The Major Conspiracy Theories of This Election Cycle

Let's take a look at five charming conspiracy theories we've faced leading up to November 5.

Hi,

It seems like a very, very long time ago now — but Webworm basically started as a newsletter about conspiracy theories (tending to debunk rather than spread, don’t worry). It’s almost alarming how much I wrote about them, a look through the archive the weirdest trip down memory lane.

Today, with the US election only 18 days away, conspiracy theories certainly haven’t stopped. With that in mind, I’m going to revisit some of the major conspiracy theories of this election cycle — guided by conspiracy expert Mike Rothschild.

But first, just quickly — a few bits of news.

Israel has killed Hamas’ top leader, Yahya Sinwar, in Southern Gaza. This generated the least surprising headline of all time:

Of course the war hasn’t ended: Israel hasn’t killed every Palestinian yet. I’ve been listening a lot to this record all week, released by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. They called the album “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD”. I can’t stop thinking about it. It was 28,340 on February 13, and for the rest of my life, whenever I play it, the question will always be, “what’s the death count now?”

Following on from my piece on capital punishment last month, a Texas judge has blocked the execution of Robert Roberson 90 minutes before he was set to die.

For now.

Robertson’s conviction was mostly based on junk science and the fact investigators didn’t realise he was autistic, thinking his lack of emotion was deeply suspicious. As lawyer Doug Gladden noted on Twitter, things had not been looking good a week ago:

“Two days ago, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that “shaken baby syndrome” is junk science. Today, the Court decided that Texas can execute a man who was convicted based on that same junk-science evidence. And they couldn’t even be bothered to explain why.”

Closer to New Zealand, a few other things jumped out. Josh Drummond has re-listed his painting of New Zealand’s Prime Minister on TradeMe, after the auction site canceled his listing for reasons clearly political. He’s called it “A Redacted Painting of Christopher Luxon”, adding that it is “Guaranteed Family Friendly & Buyer Safe.”

The artist told Webworm, “I emailed TradeMe half a dozen times or so asking what alterations to the painting might make it okay. They didn’t get back to me so I decided to paint the entire background pitch black. It should be too dark now for anyone to see anything even slightly suggestive.”

I urge you to check out the Q&A section on the auction in case TradeMe pulls it again. It’s fun.

Finally, New Zealand is currently experiencing a political scandal for the ages:

National Minister Andrew Bayly has apologised for his conduct on a ministerial visit earlier this month. A business employee formally complained after the visit, saying Bayly told him to “fuck off” and repeatedly called him a loser, making an ‘L’ with his fingers on his forehead.

Andrew Bayly is the minister of small business, and Webworm would like to state that he is not welcome in the small business Webworm’s office (aka my apartment).

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Looking Back At The Major Conspiracy Theories of This US Election Cycle

That is Russell Brand, and yes, he is wearing a magical amulet. A magical amulet that apparently protects against the evils of 5G.

Why am I talking about a failed comedian turned failed actor turned conspiracy theorist turned huckster Russell Brand?

Well, when this clip popped up last month it reminded me how strange this election cycle has gotten.

Because when I started thinking about Russell Brand, it reminded me that he’d recently become a born again Christian and had teamed up with self-help guru Jordan Peterson to help campaign for Donald Trump.

A British man accused of rape and sexual assault joining forces with a Canadian who eats nothing but beef and hate trans people.

What the hell was going on.

As Webworm has previously noted, the Brit and the Canadian were at a very American event called “Rescue the Republic”, organised by American podcaster Dr Bret Weinstein, a man who’s previously made a lot of false claims about Covid and HIV/AIDS. The event ended in a lot of praying and talk of “true democracy”.

Talk of “True democracy” at a rally for Donald Trump was a reach, considering the former reality TV star incited a riot at the Capitol over false claims of a stolen election.

The whole thing has felt quite odd.

To get some perspective on the last few months, I wanted to talk to conspiracy expert Mike Rothschild. Mike is one of my favourite experts when it comes to conspiracy theory culture, writing a book called The Storm is Coming which I think everyone should read.

