A State of Fear: How the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, Laura Dodsworth [the two towers ebook .txt] 📗

plague, or even Spanish flu, and yet you are told it is the greatest threat in peacetime, what do you make of the panic? If you are told it is best for everyone to quarantine, including the sick, the potentially infectious and the healthy, even though that has never happened before, and you foresee economic devastation, what are you to make of the government using such a destructive policy without precedent or evidence?

What if it feels like everyone around you is being inducted into a cult, using brand new language you don’t relate to, the emotions flicking disorientatingly between fear and love-bombing, and punishments for dissent are mandated, rewards for compliance seep into society, but you were impervious to the programming?

People look for answers. Some people grow ‘conspiracy theory’ in this gap between rationality and reality. A conspiracy theory is a theory about a plot which is carried out in secret, with a sinister end goal. The term has a negative connotation, the implication being that the conspiracy is based on insufficient evidence, or prejudice, or stupidity. Generally, it’s considered that decent journalism, state-sponsored inquiries, whistleblowers and Freedom of Information requests are the bedrock of uncovering conspiracies. Until they are proven, they are ‘conspiracy theories’. State-sponsored inquiries are slow. Whistleblowers don’t always come forward. And when they do, the media don’t always want to go near them. It was Middle East Eye, not the broadsheets, which reported the extraordinary stories of government propaganda through RICU and external agencies employed by the unit. And Freedom of Information requests are sadly not a reliable way to extract information. In my own experience they go unanswered or responses can be avoidant.

Investigation and verifying claims is not straightforward. Absence of evidence could indicate that a theory is just a ‘conspiracy theory’, or it could mean the evidence is obscured for the time being. Although conspiracy theories have a bad reputation, some conspiracies turn out to be true, and people in power at the highest levels try and cover up what they are doing. In our own recent history in the UK there are weapons of mass destruction used to justify an invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the lies perpetrated by South Yorkshire Police after the Hillsborough disaster.

Actor Sean Ward was surprised to find out that he might feature in a BBC documentary ‘about people who have lost, or are losing loved ones down the conspiracy rabbit hole’ and families ‘ripped apart… by harmful conspiratorial belief’. A BBC TV researcher contacted Ward’s sister through her personal Facebook account and her work email.

Ward has been vocal about opposition to lockdown and also talked about vaccine concerns through his popular social media channels. The BBC researcher may perhaps characterise him as an ‘anti-vaxxer’ and conspiracy theorist. He also received ‘bad press’ – in his words – for attending anti-lockdown protests in London. But he feels his social media airings have been helpful to his followers and created a sense of community. Which is, of course, exactly the sort of influence the programme makers are concerned about – ‘blue ticks’ influencing in the wrong way.

Regardless of his beliefs and their veracity, the description of the programme in the email (which he forwarded to me to read) to Ward’s sister appeared to be quite one-sided, describing the ‘big issues’ of people with ‘huge numbers of followers’ sharing disinformation. They didn’t specify what the disinformation consisted of in Ward’s case though.

The email nodded to mental health issues, but this would be a very sensitive area for the documentary makers to manage without psychologically harming their contributors and the family members they are talking about. I spoke with Ward about how the approach, made to his family behind his back, had affected him. ‘I feel like I am easy-pickings because I spoke about mental health and suicidal thoughts in 2018,’ he told me. ‘Messaging my family feels very personal. This is especially painful because the BBC was my employer for years. My sister was quite worried about it the first time they approached her and now she is livid. She doesn’t think they really have the content they need and that’s why they need her.’

Ward’s sister did not want to contribute to the programme and the request had a sobering affect on the two of them. One can imagine that if families weren’t ‘ripped apart’ before the documentary, they might be after.

This chapter belies my own fascination with conspiracy theory and, of course, this is an ideal area of exploration for a documentary, but there is a danger of upholding the tropes so favoured during the epidemic of the ‘Covidiot’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’, and using denigration to suppress dissent, as discussed in Chapter 13, ‘The climate of fear’. Media appears never to have been so partisan and propagandist, even while purporting to be the opposite

I decided to research people who fall under the umbrella term ‘conspiracy theorist’. To be honest it was easy to uncover all kinds of theories among all kinds of people given that the gap between rationality and reality was more of a chasm. I interviewed two men, Steve and Alex, both of whom had pronounced theories and had taken action upon them.

Steve’s camouflage clothes and olive green Land Rover would have been well disguised in woodlands, but he was immediately obvious to me in the B&Q car park. Although cafés were open at the time, he’d wanted to meet somewhere anonymous, and suggested our salubrious setting. I got a coffee from the hot dog van and got into his car.

I knew Steve from his job as a security guard in a local shop. I’d been chatting to him throughout lockdown about how business had been, how people reacted when face masks were mandated, if the people in the store had caught Covid – every shopping trip is a research opportunity! In our many conversations we’d talked about what could be behind the UK government’s pandemic policies. We’d arranged to meet away from his place of work