Only one way to stop the conspiracy theories George Christensen is spreading

The conspiracy theory that the army was rounding up at gunpoint and holding Indigenous people down to forcefully vaccinate them seems to have developed out of an increasingly feverish dialogue between the US and Australia.

US libertarians and pro-freedom groups were shocked by the record Australia set for the longest lockdown in the world (in Victoria) and heavy-handed crackdowns on pandemic protests in Victoria and NSW. Pro-gun groups saw in these a justification for the US Second Amendment, a constitutionally enshrined right for citizens to arm themselves originally intended to protect new America against the tyranny of government in the old world.

Australian conspiracy theorists fed the myth developing 10,000 miles away with stories that fit the narrative, if not the facts. As outback drug and alcohol case manager Matthew Blackwell writes, “Those of us who live in the Northern Territory have watched in astonishment as British and American pundits with huge audiences have breathlessly promoted … lunatic claims.” The theory was amplified in the US by YouTube personality Tim Pool, who broadcast it to his 1 million followers.

Essays attempting to set the record straight were published on ideas website Quillette, which has a significant readership in the US. This put a target on Quillette editor Claire Lehmann’s head. Lehmann was attacked by thousands of US Twitter accounts demanding to know why she was “an apologist for a totalitarian state”.

Cheekily she then shared Instagram photos of young Australians quarantining at the Howard Springs Quarantine Facility, looking for all the world as if they were on holidays, drawing the ire of the conspiracists who insist on describing the facility as a “concentration camp”.

This is a characterisation that most Australians might have first heard when it made the leap from the conspiracy-web to the mainstream as a result of MP George Christensen’s acquiescence to the description used by Infowars presenter Alex Jones.

Jones is known in the US for his whacko claims. He has even claimed that a school shooting in the US had been faked by gun control advocates. Christensen, in the interview, urged Infowars’ international viewers to protest outside Australian embassies internationally.

These stories feed alternative realities that can be useful for their authors. In the US, the story that freedom is failing abroad creates a politically useful siege mentality. In Australia, it creates an election platform for extremists.

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The Russians know that when one side nurses a theory and the other mocks it, chaos and disunity start to discredit democracy. They don’t care which party benefits in any given election, but that the party system loses all round. The US myth-makers can create the same polarisation here. There is only one way to dispel a conspiracy theory and that is to admit to the grain it is built around. Only then can we debunk the wild elaborations of mischievous minds.