{"title":"Bill Gates and the ‘new normal’ COVID-19 conspiracy theories: ‘it’s a new thing’ or nothing new under the sun?","authors":"Arby Ted Siraki, Malek H. Mohammad","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2207129","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019 and the subsequent lockdowns led to widespread conspiracy theories often involving one particular actor: Bill Gates. Adherents of these conspiracy theories believed Gates was behind the pandemic for some nefarious purpose, including chipping and/or eugenics. This was, however, no fringe sentiment: celebrities and other prominent voices articulated some iteration of the Gates-COVID-19 conspiracy theory beginning in 2020. Though the conspiracy theory appears to have come out of nowhere, it does have a (pre-)history. Some have tried to point to a single or recent origin, but it is in fact much older, more complex, and informed by real developments over the previous two decades. This article traces the origins of the conspiracy theory going back to its prehistory in the 1990s, describes the narrative in its various iterations and (per)mutations – along with Gates’s shifting role in them – and charts the dissemination of this dynamic conspiracy theory while examining some of its notable tropes.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.5000,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal for Cultural Research","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2207129","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CULTURAL STUDIES","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
ABSTRACT The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019 and the subsequent lockdowns led to widespread conspiracy theories often involving one particular actor: Bill Gates. Adherents of these conspiracy theories believed Gates was behind the pandemic for some nefarious purpose, including chipping and/or eugenics. This was, however, no fringe sentiment: celebrities and other prominent voices articulated some iteration of the Gates-COVID-19 conspiracy theory beginning in 2020. Though the conspiracy theory appears to have come out of nowhere, it does have a (pre-)history. Some have tried to point to a single or recent origin, but it is in fact much older, more complex, and informed by real developments over the previous two decades. This article traces the origins of the conspiracy theory going back to its prehistory in the 1990s, describes the narrative in its various iterations and (per)mutations – along with Gates’s shifting role in them – and charts the dissemination of this dynamic conspiracy theory while examining some of its notable tropes.
期刊介绍:
JouJournal for Cultural Research is an international journal, based in Lancaster University"s Institute for Cultural Research. It is interested in essays concerned with the conjuncture between culture and the many domains and practices in relation to which it is usually defined, including, for example, media, politics, technology, economics, society, art and the sacred. Culture is no longer, if it ever was, singular. It denotes a shifting multiplicity of signifying practices and value systems that provide a potentially infinite resource of academic critique, investigation and ethnographic or market research into cultural difference, cultural autonomy, cultural emancipation and the cultural aspects of power.