Days after wildfires on Maui left dozens dead and destroyed thousands of homes in August, a surprising claim spread with alarming speed on YouTube and TikTok: the fire on the island of Hawaii
was deliberately lit
, using
energy weapons futuristic technologies
developed by the United States armed forces.
Claims that there was “evidence” of this quickly emerged:
a video on TikTok
showing a beam of blinding white light, too straight to be lightning, sweeping through a residential neighborhood, sending flames and smoke billowing upward. heaven.
The video was shared millions of times,
spread by neo-Nazi groups,
anti-government radicals and supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and presented as evidence that the rulers of the United States had turned against their citizens.
Lahaina, Hawaii, devastated by fire in August 2023. Photo: AP
“What if Maui was just a rehearsal?” asked a woman on TikTok.
“So the government can use a direct energy weapon against us?”
That TikTok video had nothing to do with the Maui fires.
In fact
, it was a recording of an explosion of an electrical transformer in Chile
that occurred some time before last year.
But that didn't stop a TikTok user
with a habit of posting conspiracy videos
from using the platform to sow more fear and doubt.
It was just one of several similar manipulated videos and images that were passed off as evidence that the wildfires had not been an accident.
Conspiracy theories
have a long history in the United States,
but now they can spread around the world in a matter of seconds, amplified by social media, further eroding the truth with a new destructive force.
With the United States and many other countries facing high-stakes elections in 2024, the dangers of the rapid spread of disinformation, using increasingly sophisticated technologies such as artificial intelligence,
also threaten democracy itself
, by emboldening extremist groups and foster distrust.
"What will happen when no one believes anything anymore?"
“I think the post-truth world could be a lot closer than we would like to believe,” said AJ Nash, vice president of intelligence at ZeroFox, a cybersecurity firm that monitors disinformation.
"What will happen when no one believes anything anymore?"
Extremists and authoritarians deploy disinformation
as a powerful weapon to recruit new followers and expand their reach, using
fake videos and photos
to mislead them.
And even when they fail to convince people, the conspiracy theories held by these groups
contribute to fostering distrust in authorities
and democratic institutions, causing people to reject reliable sources of information while fueling divisions and suspicions.
Melissa Sell, a 33-year-old Pennsylvania resident, is among those who
have lost faith in facts.
Melissa Sell, a 33-year-old Pennsylvania resident, is among those who have lost faith in facts.
Photo: AP
“If there is a big news story on television, most of the time
it is to distract us from something else.
Every time you turn around, there is another news story with another agenda that distracts us all,” he stated.
Sell believes the Maui wildfires could have been set intentionally, perhaps to distract the public, perhaps to test a new weapon.
“The government has been caught lying before.
How can we know?,” he asked.
The truth in the hands of technology
In the absence of meaningful federal regulation governing social media platforms, it is largely left
to Big Tech companies
to police their own sites, resulting in confusing and inconsistent rules and controls.
Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook, says she works to remove extremist content.
Platforms like X, as well as Telegram and far-right sites like Gab,
allow them to flourish.
Federal election officials and some lawmakers in the United States have suggested implementing regulations governing artificial intelligence, including rules that would force political campaigns to
label AI-generated images used in their ads
.
But those proposals would not affect the ability of extremist groups or foreign governments to use AI to deceive Americans.
Meanwhile, US-based tech platforms
have scaled back their programs to root out misinformation
and hate speech, following the lead of Elon Musk, who
fired most content moderators
when he bought X, then called Twitter.
Elon Musk, owner of X. Photo: Reuters
“It's been a big step backwards,” said Evan Hansen, a former Wired.com editor who was head of Twitter's content regulation department, who left when Musk bought the platform.
“For the common observer it has become very difficult to elucidate: what do I believe in here?”
Hansen said it will take a combination of government regulations, voluntary measures by tech titans and public awareness to regulate the coming wave of artificial content.
He noted that the war between Israel and Hamas
has already been the subject of an avalanche of fake
and manipulated photos and videos.
This year's elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world will create similar opportunities for digital fraud.
Disinformation spread by extremist groups and even politicians like former US President Donald Trump
can create the conditions for violence
by demonizing the opposing party, attacking democratic institutions and convincing their followers that they are in an existential struggle against of those who do not share their beliefs.
Trump has spread lies
about the election, about the voting process, and about his opponents
for years.
Building on his misleading claims about the existence of a hidden state that would control the federal government, he has echoed QAnon and other conspiracy theories and encouraged his followers to view the government as an enemy.
He even suggested that now-retired Army General Mark Milley, whom Trump himself nominated to be America's top military officer during his administration, was
a traitor and deserved to be executed
.
Milley said he has had to take safety precautions to protect his family.
The list of
incidents attributed to extremists
motivated by conspiracy theories
is growing
.
The January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, attacks on vaccination clinics, anti-immigration fervor in Spain, and anti-Muslim hate in India—all were carried out by people who believed in conspiracy theories about their opponents and who decided that violence was an appropriate response.
Polls and polls on conspiracy theories show that about half of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory, and those views rarely lead to violence or extremism.
But for some, these beliefs can lead to social isolation and radicalization, interfering with their relationships, career, and finances.
For an even smaller subgroup, they can lead to violence.
The reliable data that exists on crimes motivated by conspiracy theories shows
a worrying increase
.
In 2019, researchers from the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland identified six violent attacks in which the perpetrators said their actions were motivated by a conspiracy theory.
In 2020, the year of the most recent survey, there were 116.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, a Qanon member who participated in the storming of the Capitol.
