So many conspiracy theories are so complicated and complex that you actually think, why would that be the case? But it's also a little bit about obfuscating their extreme ideas or making them seem. a lot more complicated than some of these very black and white narratives that are actually beneath it. I'm Jason Pack and this is Disorder.
a show where sometimes we interview people who go undercover to expose the conspiracy theories and hatred that spreads disorder and spreads amidst a disordered world. It's also a show where we look at hateful ideas that start off on the extreme fringes and then gradually make their way into the mainstream. And once this kind of hatred and disruptive... On today's episode...
It's my tremendous privilege to be joined by the princess of extremist infiltration and the queen of counter-radicalization, none other than Julia Ebner. Julia is the author of Going Mainstream. why extreme ideas are spreading and what we can do about it. Today's conversation will largely evolve out of the things that struck me from that book. We're going to start particularly on the question of the interplay between conspiracy theories and radical ideas. And then in next week's conversation.
We're going to talk more about how extremist ideas go mainstream and what are solutions to combat this. Despite being younger than me, Julia is an award-winning and internationally best-selling author. Her first book, The Rage, The Vicious Circle of Islamist and Far-Right Extremism, won the Bruno Kretzky Award for the 2018 Political Book of the Year. Her second book...
Going Dark, The Secret Social Lives of Extremists, was an international bestseller and has been translated into seven languages. Welcome to Disorder, Julia. Thank you so much for having me, Jason. I have so much I want to ask you right now about how all the experiences and ideas and research you've done lead you to see Trump, the Doge, Christian nationalism, the rise of the AFD.
So before we jump into everything else, we are talking a little bit before this episode is going to air. It's late February. What has struck you over these last months of events that you don't think other people... might be attuned to. What has really been shocking to observe, and especially with the insights I had previously gathered in my undercover experiences,
was how everything seems to be coming together in the Trump presidency now. Whether it's QAnon ideas and Trump pardoning some of the capital rioters and the spread of anti-vax ideas with... the new health minister being a conspiracy theorist, but also then the spread of misogynistic ideas and propagation of deeply sexist and even violent misogynistic ideas like those spread by Andrew Tate. who they've also put a good word in for in Romania.
And then also ideas related to white nationalism, identitarian, new right ideas. So it's really all coming together under Trump. And that is a very scary outlook, especially also seeing at the same time attacks against journalists. against the independent media and even against independent watchdogs and political democratic institutions. So was Hillary Clinton not wrong when she said they're a bunch of deplorables? Was she actually on to something?
It's tricky because, of course, the word deplorables has then been so instrumentalized by the Trumpian right and by his supporters because they could use it to show how Clinton looks down on them. And I think it was actually... strategically not a very good use of a word because it but it did of course put the finger onto a wound that was quite deep already and it is there is something about people having felt left behind by
what they see as the global elites, the establishment, and they even see themselves a little bit as the deplorables in a way. So Hillary was right, but I think it was not as strategically. helpful term to introduce. Of course, it wasn't strategically helpful. I was actually at the first Trump inauguration, Julia, and there was the Diplora Ball. I didn't get invited to that, but I went to another ball with Steve Forbes and Kip Forbes.
of people who were the most unlikely Trump supporters in their tuxedos, owning lots of 19th century oil paintings, you know? The point here being is I didn't necessarily grasp until it was happening that he would love to appoint a rapist to every cabinet level position. And in preparation for this interview, I'm thinking, is there something about someone who might be willing to perpetrate those kind of crimes of defrauding their own investors?
raping a woman, which somehow connects this group together? That's a really good question. I guess there is a sense of stepping over boundaries and also breaking taboos, breaking conventional societal limits.
