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Published on 20 December 2015
The conspiracy theories of extreme right and far left threaten democracy
By Natalie Nougayrède, columnist and foreign affairs commentator, published in the Guardian December 18, 2015
Type in “conspiracy theories” and it is amazing what magma bubbles up. There are entire websites devoted to laying out the wildest scenarios supposedly hidden behind events from the assassinations of JFK and John Lennon to the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, to 9/11; even the recent Paris attacks are the subject of online ramblings. Shocks occur, and crazy theories start swirling.
Psychologists have tried to explain the phenomenon. Some things can be so painful or traumatic that factual, documented truths are discarded and minds are sucked into half-baked conspiratorial versions. This is the things-aren’t-what-they-seem school of thought. Nothing new perhaps. But what has become most striking is the degree to which conspiracy theories now abound in the political arena.
This is one of the most striking features of the rise of the new populist or insurgent parties across Europe and beyond. The role of conspiracy theories is worth dwelling on because it points to some of the difficulties of representative, liberal democracies today. It’s useful to compare the mechanisms and put them in historical context. It is no coincidence that conspiracy theories are often used by authoritarian systems to crush dissent.
It was telling that in France, Marine Le Pen decided to cry foul after her far-right Front National party failed to win executive power in a single region in elections this month. The way she saw it the elites – lumped together in a single bloc identified as “the regime” – had conspired to block her rise. According to her vision, enemies of the FN join forces in obscure ways, hindering the will of “the people”, which Le Pen’s party claims to represent single-handedly. Never mind that what actually happened was the simple exercise of French electoral law and tactical voting – Le Pen needed to frame events in terms of victimhood.
This “us versus them” talk is not confined to the French far-right. It is a thread that runs through just about all populist, demagogic movements. In Putin’s Russia, the official rhetoric centres on the notion that western powers are intent on blocking “legitimate” Russian national ambitions abroad and dismantling the very statehood of Russia by manipulating groups from within. Similar logic has come to the fore in the Venezuela of Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro – regimes prone to ascribe every domestic setback to plots fostered by the US. If “Bolivarian” revolutions stumble, as recently happened in elections, this can only have outside causes, ones that are camouflaged, the results of secret plots.
Conspiracy theories were a big feature of Soviet bloc regimes, as authors like Czeslaw Milosz and Václav Havel described. But it’s also important not to overlook that they still exist to a degree in parts of Europe’s far-left.
The “anti-elite” message of the most radical elements of Podemos in Spain and of Greece’s Syriza movement may have attractive elements – understandable in the context of economic austerity, high unemployment and deep frustration among many young people. But less emphasised is the way these movements systematically cast themselves as the victims of vague and wide-ranging forces set on undermining their political prospects.
Their language is, of course, entirely different from Le Pen’s on immigration and refugees – but there’s some convergence. She speaks of “the regime” as an enemy – not unlike Podemos, which describes Spain’s 1978 constitutional system as la casta: an entity that must be overturned in its entirety because it supposedly impedes the genuine expression of the will of the people.
If Podemos and Syriza stumble, failing to meet electoral ambitions or promises, they are tempted to blame forces external to them: the European Union, globalised capitalism or obscure lobbies. What counts is that the traditional rules of the political game are questioned and the legitimacy of representative democracy is put into doubt.
Part of the appeal of conspiracy theories is their simplicity. In a complex, changing world, it is tempting to reduce multifaceted issues to the us-and-them narrative. It is a vision that meets little contradiction because reasoned facts are sidelined by emotion. It is a binary scheme, with “the people” on one side and “the system” on the other... Read more.