Photo: AP
Laws aimed at curbing the power of social media and artificial intelligence to spread disinformation are unlikely to be passed before the 2024 election, and even if they are passed,
enforcing them will be challenging
, according to Vince Lynch, an expert in AI and general director of the technology company IV.AI.
“This is happening now, and it's one of the reasons our society seems so fragmented,” Lynch said.
“I hope that one day
there will be regulation of AI,
but we are already in an abnormal situation.
"I think it's too late."
For believers,
facts don't matter.
“You can create whatever universe you want,” said Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who studies online harassment and extremism.
“If the truth does not matter, and there is no accountability for these false beliefs, then
people will begin to act on them
. ”
Sell, the conspiracy theory believer who lives in Pennsylvania, said she began to lose trust in the government and the media shortly
after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School
in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 students and six educators dead.
Sell thought the gunman seemed too small and weak to carry out such a bloody act, and that the heartbreaking interviews with the bereaved relatives seemed too perfect, almost rehearsed.
Sell, believer in conspiracy theories.
Photo: AP
“It seemed like there was a script,” he noted.
“The pieces didn't fit.”
That idea — that the victims of the massacre
were actors hired
as
part of a plot to push gun control laws
— was spread most notably by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Families of Sandy Hook victims sued, and the host of Infowars, a conspiracy theory website, was later ordered to pay nearly $1.5 billion in damages.
Allegations that elected leaders and the media in the United States cannot be trusted are prevalent in many conspiracy theories linked to extremism.
In 2018, a Florida conspiracy theorist
sent pipe bombs
to CNN, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and other high-ranking Democrats;
This man's social media accounts were filled with posts about
child sacrifices and chemtrails
, the debunked claim that the vapor clouds generated by airplanes contain chemicals or biological agents used to control the population.
In another act of violence linked to QAnon, a California man was accused of using a harpoon gun to kill his two children in 2021. He told an FBI agent that he
had been enlightened by QAnon conspiracy theories
and had convinced that his wife "
possessed snake DNA
and had passed it on to her children."
In 2022, a Colorado woman was convicted of attempting to kidnap her son from a temporary custody facility after her daughter said she had begun associating with QAnon followers.
Other followers have been accused of environmental vandalism, shooting paintballs at military reservists, kidnapping a child in France and even killing a New York mafia boss.
The pandemic, an engine of conspiracies
The
coronavirus pandemic
, with the social isolation it entailed, created ideal conditions for new conspiracy theories as the virus spread fear and uncertainty around the world.
Vaccination clinics were attacked, doctors and nurses threatened.
5G cell phone towers were destroyed and burned as a wild theory spread that they were being used to activate microchips hidden in the vaccine.
Fears about vaccines led
a Wisconsin pharmacist to destroy a batch of sought-after immunizations,
while false claims about supposed COVID-19 treatments and cures led to hospitalizations and deaths.
Few recent events, however, show the power of conspiracy theories such as
the January 6, 2021 insurrection
, when thousands of Trump supporters breached the Capitol,
ransacked congressional offices, and clashed with police
in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election. Five people died.
More than 1,200 people have been charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot.
About 900 have pleaded or been found guilty after trials.
More than 750 have been sentenced, and about two-thirds have received some form of prison time, according to data compiled by The Associated Press.
Many of the defendants said they had believed Trump's conspiracy theories that the election had been stolen.
“We, that is,
Trump supporters, were lied to
,” defendant Robert Palmer wrote in a Jan. 6 letter to a judge, who subsequently sentenced him to more than five years in prison for attacking police.
“They kept spitting out
the false narrative about a stolen election
and how it was 'our duty' to stand up to tyranny.”
Many conspiracy theory believers reject any link between their beliefs and violence, and say they are blamed for the actions of a few.
Others insist that these incidents never occurred, and that events like the January 6 attack were actually false flag events concocted by the government and the media.
“Lies, lies, lies — they lie to you over and over again,” said Steve Girard, a Pennsylvania man who has protested the jailing of the Jan. 6 defendants.
He spoke to the AP while waving an oversized American flag on a busy Washington street.
The fault of politicians
Although they may have taken on a larger role in our politics, polls show that belief in conspiracy theories hasn't changed much over the years, according to Joe Uscinski, a professor at the University of Miami and an expert on the history of conspiracy theories.
Uscinski believes that, although the Internet helps spread conspiracy theories
, most of the blame lies with politicians
who take advantage of those who believe in them.
″Who was the biggest spreader of COVID misinformation: a guy with four followers on Twitter or
the president of the United States
?
The problem is our politicians,” said Uscinski.
"January 6 happened, and people said, 'Oh, this is Facebook's fault.'
No, the president of the United States told his followers to be in this place, at this time and to fight with all his strength.
The governments of Russia, China, Iran and other countries have also spread extremist content on social media as part of their attempts to destabilize Western democracy.
Moscow has amplified numerous anti-American conspiracy theories, including some that claim the United States runs secret germ warfare laboratories and created HIV as a biological weapon, as well as conspiracy theories that accuse Ukraine of being a Nazi state.
Covid a biological weapon
Beijing has helped spread claims that
Washington created COVID-19 as a biological weapon.
Tom Fishman, CEO of the nonprofit Starts With Us, said Americans can take steps to defend the fabric of society by turning off their computers and meeting with people they disagree with.
He noted that Americans must remember what unites them.
“We can look out the window and see harbingers of what could happen if we don't: threats to a functioning democracy, threats of violence against elected leaders,” he said.
“We have a civic duty to do it right.”