THEY have been part of our global social and political landscape since before records began. I’m talking about conspiracy theories. Rarely though in my own lifetime can I remember a period like this when such theories have taken on a resonance and been embraced more readily by people one might otherwise regard as reasoned and level-headed.

It’s a moment the World Health Organisation (WHO) has called an infodemic, a time in which a wave of data is mixed up with falsehood sometimes with catastrophic effects.

At times, you could be forgiven for thinking that almost all rational thinking has been usurped by lurid or bizarre explanations and interpretation of the events that impact daily on our lives.

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The most obvious and widespread in recent times have been those surrounding the origins and response to the coronavirus pandemic. Was the virus a Chinese strategem designed to wage war on the US? Were 5G telecommunications masts used to spread the virus? Is it a grand plot allowing global elites to control the world’s citizens?

And so, the list of such scheming and sometimes downright ludicrous interpretations goes on.

It’s doesn’t matter whether it’s Covid, the war in Ukraine, climate change, race or gender politics, almost every sphere of our lives today is drip-fed by this pernicious flow sometimes deliberately with malign intent and potentially dangerous consequences.

For a long time such disinformation was largely consigned to the fringe thinking that was its natural habitat. But then along came the likes of political leaders like former US president Donald Trump who turned this upside down by helping push typically fringe theories into the mainstream. Most recently Trump did this by downplaying the pandemic and promoting the unsupported claim that the US presidential election had been stolen from him.

As Peter Ditto a social psychologist at the University of California Irvine, explained just after the assault on the US Capitol in January 2021, Trump “weaponised motivated reasoning”.

It was Trump, of course, during his presidency who frequently retweeted followers linked to the outlandish conspiracy theory QAnon, a narrative which at its heart is a massively encompassing completely unfounded theory that elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles exist in government, business and the media and that Trump is fighting them. QAnon believers have also speculated that this fight will lead to a day of reckoning.

On the face of it, such thinking is as absurd as it sounds, but what’s far less preposterous is the extent to which QAnon-style conspiracy theories have spread across western democracies. For evidence of this, look no further than events yesterday in Germany where the authorities arrested 25 alleged right-wing radicals suspected of planning to overthrow the state in a violent coup.

In what has been described as the biggest police operation Germany has ever launched against suspected extremists, a statement from the federal prosecutors office said those arrested were suspected of being members or supporters of a “domestic terrorist organisation”.

According to Deutsche Presse-Agentur news agency, members of the group were motivated by conspiracy theories such as QAnon and were linked to the “Reichsburger” (citizens of the Reich), a radical right-wing movement that doesn’t recognise the authority of the federal republic. “They are completely convinced that Germany is governed by members of the so-called deep state,” it said. Sound familiar?

Some members of the Reichsburger are said to be devoted to the German empire under monarchy, while some are adherents of Nazi ideas and others believe Germany is still under military occupation.

Their plot appears to have envisaged a former member of a German royal family, identified as Heinrich XIII P R under Germany’s privacy law, as leader in a future state while another suspect, Ruediger v P, was the head of the military arm, the prosecutors’ office said.

While the whole affair might appear to have the whiff of some over-imagined fictional thriller, the reality according to German prosecutors, is that the group’s military arm include former soldiers from the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces and that they planned to violently overthrow democratic institutions in German town and cities including the Bundestag, the country’s parliament.

What’s really significant here is the way shared narratives have facilitated the connectivity between the likes of QAnon conspiracy theories and far right extremism. In this regard, Germany is far from unique in having followed the US example.

AS the advocacy group Hope not Hate which campaigns against racism and fascism has highlighted, that same “intermingling” exists here in the UK too.

In a passage on its website entitled “The Conspiracist Crossover”, it describes how this process works.

“Conspiracy theories and populism both employ a binary worldview that divides societies between corrupt or evil elites and the pure unknowing people, a framework that contextualises fears and hardships by personifying them into an identifiable enemy.” And as the accepted thinking goes and night follows day, “belief in one conspiracy theory signifies an openness to others”.

It’s long been recognised that such theories always tend to surface in times of crisis and unrest. In that respect, rarely can there have been more fertile political terrain for such thinking to take root than right now in a post pandemic world, where a major war in Europe resulting from the Russian invasion of Ukraine is also having a huge global impact.

Yes, conspiracy theories are nothing new, having been with us over the ages and used by powerful figures, but evidence garnered during that time also shows that they often have profound consequences for people’s political intentions.

While some who subscribe to such theories often show a diminishing trust in politics, for others, they act as what’s been described as a “radicalising multiplier” for extremist thinking.

If there are lessons to be learned from all of this, it’s the dangers in these infodemic times of dismissing those who believe in such theories as simply fringe-thinking cranks.

As yesterday’s uncovered coup plot in Germany highlighted, never has there been a more pressing need for identifying truth and kicking back against lies and misinformation.