The Other Pandemic review: Can smart reframing fight conspiracies?

The Other Pandemic review: Can smart reframing fight conspiracies?

Comment

James Ball’s clever take on conspiracy theories is to see them as public health emergencies. But will it really help us fight the likes of QAnon?

By Chris Stokel-Walker

Win McNamee/Getty Images

The Other Pandemic: How QAnon contaminated the world
James Ball (Bloomsbury)

Nearly six years ago, a global conspiracy movement was born in real time. A post on the website 4chan’s /pol/ board ignited a series of conspiracies, which, when layered on top of each other, can be plausibly linked to everything from the attack on the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021 to the ongoing protests against so-called 15-minute cities in the UK.

That conspiracy movement is QAnon. It is an outlandish and nonsensical conspiracy theory, alleging that there is a global cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles who are …

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