Over the last few years, I’ve watched a disturbing number of people I used to know fall victim to the radicalisation spiral. It’s unnerving watching acquaintances who seemed relatively normal suddenly become obsessed with antivaxxer propaganda or start retweeting Tommy Robinson. I suspect many readers know someone, even if only tangentially, who’s disappeared down an online rabbit hole. Obviously, radicalisation is not a new phenomenon. There have always been people prone to extreme ideological movements and cults. But social media has made it easier for those becoming radicalised to find like-minded people and for the rest of us to watch it happen in real time.
It’s also having a massive impact on politics. In an attention economy, people willing to say extreme things are a valuable commodity with increasing access to power. In the US, a radicalised former Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard, is Director of National Intelligence, conspiracist podcasters are in charge of the FBI, and a leading antivaxxer is Secretary of Health. And it can’t help but have an impact on the unradicalised who are spending more and more of their time trying to rebut nonsensical claims, using up energy that could be spent solving real problems.
As a result I’ve become fascinated with the question of why certain people seem more susceptible to the spiral than others. Some possibilities can be ruled out. It’s not about intelligence or education. Very smart and qualified people can spiral and indeed are often better at the cherry-picking required for convincing conspiracism. Nor is it about mental illness: we might talk colloquially about people “going crazy” or “losing their marbles” but there’s no correlation between actual medical conditions and radicalisation. It’s certaintly not about economic deprivation – it’s happened to the world’s richest man and plenty of others who are well off.
A few years ago Naomi Klein published an excellent book called “Doppelganger” about Naomi Wolf, who Klein got confused with so often it became a meme. Wolf went through a dramatic radicalisation spiral, going from leading feminist author to endorsing bizarre health-related conspiracies to becoming an antivaxxer and regular guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Klein offers an equation for the process: Narcissism(Grandiosity) + social media addiction + midlife crisis ÷ public shaming = Right-wing meltdown While she was being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, there is, as she says, “some truth to that bit of math”. But it needs broadening out.
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