But perhaps there's also something deeper on a personality level. I mean, it is perhaps also a case of people with, for example, dark triad of personality traits connecting better with each other. And there are studies that show that, for example, narcissists... machiavellianism and even psychopathy are overrepresented in politics and i guess to some extent people who commit crimes often also have show some of these toxic traits
And there must be something about them getting along with each other, which also is seen, of course, not just in the context of the U.S., but also in other political environments. So for me, the top line takeaway of your book. was that extremists throughout the Western and democratic world all seem to believe in conspiracy theories that they can spread as memes or in online platform.
and that these conspiracy theories help them recruit, but it also helps them convey a political program. So I want to drill down into this in this episode, because on the disorder program...
we're very concerned about conspiracy theories. I don't fully understand why do conspiracy theories need to be a part of hateful or extremist ideas. Yeah, what's really interesting is that... I guess, especially in times of disorder, in times of crisis, and especially now where we're facing a poly crisis on so many levels.
with the financial and economic inflation crisis, before that the global health crisis, the COVID pandemic, and also an overlaying security, an international security crisis with the war in Gaza and in Ukraine. I guess there is a much higher proneness and susceptibility in overall populations to conspiracy. beliefs, but also to black and white narratives and extremist ideologies. And that's been shown throughout history to be the case. I mean, even in times of the plague or the cholera.
there were actually all kinds of conspiracy myths that spread without the black death, you know, the Jews poisoned the wells, all of this. Yeah. Right, exactly. Or in times of the cholera, the doctors being blamed for wanting to apparently harvest organs and having introduced the epidemic. But yeah, so I think there is something there that makes us more prone. And I guess it is also to some extent related to... drops in our cognitive complexity during stressful situations.
where the more disorder there is, the more adrenaline we release, the more cortisone we release. And that can even be measured in also MRI scans. We see that cognitive complexity drops. And even linguistically, it shows that people use simpler language, simpler narratives when they're under stress. And I guess crisis are permanent forms of stress or exposure to potential trauma and things that can...
narrow our cognitive complexity. I think that's very compelling, Julia. When you put an organism under stress, very few people can rise to the challenge, but most people... retreat into their own and they retreat into the bubble that they're comfortable with. Now, I also want to talk about the issue of how conspiracy theories can unite. the different extremist ideologies you look at. So in your really excellent book, Going Mainstream, you talk about the ways in which conspiracy theories unite.
incels, climate change skeptics, transphobic activists, anti-vaxxers, and the White Lives Matter crew. as well as, of course, the Jan 6 and election deniers. How do conspiracy theories unite these very different groups? First of all, they often have a lowest common denominator in believing that... the establishment or what they call the global elites.
are behind everything that is going wrong in the world. So they, of course, tend to blame the same enemies. And often that is actually the global Jewish elite, how they put it. But sometimes they also blame other outgroups. And that is often transformed into a conspiracy myth. But that might just be a very locally focused conspiracy myth.
But what we've seen happen now in recent years is actually, I think, a new form of master narratives that we see or a new type of conspiracy myth, which combines all these different elements and weaves them together. So, for example, QAnon is... is probably the most prominent example of this, where we see that all kinds of conspiracy myths have been combined into one big one. And it looks like a little bit of a puzzle of different conspiracy myths and layers.
aliens and NASA-related ideas and the death of Princess Diana or John F. Kennedy, perhaps even the moon landing and 9-11. So you really, you see that there is a combination of all types of conspiracy myths that were then also... tied to current events, to current affairs, for example, the global pandemic and COVID vaccines, then also everything that happened with Russia and Ukraine. So it is very sophisticated in...
Turning this almost into a crowdsourced puzzle where everyone can participate and bring their own myths and their own disinformation pieces, sometimes also pieces of half-truths or information, to that collective puzzle.
game. And that meant that it brought together a lot of people across different, even different extreme ends of the political spectrum. That's fascinating, the way in which you talk about the crowdsourcing of these myths and how conspiracy theories maybe draw people in who might not be so overtly political, but love the aspect of a puzzle or they might not follow the news so much, but some of these things that you mentioned appeal to them.
I want to try to drill yet deeper into how this works and why it's necessary. So I don't really get... How do conspiracy theories succeed in uniting an in-group and an out-group? I mean, you use those terms. And obviously, if you're going to, for example, be an incel, which you write about so vividly.
