Yes. We live in increasingly uncertain times in which conspiracy theories have become less concerned with questioning the extent to which centralised power can manipulate accounts of its interventions and are more likely to give succour to extremists. Anti-Semitism has become rife on both the political right and left and is supported by nonsensical canards like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in one of its many guises. Similar fictions circulate regarding other persecuted communities. The opportunity for rational discussion of any topic of current concern becomes undermined by the blurring  of the terms of discussion by ‘alternate facts’, ‘fake news’ and conspiracy theories.

The world is increasingly complex. Within a generation digital technologies have transformed what we know of ourselves both individually and as nations, societies, economies and cultures. I wrote the following elsewhere whilst discussing the use of memes in conspiracy cultures on 4chan:

This is a bleak and frightened response to a world of change: a retreat from and surrender to the complexity of the kind of subjective becoming that digital global capital demands of us. The alt-right have intuited the end of existing order and have used tactics of confusion and irrationality to build a wall made of conspiracy, paranoia, magic and memes around themselves. – https://randomforest.site/dissecting-pepe/

Initially, I set this WordPress site up to host a call for papers for a conference and edited collection I’m organising/editing but it makes sense to me to use this site for more than that. The purpose for this blog, then, is to undo these tendencies and expose the nature of the conspiracy theories that circulate in these times.