The Grassroots Nature of Conspiracy

In a previous post, I suggested the Ukraine information war is not a conspiracy, and this might be the most controversial thing I ever said. So today, I decided to elaborate more.

From the original post:

Both “right-wing” and “left-wing” enthusiasts have this vision of a handful of billionaires controlling all of the news in the world. While there is some grain of truth to this, in the sense that politicians and rich people have certain narratives they want pushed, we are vastly overestimating how much these narratives are centrally controlled. Here’s why.

When it comes to the “information war” – remember that journalists, or at least the vast majority of them, are not paid agents of the state. So they willingly go along with the party line on the Ukraine war, do receive an intense degree of peer pressure to not deviate from it, but they are not being held at gunpoint. That’s why I think it is silly when people talk about “cracks are appearing in the Ukraine narrative.” You see, there was never a monolithic, centrally controlled narrative. People were organically, under their own free will, parroting the same narrative.

To be clear, I’m not claiming that there aren’t any narratives being pushed by the powers that be, far from it. What I am saying is that it’s not as difficult as one might think, and is fairly cooperative (as opposed to coercive) in nature.

When I was a public affairs specialist in the US Army, getting a visit from the media generally went something like this. A reporter would contact us, explain the story and his deadline for it, and schedule a visit (or sign up for a preexisting press pool or event). Prior to him arriving, we would plan with the local leadership, identify qualified people to be interviewed, and the locations the reporter would be taken to. When the reporter arrived, we would give him a press kit including biographies of the commanders, a description of the unit and mission, and a disc containing b-roll and stock photos he was free to use. After he left, we would follow up to make sure he was happy and had everything he needed.

Here’s a famous corporate example of this same principle. The 2017 incident when a United airlines crew called police to forcibly remove a passenger named Dr. David Dao Duy Anh from the plane. The violence was caught on camera and sparked national outrage. Days later, another story broke out in the news: Anh had been previously accused of a “drugs for sex” racket at his clinic. I remember thinking of how convenient it was for the victim of this high profile case to be smeared by a completely unrelated accusation against him. My first guess for how this happened was someone at United Airlines dug up some dirt on him, wrote it up in a press release, and “news” outlets across the western world dutifully regurgitated it without question. Yes, that’s a “conspiracy theory” on my part, in the sense that I suspect the airline was willing to play dirty, but it also requires thousands of reporters to have no ethics or self respect whatsoever, which is also true.It’s worth mentioning that it turned out that the man involved in the sex scandal might not have even been him at all, but someone else with a similar name.

I would summarize public relations as a form of channeling, in the military sense. On a physical battlefield, you use a system of razor wire, minefields, trenches, berms, and other obstacles to coax an attacking enemy into the path most advantageous to you. Ideally, to put him into a position where he’s exposed to enfilading fire from your weapons. Soldiers can get through physical barriers like barbed wire and minefields if they really want to, but there’s the psychological dimension to think about: people naturally take the path of least resistance, and this tendency can be used against them.

Apply that concept to the information dimension, we channel reporters into a path of least resistance. In other words, we offer them low-hanging fruit. It’s much easier to be a friend of the establishment than it is to be an enemy. Consider my post about HIMARS. Of all people, CNN got the opportunity to film them on the ground. Of course CNN didn’t engage in real journalism here, it was a naked marketing campaign for arms manufacturers (notice the long, lingering shots on the corporate markings on the missiles). Alternative media outlets just don’t get opportunities like that. Unfriendly media is simply denied access altogether. Wandering in a war zone without NATO patronage is much more difficult and dangerous, and that’s enough of a disincentive most of the time without resorting to cartoonish Hollywood blackmail and assassinations.

That’s my first point. My second point is that conspiracy enthusiasts tend to see coercion everywhere. Even Glenn Greenwald has complained about Biden giving veiled threats to social media giants to cooperate with him or else. As I’ve said already, there are negative consequences to not cooperating with the establishment, it’s just not necessary most of the time. Liberal talking heads are generally eager to cooperate as much as possible without any threats. So it’s not coercion, it’s just grassroots tribalism and group think.

Here’s an example for you, dear readers. Wikipedia, the closest thing to a democracy that we have (haha). Consider these sequential edits that happened over the past year on Volodymyr Zelensky’s biography page:

The first screenshot is from 2021. Notice there are Ukrainian and Russian spellings of his name (remember that he’s a native Russian speaker) and the English transliteration is “Zelensky.” Then Feb. 8, 2022, when they revised text and removed the Russian spelling of his name. This is odd since Zelensky is a native Russian speaker, and this is also against the usual Wikipedia convention for people born in the Ukrainian SSR. In fact if you look at the wiki bios of Russian people from the Ukrainian SSR who aren’t widely known internationally (like this one), there will often just be a Russian spelling. (EDIT) – they also revised the English spelling of his name to “Zelenskyy” – the politicized English transliteration of “ий.”

Lastly here’s the present, “post-invasion” wiki for Zelensky. Both Ukrainian and Russian spellings have been removed, and he is simply Jewish. This early life fact is so important, they pushed it up to the lead.

There are many, many other examples on Wikipedia of this convenient editing. The US economy is in a recession? Well, just change the definition of recession! Is this a conspiracy? Are all of these volunteer editors on the payroll? Are they bots? While I am sure that there are some paid trolls and bots involved (from multiple parties, not just the USG), the truth is worse. It’s grassroots tribalism. It’s a natural human tendency to make the “good” side look correct, and the ”bad” side look wrong, and that very often does involve cherry picking or outright changing the facts, literally.

Consider Terrance Yeakey, a policeman who made headlines saving several people after the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995,.. then died in a bizarre “suicide” a few weeks later. Look at his Wikipedia page and you’ll see heavy whitewashing of the incident. In the talk page, you’ll even see people actually trying to delete the Yeakey page altogether. Is this a conspiracy by paid trolls, or is it organic tribalism. Believe what you want, but I’m telling you that people carry water for their own “side” naturally, and will do it for free. We like to dismiss people we disagree with as bots, but the truth is worse. People act more like bots than actual bots.

Modern liberalism is an entire hegemonic ideology built around compliance, virtue signaling, and aggressively bullying all opposition into silence. Yes, of course there were decades of social engineering and propaganda to get us to this point, but it required much less effort than some of you would like to believe, because tribalism is the natural human condition. None of this really goes far beyond me handing a reporter a press kit. The government and mainstream media gives people the rope, but it’s a personal choice to hang yourself.

If you disagree, let me know in the comments as usual – but I have explained this in the most black-and-white terms I can think of.  

Featured Image Credit: 0fjd125gk87 on Pixabay

Ian Kummer

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