In your book, I learned so much about their subculture. Why do they need conspiracy myths? Can't they just be incels talking about, you know, the difficulties of dating? Yeah, it's true. And that was... The origin of the incel platform was an entirely different one. They talked about loneliness. It was not yet that politicized. They talked about grievances. They held as perhaps lonely men. In the beginning, even women actually were on the platform. And then it turned gradually into this...
toxic, misogynistic, man-only place. And then there were added layers of conspiracy myths, mainly, I guess, to blame an outgroup for their misery and to have a clear enemy. Often we saw that this was because they were looking for explanations of why things are, as they would put it, so difficult for men these days. And they blame it all on...
for example, the three waves of feminism. And then they go deeper into actually looking into liberal progressive policies as such. And then that might be tied to great replacement ideas of, well, actually it's... Feminist policies and pro-LGBTQ policies that have lowered our white birth rates. But it's also open migration policies that take over supposedly by...
non-European migrants of continental Europe and the UK and the US and other countries. And then it all becomes a bigger picture of, well, and who's behind this? It's, of course... What they would then see as the global Jewish elites who've been driving this plot, apparently, to wipe out white Europeans and especially have white men suffer. But why is the conspiracy theory...
useful in uniting the in-group and the out-group. Let's talk about incels and then maybe anti-vax. So let's say that I'm an anti-vax person. I just don't like vaccines. I dislike needles. I would think... I could have like an internet platform or meet with my friends and we talk about we don't like needles. I don't need a conspiracy theory that Fauci is the devil incarnated and Fauci works with the drug companies.
Fauci is actually a secret billionaire who gets money in the Cayman Islands. That's funny, right? It's interesting. But why can't I succeed in like having my group? We just don't like vaccine and we don't like needles. Why do we need a conspiracy theory that Fauci is the devil incarnated and he is getting secret payments from Pfizer? Why is that needed?
In many ways, it provides a channel for the very strong emotions, for the anger and the grievances that take shape. But it's also very strategically useful to have a bigger conspiracy myth where you can also reach additional audiences with that.
And we saw that now, even with the elections, the US elections and the Trump government at the moment, where we see that it's extremely useful that these conspiracy myths have been able to reach so many different target audiences. And we saw with each crisis or perceived crisis.
is there was a new target audience that opened up and a new layer that was added to some of these conspiracy myths where you can then get to even left-leaning anti-vaxxers and you can get to people in the fitness and health alternative medicine community. because you tie your conspiracy also to vaccines and to the pharma industry. Whereas perhaps before you were only able to reach the people opposed to migration who believed in kind of the white genocide and great replacement ideas.
And then you might also have another entry gate, which is misogyny and where you reach. young men who feel left behind or who feel like their privileges are being taken away from them. So it's strategically extremely useful to have a bigger master narrative, and conspiracy myths really provide that, where you can...
address different audiences and cater to their grievances. That was a brilliant way of explaining it. I think that there's a mystery here and it may be worth unpacking deeper because the conspiracy myth... as you explained it so eloquently, is a kind of propaganda. It has certain implications for an in-group and an out-group. It has political implications. But if you just told everything so straightforwardly, you might not reach...
People who, for example, are only interested in health and they take health supplements and they may not have this exact concern about the vaccine, but if you phrased it a different way, you could reach their community. So let's go on an investigation together here. I'm wondering out loud why these subcultures that you've done so much to think about, to infiltrate, to read their materials, why they have these conspiracies. To my mind...
They use them to hide behind their actual views. But this leads to the question, why can't the climate deniers come out and say, we believe fossil fuel companies should make as much profit as possible? even if the environment suffers. We don't care about the environment. That, to me, is something that you could say. You write an article, you defend capitalism in some bizarre way or neoliberalism, as you might do, but that's not what they do.
They say, actually, the Earth was very cold before and then it got warm and now it's getting cold. It might get warm. It's not because of fossil fuels. We think that the fossil fuel companies should be able to do whatever they want because there's no climate change. Why do they even need that?
Yeah, well, you already mentioned it, I guess. It provides a completely alternative explanation for something that is actually scientifically, where there is a scientific consensus. But if you put all of that into a conspiracy myth, then, of course, you have a way out because you can even...
supposedly disprove scientific evidence because you can just say, well, all of this is rigged, all of this is fake and it's all part of a big plot. So it is an alternative route for people who want to convey. a narrative that is otherwise at odds with science or at odds with even common sense. I've been thinking a lot about this since reading your book because I don't work directly on all these issues. And what I've been reflecting on is...
