Documentary Worth Watching

Last night, Monika and I watched the most recent PBS Frontline documentary, The United States of Conspiracy. As can be inferred from the picture above, Alex Jones is a major figure in the picture. Last year, I read Jon Ronson's book on Jones, The Elephant in the Room, so much of the material was familiar to me. But I will say that the Frontline documentary is able to give a visceral sense of just how dangerous one conspiracy theory has become. Consider both PizzaGate and Sandy Hook, as examples where a conspiracy with no evidence drove people to commit acts that resulted in actual crimes.

The publisher describes the book as follows:

Both the book and the PBS Frontline episode are excellent and worth your time.

Let me end this entry by point out the following. Whilee Jones has mostly had his platforms for broadcasting and making money taken away, another dangerous conspiracy theory has taken hold. QAnon. Consider how wikipedia describes the theory:

QAnon^[a] (/kjuːəˈnɒn/) is a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by an alleged "deep state" against U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters. The theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by someone using the name Q, who was presumably an American individual initially, but probably later became a group of people, claiming to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States. Analysis by NBC News found that three people took the original Q post and expanded it across multiple media platforms to build internet followings for monetization. QAnon was preceded by several similar anonymous 4chan posters such as FBIAnon, HLIAnon (high level insider), CIAAnon and WH Insider Anon.

Q has falsely accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of an international child sex trafficking ring. Q also claimed that Donald Trump feigned collusion with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros.^[14][15][16] "Q" is a reference to the Q clearance used by the Department of Energy. QAnon believers commonly tag their social media posts with the hashtag #WWG1WGA, signifying the motto "Where We Go One, We Go All".

QAnon adherents began appearing at Trump re-election campaign rallies during the summer of 2018. TV and radio personality Michael "Lionel" Lebron, a promoter of the theory, was granted a photo opportunity with President Trump in the Oval Office on August 24, 2018. Bill Mitchell, a broadcaster who promotes the QAnon conspiracy theory, attended a White House "social media summit" in July 2019. According to analysis conducted by Media Matters, through July 7, 2020 Trump had amplified QAnon messaging at least 185 times by retweeting or mentioning 114 QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts, sometimes multiple times a day.