Yes, he is aware his surname “Rothschild” is quite funny when you consider what he does — which is why his last book was called Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories.

“This election cycle has definitely turned into a blur. It’s kind of like taking three different flavors of oatmeal and mixing them all together. They’re a little bit different — but at the end of the day, they’re all oatmeal. So you just kind of have a mush that tastes like a bunch of different things.

The crazy has been a little bit different with every election cycle.

I think with 2016, there was this thought that Trump can’t possibly win. This is ridiculous. He’s just doing this to launch a TV network or something. No one expected him to win. He didn’t expect to win. You go back to the clips on election night, he’s standing there looking just totally stunned.

2020 of course was Covid — the two oldest presidential candidates in history running against each other.

And 2024 has been the Democratic switch, Trump’s completely obvious decay, the economy, the rumors, the conspiracy theories.

So it’s all a little bit different. It’s also kind of the same.”

It’s the same in that yes, there are always conspiracy theories. But I thought it would be nice to run through some of the ones that have been buzzing around in the lead up to today.

Firstly — what spun out of that first assassination attempt on Donald Trump on July 13th in Pennsylvania. 

1. The Assassination Conspiracy

I said “first assassination attempt” because yes, there were a few. But it was that first one really got people blabbing and theorizing — on both the left and the right.

“I really think that the conspiracy theories about the assassination attempt are absolutely fascinating because you are taking in events and you are looking at it in two completely different ways.

The far right — the rabidly pro-Trump sphere — think this was a deep state hit job that was foiled literally by God flicking his cosmic finger and nudging the bullet out of the way. Never mind the other guy who got killed and the shooter who got killed — Trump was saved by divine providence to lead America to the promised land.

And on the anti-Trump side, the whole thing is staged, it’s all fake, Trump was working with the Secret Service to pop up at just the right amount of time with the flag there at the right angle.

So you’re seeing two different sides of this political spectrum looking at the same thing and finding totally different approaches to it. And I don’t happen to think either one of them are true — but I’ve seen so many people invested in either one of them being true, without actually really thinking about, “Well, I don’t think that God saved Trump from being shot in the head. I also don’t think that Trump would allow somebody to shoot at him and hit his ear rather than his head. He’s too vain for that.”

So that one just fascinated me because I could see it happening in real time. The calcification of points of view was happening minute by minute on social media before we even really knew what had happened.”

Conspiracy theorists on the right said it was planned by the Democrats — terms like “ANTIFA” trending almost immediately on places like Twitter or X or whatever it’s called these days, where conspiracies were amplified thanks to retweets by Elon Musk.

Marjorie Taylor Greene jumped in saying “Democrats wanted this to happen” and US representative Mike Collins said that Joe Biden “Sent the order”.

Conspiracy theorists on the left claimed it was staged by Republicans, with a lot of talk of false flag and crisis actors. Thanks, BlueAnon.

2. The Geo-Engineered Hurricane Milton Conspiracy Theory

Another big conspiracy that emerged was around Hurricane Milton, which descended on Florida earlier this month. As horror writer Stephen King tweeted — “What a stupid name for a hurricane.”

Hurricane Milton followed Hurricane Helene which had hit two weeks earlier… and it was BIG.

But of course a storm can’t just be a storm: This is America, so there has to be a conspiracy of some kind. Some kind of diabolical plan with political motivations.

There was the theory — false, and repeated by Trump — that specific hurricane relief funds were being diverted to migrants.

Others claimed democrats had geo-engineered the whole thing in order to kill Florida’s republican voter base. Marjorie Taylor Green weighed in again of course, tweeting “Yes, they control the weather” — not making it clear who “THEY” were. 

Others thought images were fake when they were real, and everyone’s parents shared that one AI photo of a kid with a dog thinking it was real.

THIS IS CLEARLY NOT REAL GOOD GOD WHY DO WE HAVE BRAIN ROT.

“We are now so immersed in the idea of, “How does this fit into our narrative? Who is lying to us about this? How can we work this into the things that we already believe and use it against the people who we don't like?”