Why is it that people in the alt-right don't come out and say, we believe blacks or Muslims are culturally different or inferior, and we think that the police should treat them differently? And we advocate a political program where women and men have different spheres of activity. Women's role should be the family. This is our prerogative. This is how it was done until 1890. No one had an issue with it.
And if they did, they didn't have political power. That to me is completely legitimate. I disagree with that political program. I'm also shocked because I didn't know to think about this. that in fact, the people who advocate that political program, they don't actually say that. I don't get it. I don't get why they don't say that. Yeah, it's very true. And I guess even looking back at the Holocaust, you had so many...
anti-Jewish tropes and so many anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy myths linked to that. It almost felt like that was necessary in order to mainstream. a brutally honest and terrible anti-out group idea or basically the systematic demonization and dehumanization of an entire out group. You need something else because you're not going to get a lot of people on board if you just project the
hatred towards an out-group in a public forum. I think if you use a conspiracy myth and you then clearly turn them into systematically evil... that is a lot more powerful in terms of bringing other people on board. I think you're on to something with the Holocaust in one way, but you're maybe missing a change over the last 80 years in another way.
The Holocaust is something that interests me. I'm more knowledgeable about that than some of the other topics that we're going to discuss today. There was a wing of anti-Semitism. in Germanic Europe from Luger through to Wagner, which was honest in the way that I'm saying about things, they would say, we think the Jews are culturally different.
We don't want to have a meritocracy where they can be in our universities merely because they do well on tests and create economic and artistic products. We think they should be second-class citizens. Because they should be second class citizens because they're Jews. And there was an honesty to that. Whereas the idea of.
The Jews control the world and run a pedophilia ring, which is trying to, at the same time, subjugate the white race and dilute its blood through bringing migrants into Europe and America. That's like lacking in the honesty of what we would call classic Germanic anti-Semitism. And I'm wondering if we're... We're really on to something now because you brought up the Holocaust parallel because it shows more of a change in how these things have gone about rather than a similarity.
Perhaps. I do think that conspiracy myths were also a political tool then, but it is true that there was a much more honest... layer of prejudice and of very explicit outward hostility in that time than there is now. Perhaps there are some, of course, very extreme neonatic groups who still have that very explicit. But the movements that try to gain popularity, that have tried to have a political impact, I think also have to.
take a more subtle approach to become successful. And we've seen that with a lot of the biographies of a lot of these extremist leaders that I met in my undercover operations and in my research, a lot of them came actually from neo-Nazi backgrounds.
even painting swastikas on the school walls or were involved with neo-Nazi movements in their youth. It's really fascinating to then often see that there is a kind of learning curve from that because they then have the experience of, well, this is actually... widely rejected and they don't get anywhere. And then they adopt what I think is a lot more dangerous. They adopt a much subtler tactic. And we've seen that with, for example, the leader of the identitarian movement, Martin Selner.
who used to be in neo-Nazi circles, and he actually did draw swastikas on the school wall. And also other leaders like, for example, Mark Collette, who now leads the Patriotic Alternative in the UK, which, of course, is also advocating for... basically white supremacist ideas, but is a lot more subtle in his rhetoric, but has a past in the BNP as the youth leader. And we see a lot of these figures and they're also...
In the very strongly pro-Trump crowd, we've also seen a few of these figures who've learned to... be a lot more eloquent and more subtle in their rhetoric in order to mainstream their ideas. And I guess conspiracy myths are one way into that. Brilliantly put. I want to... Wrap a bow around this lesson for our mega orderers out there Essentially what I take Julia to mean is that
If you very overtly say, I believe blacks are inferior, and even if they might be good at some things, we should prevent them from getting into university. The pushback is so direct. you struggle to reach a wide audience. In other words, people won't join your movement. You won't get elected. David Duke couldn't become president. But if you say...
