The news gives flavor to the last vacation days. The flat earthers have met in Menorca on September 18 to celebrate the first Balearic congress of such a substantial matter. On Monday, more than 150 people had signed up for the event. As Miquel Fèlix explains in the Menorca newspaper, the three ladies who promote this meeting do not live in a cave, they have university education and are recognized in their respective professional fields. However, they militate in the purest irrationalism and do so with an amazing conviction. One of the organizers has declared that it will be “a wonderful occasion for people to ask themselves questions and question the obvious”. Observe the perverse strategy: encourage critical thinking to legitimize a falsehood so obvious that it is lazy to talk about it.
We assume that the three organizers of the thing do not mind being taken for fools or crazy, their enthusiasm is proof of all scientific evidence. They are not alone. There they go, along with the flat earthers, the anti-vaccines, those who deny the Holocaust, those who question the climate crisis, those who say that the Ukrainian people do not exist or those who affirm that Valencian and Catalan are different languages. They all have something in common: they fiercely despise the knowledge produced by the academy and have a tremendous fascination with what they call “unofficial truths”.
We live in paradoxical times: citizen access to quality scientific discourse is easier than ever, but, at the same time, pseudo-theories circulate with great profusion and, in some cases, manage to carve out a place for themselves. By introducing false premises and baseless arguments into the debate, the groups that militate in the false distort the playing field of public opinion. Then, an erosion of democracy inevitably occurs, since these discourses end up filtering –little or much– into political deliberation and legislative processes. Some populist parties channel these lies and present them with the appearance of credibility.
We have seen how Trumpism has sophisticated and intensified false militancy to the point of turning it into a lifestyle and a perfectly articulated ideology. Let us remember that Trump, being president, spread some measures against covid that are dangerous quackery. What is new about the Trump machine compared to other political movements based on large-scale toxic propaganda is the use of social media to create completely impregnable bubbles of meaning. In these bubbles, friend-enemy logic is the only one that rules.
This is linked to something that the totalitarianism of the 20th century already exploited: the shielding of the discourse itself by appealing to a supposed great conspiracy that must be denounced by the movement and its leaders; Except for those who militate in the cause, all are part of that conspiracy, and that serves to reaffirm the postulates. The flat earther claims to be a victim of the “great lie and fraud that we live on a globe, that we revolve around the Sun and that we are in infinite space”. The trumpist presents himself as a victim of an alliance of progressives, Washington DC officials, blacks, Jews, feminists and others who move the country’s levers “against good people.”
The jump to fanaticism is automatic. To fight against the alleged conspiracy anything goes. That is why Trump and his hosts did not hesitate to attempt a violent coup against the Capitol. The fanatic, as the Israeli writer Amos Oz points out, lacks a sense of humor and has very thin skin, which is why these people turn social networks into scenarios to move without any type of filter. And it’s funny how angry bubbles resemble each other. For example, on Monday, the fans of Laura Borràs gave me tweets that seemed to be copied from those I received back in the day from the supporters of Albert Rivera, the Spanish supporters of “for them” and the most esoteric sectors of the 15-M movement. The style is very similar, beyond the doctrines.
One day, on the street, an anti-vaccine kid accused me of being bought by the system to prevent the spread of “the truth”. In vain I tried to argue that vaccines save many lives, including yours. I wasn’t listening. Every day there are more people like that. And they vote, like you and me. Let’s not let our guard down.
