Anti-Globalists

Extremists spread rumours about false-flag operations and crisis actors on social media

"Anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist at a Tea Party Express rally" by Fibonacci Blue is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Kate Starbird is an associate professor at the University of Washington. She discovered the anti-globalist movement by accident. She was studying how information flows around the world after a disaster, when she began to notice similar rumours about crisis actors and false-flag attacks every time something went wrong in the world. She started tracking 80 websites that generated the speculation and noticed that the misinformation was amplified on Twitter, particularly by Russian bots.

The academic says that these rumours are nurtured by an anti-globalist ecosystem, which spans the far-left and the far-right. Common themes include strong opposition to science and democratic governments in the West. Anti-globalists tend to also oppose immigration and structures like the European Union, which are designed to overcome nationalism by letting any European live wherever they like in Europe.

Anti-globalists tend to exemplify many of the mistakes we have talked about throughout the Sharpen Your Axe project. Many of their theories are just guesses. They tend to work backwards from an event to an alleged cause. Their methodology tends to be weak. Their speculation is designed to defend an imperfect worldview. They tend to react badly to any constructive criticism.

If you have ever found yourself sharing memes about crisis actors or alleged false-flag operations, don’t be too hard on yourself. We have seen how utter certainty can be attractive to us. These rumours are designed to appeal to our emotions by showing us that hard-to-understand events have concrete causes. Taking an interest in current affairs and doing your own research are both positive, even if your first steps went wrong. What can you do instead of sharing misinformation?

So far, we have argued that we should all read several news sources. The idea is to focus on the news and mostly ignore the commentary. Try to work out what has actually happened by looking for consensus across your sources. Suspend judgement on why an event has happened for now. When the time comes to work out why an event has happened, take a probabilistic approach. Hold your opinions lightly and adjust them according to the evidence. Bet against big, sweeping narratives that claim to explain everything: The universe is very large and our brains are very small.

If you would like to dig deeper into the anti-globalist community, where right-wing billionaires and conspiracy entrepreneurs build websites to create rumours that are then spread aggressively by authoritarian governments, you will find plenty of food for thought in Chapter 12 of Sharpen Your Axe. For those who have just joined us, here are the links to Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten and Chapter 11. The arguments are summarized in the blog posts. You can find the links in the text above.

We probably all know somebody who shares misinformation after major disasters. You might have tried to persuade them they were being misguided. If so, it probably ended badly. Instead of talking about conclusions, we should focus any debate on methodology. Why not send your friend or relative a link to this blog post? Also, if you could share it on social media, it would help spread the word to more people. Please take a second to subscribe so you don’t miss another installment. Next week will look at the mainstream media in more depth. See you on Saturday!

Update (25 April 2021)

The full beta version is available here

[Updated on 10 March 2022] Opinions expressed on Substack and Twitter are those of Rupert Cocke as an individual and do not reflect the opinions or views of the organization where he works or its subsidiaries.