I believe that there is a mystical pedophilia ring and a pizza parlor. And in fact, Fauci is taking the money and it's like going into the Cayman Islands and then it recirculates in this way. It's really difficult for people to push back directly. And some people who might say, hey, I have blacks who are my friends, but I hate the idea that there's this.
pedophilia ring in the pizza parlor. I can join this because it's like they're not really racists. It can draw adherence better while also it's harder to attack. Is that it? Yeah, I think that's completely right. And that is definitely the case, especially also why so many conspiracy theories are so...
complicated and complex that you actually think, why would that be the case? But it's also a little bit about obfuscating their extreme ideas or making them seem a lot more complicated than some of these very black and white narratives. that are actually beneath it. After the break, Julie and I delve deeper. Why is it that extremist movements need conspiracy theories? Mega orderers!
I'm guessing that you would enjoy to read the books of disordered guests like George Monbiot, Harvey Whitehouse, Julia Ebner, Brian Kloss, or Anne Applebaum. But who has the time to read all these books? You know what you should do? You should check out the New Books Network. It is the world's largest podcast network, which is book-focused. I found myself listening to stuff about.
Neoliberalism and then Mexican-American studies, then Christian interpretations of the Old Testament. Amazing stuff. The way I look at it is that it is like a Wikipedia for audio. except that the contributors are all experts. And man, do I love me some experts. So if you love experts, you should search for the New Books Network on Spotify. Now I want to expand while we're trying to wrap a bow around this lesson.
Political programs are frequently coded. They mean one thing to the masses and another thing to the elites who traffic in them but might know that they are not literally true. I considered it very fascinating. that Elon Musk about a year ago tweeted about great replacement theory. It is the literal truth. And you have to think, he only had 100 billion then, and now he has 400 billion, but...
Whatever you might think about the guy, the guy is bright. He must know that it isn't the literal truth. And in episode 76 with Joseph Uzinski, we explained various ways to unpack. why someone like Elon might say that. And this is that conspiracy theories are multi-layered. They're interpreted differently by different where you are in the social pecking order. And they're also calls to actions.
I'd like you to tell us a story, Julia, because you've been in the trenches. You've met people who believe these things. Could you tell me an example on the one hand of a conspiracy theory that someone told you that they. subtly indicated that they knew it was not literally true, but yet they advocated for it? And then on the other hand, could you tell me a conspiracy theory that was ludicrous?
that a person believed even though you thought there's no way anyone could literally believe it, but yet they signaled to you that they did believe it.
Let me start with the last one, with the really crazy, insane idea that someone pretty sure actually believed in. Because I spoke, I met a person who had set up... kind of a stand with tents and food on Whitehall in London and was trying to get across the idea that everyone in Buckingham Palace is a reptile and is trying to mess with not just the UK, but...
really try to basically run the world and was behind all the problems, combined all kinds of ideas about they're manipulating the weather, they are trying to... Mix with non-reptilians to have children who can then somehow read your mind. And almost everyone by now is.
either a reptile or a half reptile. He really believed in all of these crazy ideas. And there were even, there were people stopping at his stand and asking him questions. And he was, I think also, he had some mental health issues and he was clearly... He was on a hunger strike actually, so he was also completely, by that time, completely exhausted and probably had perhaps hallucinations. But that was quite a scary encounter.
Because I did then see a couple of people and I chatted to them who actually stopped. Most of them have said, what crazy bullshit is that? But there were a few that actually stopped and engaged in the conversations. And you could see there were some things where... it clicked in people's minds. And I still don't exactly know why, but there were people who were clearly susceptible to it.
And for example, there was one person who stopped by and wanted to talk about chemtrails, about apparent weather manipulation and the chemtrails that supposedly cause toxic rain that potentially even genetically... modifies us and where there is also a bigger plot behind that. So that was, I guess, one of these stories where it was hard to believe, but they were serious. And before you move on, what I take from this...
Dear Mega Orderers, is there is something in us which likes mystical thinking. The human being is attracted to religion. It's attracted to myth. And even though the idea that there are lizard people who live in Buckingham Palace doesn't appear to be a religious myth of the kind that evolution would have selected for in us. it taps into something in some people's DNA or evolutionary longings or whatever, right?
