Through his series of interviews “Fake and causes”, 20 minutes sheds light on the themes around conspiracy, fact-checking and issues for democracy. 20 minutes gives the floor to researchers, associations, experts or other members of civil society to open the debate.
While the French government is preparing a meeting of sectarian aberrations and conspiracy, which should take place in the first quarter of 2023, we spoke with Marie Peltier, professor at the Haute Ecole Galilée in Brussels. The Belgian historian, specialist in conspiracies for ten years, delivers a very critical vision of the executive. And questions the conspiratorial postulates in each of us.
Do you think it is relevant to organize meetings on sectarian aberrations and conspiracy, like those planned for the first quarter of 2023?
Associating “conspiracy” and “sectarian excesses” entails a risk that is very present today in the fight against conspiracy: that of depoliticization. If we consider the conspiratorial phenomenon as being the result of “radicalized” or “recruited” people, we take the very great risk of missing its massive character in society. Because it is a question of a political imaginary of mistrust which is spreading to varying degrees. The risk is that with such a posture, we accentuate a binary – conspiracy versus anti-conspiracy -, rather than working to redefine a common vision that can restore confidence in democracy.
On the set of Do not touch My TVmid-November, Sonia Babkes, Secretary of State for Citizenship, explained that conspiracy was ” the use of a whole series of unproven theories that generate a form of separatism from what is verified ». Why do these words bother you?
It means absolutely nothing. The context of separatism, I don’t know what it’s doing there. But apart from the fact that it looks like juxtaposed and uncontrolled contexts, it denotes above all a very strong depoliticization of conspiracy, in particular because of the French government and the Bronner commission as well. Increasingly, conspiracy has been presented as the fruit of groups of radicalized people, assimilated to people who would be in sects.
To think that we can fight things by restoring the truth and by going to look for lost sheep, by putting them back on the right path, is a decoy. This kind of approach does not work. It’s quite disturbing to see that politicians have convinced themselves that conspiracy is simply a problem of people who cut themselves off from society and that it is not a much more global problem, a contemporary democratic disease.
You say that there is danger in assimilating conspiracy and sectarian aberrations, as was done in the report of the Miviludeswhat is this danger?
This is the heart of the logic of depoliticization: conspiracy is seen only through the prism of the most extreme people, those who can lose touch with reality, in their relationship with their family. They exist and, in this context, sectarian aberrations organizations can be of some help, but the heart of the conspiratorial problem is not there. The heart of the problem is that there is mainstream conspiracy, mainstream mistrust, which is even present in political parties. The great danger of associating this with sects is to externalize the problem, not to see that it questions all of our societies and that it concerns us all: it is how to recreate trust, meaning and background.
The serious political error of this report is that. This resembles what was done for jihadist radicalization a few years ago, we fell into the same traps, with de-radicalization programs. These are exactly the same ineffective methods, to clear one’s conscience, which are recycled in the approach.
What is your definition of conspiracy?
It is a political imaginary of mistrust towards what normally speaks of authority in a democracy, with regard to the media word, the scientific word, the political word. This imaginary of defiance postulates that behind what we are told, there is a logic of staging in the service of hidden interests. It is the idea that what we are told, particularly in a democracy, is an illusion.
This is what the Secretary of State does not understand, in the conspiratorial software, her word itself is a decoy. And so democracy ultimately would also be a decoy. That’s really the root of the problem. It is a software of defiance, of questioning of democratic institutions which can go as far as an attack on the Capitol in the United States. The political DNA of conspiracy theorizes potentially leading to the attempt to overthrow democratic institutions. This is the perspective of conspiracy.
Emmanuel Macron analyzed conspiracy in 2020 in the light of the ” challenge to any form of authority including academic and scientific ». Do you agree more with this idea?
In part, but for me, it is rather what is authoritative in a democracy. Its very important. Conspiracy isn’t just rebellion against authority. It is the questioning of what is normally authoritative in a democracy, that is to say what makes democracy legitimate. And if we don’t have that reading, we don’t understand why conspiracy is a weapon of dictatorship, of propaganda to discredit the word of authority, but the word of authority in a democracy. Conspiracy theorists don’t question Putin’s word generally, for example.
What are the causes of conspiracy?