Anything that happens at any point is now going to be grist for conspiracism.

Weather control theories are nothing new. The one thing that I was amused by was the far right people who were claiming “FEMA is not here! We’re not getting what we need from FEMA! We tried to get our StarLink terminals and FEMA wouldn't give them to us!”

These are the people who 15 years ago thought FEMA was going to put them in an internment camp. This was still the party of Ronald Reagan who said the nine most dangerous words in the English language are, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

Now suddenly Donald Trump is running for office and like they can’t get enough stuff from FEMA. So really to me the most interesting thing was pointing out how it became a real inversion of what the far right used to be.”

3. The Incredibly Racist Cats and Dogs Conspiracy Theory

The third big conspiracy theory that spun out of control this election cycle was the whole cats and dogs thing. You know the one:

“Watching that happen felt like one of those old chain emails or fax blasts that somebody would send you about, you know, you flash your lights at an oncoming car that doesn’t have its lights on is a gang initiation — they’re going to murder you.

It felt that ridiculous and kind of whispered and salacious and it just kept going and going and going. And it was so close to the debate that I watched him going, “Trump’s going to talk about this. Trump’s going to talk about this.”

And ten minutes into it, he’s screaming it! “They’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs.”

And for me, I’m looking at this going — this has been happening on these sort of darkest pits of far right social media. If you're not living in those spaces, if you're not following the influencers who are relentlessly pushing that stuff, it sounds like the man is having a stroke. It sounds like just brain rot.

And I'm thinking to myself, “How many people understand what that’s supposed to mean?” Now everyone knows what it’s supposed to mean because the former president and maybe soon to again be president is screaming about it because he’s taking the bait, because Kamala Harris is needling him about what his rally attendance is like. He’s just waiting for some sort of excuse to talk about the cat eating as opposed to anything that was actually going to affect people’s daily lives.”

4. The Birther Thing Didn’t Catch on So Let’s Talk About McDonalds (an Ode to a Failed Conspiracy Theory)

There is no denying that Donald Trump loves a conspiracy theory — they’re his bread and butter — and he was lobbing a lot of them directly at his opponent this election to see what would stick.

This was nothing new for him. Same shit, different day.

“You know it's been interesting to watch some of the previous generations of conspiracy theories try to get repurposed and not quite work for a couple of days after Kamala Harris took the nomination.

There was this real effort to revive the birther thing of like, “Her dad’s Jamaican, and she's not a natural born citizen.” And I think everybody went like, “No, we’re not doing this again.” And you saw that very quickly fade away.

And now the only real conspiracy theory that’s stuck about her past is whether she worked at McDonald’s or not when she was 19, which Trump just talks about endlessly.”

But it’s been interesting to watch some of those previous things, just not quite catching on. Maybe it shows that we’ve learned a little bit… or we’ve just gotten dumber about different things.”

5. The Rigged Election Conspiracy Theory

We can’t cover election theory conspiracies without mentioning the one that stuck years ago: The idea that the last election was rigged and that Trump actually won.

It’s so ingrained that Trump’s vice presidential nominee has to embarrassingly just go along with it, transformed into the equivalent of a talking potato.

Speaking on The Daily podcast on October 12, JD Vance did that thing many politicians tend to do… refusing to answer very simple questions. Somehow, this one just seemed a bit more embarrassing, though.

“You know, I think at this point it’s become so orthodox on the right that you kind of have to toe the line of, “The election was rigged, the election was stolen.”

Yes, there was no evidence of voter fraud that we know of, but there were many irregularities. And you sort of answer the question without actually answering it. You leave it open for people to, you know, do their own research. You don’t definitively say, “Yes, Trump lost. He did not run a good campaign. We’re going to give it another try. We have the right message for America, blah, blah, blah.”

They can’t even say four years later that he actually lost the election. And one of the things I’m kind of hopeful for is I’m really hoping that Kamala Harris wins by enough of a margin that we don't really see the enthusiasm for another go at “stop the steal”, because if you’re Donald Trump and you’ve allowed the deep state to rig one election, that’s one thing. But if you're Donald Trump and you've now allowed the deep state to rig two elections — at some point you just can’t quite muster up the enthusiasm anymore.