Absolutely. And that's also why I think some of the most successful authoritarian leaders and even semi-authoritarian leaders have used, have tried to tap into that human bias of religiosity and have tried to paint themselves. as divinely chosen or as having supernatural powers of having some kind of, or even being a prophet and being able to predict apocalyptic events.
Are you saying that some leaders might, for example, say that they were saved by God to make America great again, and that a bullet might have missed their ear because of divine providence? Would someone come up with such a crazy idea? It is extremely effective. And I do think that boosted Trump's success a lot before the election. I mean, it is extremely powerful. And we've seen other leaders succeed with exactly that tactic.
Kim Jong-un is using it all the time, like this idea of having supernatural powers. Or if you think about some of the dictators in African states. The Gambia's brutal leader, Yaya Chameh, he kept saying that he's able to cure HIV, AIDS and even asthma with his bare hands and that he's able to foresee the future. And there is something, and I think you put it exactly the right way, in us, there's a very human need almost, or at least a desire for the supernatural and for deeply...
of mystical and religious beliefs. The mega-orderers may not know one of my superpowers is that sometimes if I'm having very bad Wi-Fi, I can make it better by turning it off, turning it back on. And then I get better signal and we can record the podcast. I'm extremely unique in having this superpower. And it's very useful sometimes to be able to deploy this power. to make a podcast. So can we hear the other story now? An example of the first phenomenon is when...
anti-trans communities spread ideas about transgender policies and pro-trans policies actually being a gateway to transhumanism. So basically the idea that The establishment is trying to implant all of us microchips or lead us in the direction of being partly artificial and being a tool for mass surveillance.
And trans rights being basically a vehicle to get there. So that is an idea that has a clear... political strategy behind it and where I don't think anyone really believes in it but it's of course it's more of a metaphor and it stands for something and it has a strategic value to those who promote it. I think that we've really exposed a lot of the Mamanidean or dare we say platonic aspect of conspiracy theories.
i.e. the conspiracy theory is multi-layered and accomplishes different things. When promoted by elites, it has one meaning. When supported by the masses, it might tap into some people's biology. It has an exoteric aspect. It may have certain esoteric aspects.
What I want to try to get at is does each conspiracy theory encode a view of the social order? So that if you looked at the lizard one that we've just discussed or... certain QAnon ideas or certain ideas that the incels have about conspiracies, that it encodes... a view of the social order of the relationality of in-groups and out-groups and the listener in a coherent social order, the way that religion can convey.
a multi-layered social order, but maybe a lot of conventional political programs fail to convey that these days. I think most conspiracy myths do indeed have a social order theory ingrained in them. And those are also usually the ones that are most dangerous because they have a clear idea of who's in power and perhaps for the wrong reasons and is exploiting these powerful positions. sessions.
But there are some conspiracy myths that are basically, I think, just acting as a form of coping mechanisms, filling an information vacuum with random pieces of information that don't really fit together, that are not based on any kind of scientific evidence. For example, why the death of Princess Diana or 9-11 happened, as originally some of those conspiracy myths don't necessarily have a social order explanation. But you've hit something key here.
which is that one thing that conspiracy theories do is they can be dead cats for real policy issues. And we've been speaking a lot about dead catting because... I think that the disorder which we are descending into as a civilization has to do with the ways in which the internet can be used to dead cat us completely from the concentration of wealth.
and power that tech elites have been able to amass over the last 15 to 20 years. We spoke about this last week with George Monbiot and his view of conspiracy theories whether they're focused on great replacement or Jews or the vaccine, they dead cat from the fact that if everyone was really talking about what has changed in my short lifetime.
of less than five decades if we were really talking about those social changes people would be outraged and they would want a political program to stop it whereas if whole groups of people are spending their political engagement energy primarily concerned about preventing vaccines from causing autism or trying to defeat a cabal of elite pedophiles, it goes without saying that they can't be focused on...
win-win international solutions to tackle tax havens. Do you see this dead catting as a very important aspect of conspiracy theories? Yeah, so you mean almost a distraction mechanism. I guess, I mean, that is partly, I think, a tactic that has been used. And it's also I do think there is an additional dimension to it, though, I guess.
