger device and claiming it could help with the “Wuhan coronavirus”.

In a great piece of observational reporting, one of the authors goes undercover to attend his wellbeing retreat and brings to life his charismatic appeal, the range of conspiracies his followers believe, his considerable skills as a chef, and his phoenix-like ability to rise again — he recently published a children’s cookbook with Robert F Kennedy Jnr, the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services and prominent anti-vaccine campaigner.

Rather than just seeing a bunch of crackpots espousing out-there ideas, the book’s key strength is that the authors take time to listen and relay the many viewpoints. But they are also clear. From the citizens trying to co-opt First Nations sovereignty, to the Wieambilla family who murdered two police officers and their neighbour, believing in conspiracy theories – and the gurus who sell them – can have destructive, dangerous and even life-threatening outcomes.

Kirsten Krauth’s latest novel Almost a Mirror was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize and SPN Book of the Year.

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