And of course, a lot of the big stolen election influencers have suffered some real consequences because of this. Hundreds of people involved with January 6th have gone to prison. A lot of the other major figures, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, people like Patrick Byrne, you know, they’ve gone broke. They've gone bankrupt. They’ve been disgraced. They’ve been disbarred. You wonder if people are really going to do this again for Trump when it’s so clear that he just doesn’t have the juice anymore.

So, you know, it’s hard to make that kind of lightning strike twice. There’ll be some kind of insanity after the election. But I just wonder if maybe it’s kind of hard to get that worked up again.”

Mike’s Parting Words

With those conspiracy theories covered — I wonder where Mike Rothschild’s brain is at now the election is almost here.

“I’m desperate for it to be over. It has just consumed everything about everything over the last two years, really.

But also it kind of feels like it just started because it’s only been Trump versus Harris for three months. So it really is this kind of funhouse mirror where it feels like it’s been going on forever. And it also feels like it just started. So I am very desperate for it to be over.

I want to know how it ends.

I want to know what's going to happen afterwards, what kind of reaction there’s going to be from the far right.

I mean, Democrats just love doom and gloom and we just soak in it. I think a lot of it is 2016 trauma. Yeah, I think she’s going to win. I think that this country is just sick of him. And a lot of moderate conservatives just want him to go away and have a Republican Party that you can actually feel good about talking about and voting for again.

If I had to guess, I think the electoral map is going to look a lot like 2020. I think we might see Georgia flipped to the Republicans just because it was such a razor thin margin last time. I think we might see North Carolina flipped to the Democrats because they’re running the “black Nazi” for governor. I mean, I don’t know how you get ticket splitting with Kamala Harris and the black Nazi. I mean, I just don’t see that.”

The Black Nazi reference went right over my head — I did a quick Google and there’s a lot of reporting on this:

“Mark Robinson, the controversial and socially conservative Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina, made a series of inflammatory comments on a pornography website’s message board more than a decade ago, in which he referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” and expressed support for reinstating slavery.”

Totally normal stuff. I mean fuck, who is posting on porn sites? Don’t you just go there and watch porn and then leave? Who’s sticking around to chat? I guess now we know.

But back to Mike on his thoughts about November 5 - obviously, from listening to him, he doesn’t want Trump to win.

I feel pretty good about it. I think she’s massively outraising him. Her ground game is so much stronger than his. He is disintegrating day by day. She’s running a really solid campaign. I think we’re going to look back on this and see were really, really worried about something that just didn’t happen.

It always sits in the back of your mind: Is she doing enough in Wisconsin? Is she doing enough in Pennsylvania? But last time was very different. I think a lot of people really looked at Trump as a viable alternative. He was a businessman and he was going to run the country like a CEO. And it was Hillary Clinton, and a lot of people just really hated Hillary Clinton. And a lot of people were like, “Well, I don’t like Trump, but I hate her.” And so they voted for Trump.

And then once you start voting for Trump, it’s like the gateway drug of insanity and you start to defend it more and more, you dig in more and more, you vote for him again. You defend him more.

But some people have broken out of that cycle. But I think that the shock of that initial moment of, “it is not going well” has never really left us. And I don’t know that will until Trump is really finally off the national stage.”

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I’m curious what, in the land of conspiracy theories, has stood out to you over the last few months? There are plenty of others floating around. The rigging of the Super Bowl for the Chiefs so Taylor Swift could sway the presidency, or for those that follow the royal family, all the horrific body-double “Kate Gate” stuff back in March.

As Mike said — I’m kind of just desperate for it to be over.

And niggling in the back of my head is the fact this US system favours only two parties, and both options don’t look very good if you’re Palestinian which makes voting for the saner option of the two still feel like a kick in the guts.

Not that I can vote. I’m just standing here, useless, watching.

David.