where we actually see hostile state actors have an interest in conspiracy myths and in the spread of conspiracy myths in, say, Europe or North America. And if we look, for example, at whether that's Putin or whether that's Iran, some of these... conspiracy myths are quite beneficial when they spread on scale across the EU or across the United States because they are so powerful in dividing.
and then also destabilizing things as they are. And we've, of course, seen what the spread of conspiracy myths led to in the past few years. And my colleagues and I at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, we actually ran a few data analysis during COVID. And we also found that there were clearly Russian... state propaganda outlets that were trying to push some of these anti-vaccine narratives and some of the conspiracy myths.
because there is something also clearly destabilizing and being a disruptive force that causes global disorder, but that is in the interest of hostile state actors. 100%. I mean, the thesis of this program is that the disordering is overt. That whether it's Putin or some Brexiteers... or some on the alt-right, Bannon is a classic example, he doesn't care exactly where the chips may fall. If it just strews disorder, that's good. So...
Conspiracy theories have a dead catting aspect which is disordering. They have other aspects which are disordering because of their mental and psychological implications for people. I think that this has been really useful. Could you sum up for the listeners what you think we've covered about how conspiracy theories are central?
to the new political movements of our day, the neo-populists, the AFD, the Trumpian movement, how would you explain in one minute the role that conspiracy theories play in those movements. Whether you look at the Trumpian right or the alternative for Germany in Germany or other far-right populist parties across Europe, including in my home country, the Freedom Party in Austria,
they all use very similar conspiracy myths. And it's really interesting because you even see the same slogan, sometimes all of them in English language, actually, and the same symbols at some of these protests or rallies of these parties. That shows that it's clearly a global phenomenon and they often tap into very similar types of grievances around climate change, climate action, or around liberal progressive policies, feminism, but also LGBTQ rights as well.
as, of course, migration policies and also how to deal with health issues and especially the topic of anti-vax misinformation that's been spreading there. But you see that they take the... opposite viewpoint to the centrist parties on all of these points. And it's a very powerful way of getting to people who are very upset with the current political situation or who feel that they need some kind of alternative.
And of course, conspiracy myths are also an alternative way of explaining reality. They also usually offer an alternative way out of things by basically scapegoating entire groups of populations. been incredible to see how similar all of these conspiracy myths are. in these different geographies. They're just tied to the local context, but they follow a very similar pattern.
I think that we've wrapped this up into a bow. We've extrapolated some reasons why conspiracy theories are so critical for extremist movements to function in the modern world. The kind of hate or the nature of the political program that they want to put forward would not be acceptable to the mainstream. And if they articulated it, they would draw resistance.
So by having a multi-layered conspiratorial political program, they can reach some segments that may not agree with all their core tenants, but they also are not exposing themselves to so many detractors. That is absolutely critical and so fascinating. I hope that you mega orderers have enjoyed this episode as much as I have. And wow, have I loved chatting with Julia today.
And that you join us when we are back, when we discuss how Julia's research sheds light on how extremist ideas become mainstreamed. and how the voicing of ever more radical and more conspiratorial and more hateful ideas actually pushes our political discourse towards those extremes. It's a shocking and interesting and frightening episode. And then we order the disorder about what we can do to combat extremism online. As always.
Our producer has been the one, the only, the George McDonough. Our executive producer is Neil Fern. As always, please follow the links in the show notes to the sub stack where we're going to put more videos of... Julia, speaking about a range of topics from de-radicalization to infiltrating extremist groups. We think that you'd like her book, Going Mainstream, Why Extreme Ideas Are Spreading and What We Can Do About It.
And also her PhD supervisor and our mutual friend Harvey Whitehouse's book. That is Inheritance. It's just come out again in paperback now. As always, I am wishing you an orderly and extremist-free week. The political landscape has changed. The country is changing direction. It's a big moment and a very, very difficult one. The New Statesman podcast is here to help you understand what's really going on in Westminster.
and beyond. I think there's a sense in Downing Street that this is the vision, this is the narrative, this is the plan. I'm Hannah Barnes. Join me, Andrew Marr, the New Statesman's politics team and political guests every Thursday and Friday. Search The New Statesman in your podcast app now.