Conspiracy theorist threat

Submitted by AWL on 2 September, 2020 - 8:44 Author: Zack Muddle
Anti-lockdown protest

Over two hundred Covid-conspiracy theorists, including some genuinely wearing tin foil hats, held a rally and march in Bristol; thousands in London; and tens of thousands in Berlin, on the weekend of 29-30 August.

Participants and speakers opposed masks, vaccines, lockdown, 5G, and the “New World Order”. They pushed wild, incoherent, and often contradictory conspiracy theories, from 9/11 classics or a global shadowy elite of (satanic) paedophiles (QAnon), to Covid-19 being a hoax or 5G being an infrastructure designed to control individuals through microchips implanted under the guise of vaccines, to masks reducing immunity and increasing infections or hydroxychloroquine curing Covid-19.

Crowds seem, anecdotally, to have been mostly white and middle-aged.

While a first response might be to laugh at them, they could generate a serious threat. Far-right and fascist groups had a serious presence in the London and Berlin demos. Conspiratorial beliefs around Covid-19, some gaining wider traction, undermine efforts to curb the virus. Reasserting and building rational, critical, class-based politics is more crucial now than ever.

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