They are obviously multiple, like any social phenomenon. Conspiracy is an old phenomenon historically, strongly linked to anti-Semitism. Historically, conspiracy is a weapon of hatred of Jews. From September 11, 2001, there is a resurgence of conspiratorial speech due to a series of factors, including the massification of the Web. The medium obviously played a role in this. But also because we have entered a phase of democratic disillusion. We decided to give a very civilizational color to September 11 and, to everything that followed, the idea that our civilization was attacked by barbarians or terrorists. We have divided our societies enormously around security policies.
A fracture occurred at that time. And, at the same time, the software of defiance grew: the idea that the West would promote democracy, but in reality to perpetuate its domination. The distrust of our democratic societies crystallized a lot in 2003 with the intervention in Iraq, where there, in addition, we know that the American power is lying to intervene. From the beginning of the 2000s, events somewhat frozen a disillusionment, a split and, on this weakening, the speeches of propaganda, of support for dictatorships were able to prosper. It’s the idea that democracy is a decoy, that another narrative is offered, an alternative narrative in quotation marks.
In twenty years, it has taken more and more space, with a big turning point in the 2010s through social networks. Everyone has been able to appropriate this software, everyone becomes their own content creator. Then comes the election of Donald Trump in 2017. We really see that this imagination, because Trump is imbued with it, becomes dominant and massive in society.
This political sequence is about twenty years old and has gradually taken hold. Today, this systematic distrust permeates our entire society. It’s not just a small group that believes in the Illuminati or that the Earth is flat.
In conspiratorial speeches, the argument of free thought, freedom of expression is frequently invoked to support its positions. And to contradict these speeches is to go against freedom of expression.
Yes, it is very fair and very important to raise it. The conspiratorial spheres or the spheres of propaganda have taken over, in recent years, democratic values. They have not shown themselves to be undemocratic. Paradoxically, they claimed that, henceforth, it was they who represented democracy better than the democrats themselves. To this end, they have made extensive use of what I call a semantic hold-up: they have recovered all the democratic semantics, but for the purpose of supporting dictatorships. Which is complicated as a result, because people in good faith can adhere to this kind of statement while having the democratic ideal at heart.
The concept of freedom of expression has been exploited enormously to say that it is the obligation to listen to everyone, that is to say this kind of idea that must be put around the table, if we speak of Syria for example, a pro and an anti Assad. It is a total perversion of the journalistic spirit and freedom of expression. Freedom of expression does not mean listening to all the words hostile to democracy or the words ‘everything is a war crime’.
Unfortunately, it is a story that has done a lot of harm to the media, which must face up to this level. It has been twenty years since there have been TV shows where, under the guise of freedom of expression, pro-dictatorship, racist speech, etc., has been released.
What are the limits between critical thinking and conspiracy?
It’s a tricky question because there really isn’t a clear limit. And it is in this that the speech of the Secretary of State is an illusion. Unfortunately, conspiracy can spread to varying degrees and we can all be impregnated by logics of mistrust. Everyone must question their own assumptions.
The problem with conspiracy is that there is already a premise that is fixed upstream. For example, automatically believing that it is the West that is guilty of everything in the war in Ukraine. To have this postulate is not critical thinking, social criticism or political criticism, it’s just conspiracy theories, it’s just propaganda and misinformation. But if we are ready to question our ideological assumptions, we will be able to reopen the possibility of real criticism.
Currently, it is hard to bring a criticism of the constructive political scene because it will be misguided, recovered by conspirators. To avoid this, we ourselves, a collective us, must be very clear about our assumptions, our limits, our vision, what we defend, what we don’t agree with. The real work is that of clarity, of giving political guidelines on what is acceptable and what is not. This is what will be able to reopen the possibility of a criticism that bears fruit.
Is conspiracy linked to a particular ideology?
Yes, in the sense that this ideology is reactionary, hostile to emancipation, to democracy, that’s clear and that’s historic. More concretely, it means that there have always been cultural links with the extreme right. And even now, the French-speaking conspiratorial networks are very much rooted in the extreme right, also in connection with the propaganda of authoritarian regimes, which are often the same as the extreme right networks.
For the pro-dictatorship networks, those pro-Russian or pro-Assad, conspiracy is really a business. In these movements, there are also left movements. It is often said that conspiracy is the extreme right and the extreme left, I do not totally agree. It’s the extreme right, it’s clear, it’s also part of the extreme left which is often rather prodictatorship.
But, at present, in the context of mainstreaming, conspiracy affects all political families. We can no longer say that it is an ideology reserved for a small group. This anti-democratic ideology, which discredits emancipation movements, is quite mainstream in society. It is therefore to be fought by all. That is really the blind spot formed by depoliticization.