The Corona Crisis: The Rothschilds? Bill Gates? The Search For A Scapegoat Has Begun
As scientists attempt to understand the corona virus, outlandish conspiracy theories are already ... [+]
GettyIt is almost a law of human nature: In any crisis, natural disaster or epidemic, sooner or later people will begin to search for the “guilty parties” and events will quickly become politicized. Emerging crises are usually not taken all that seriously at first. Of course, at some point, panic will break out, but at least initially, the primary focus is on getting to grips with the immediate consequences of a disaster—which is precisely what we are seeing right now with the corona crisis.
But then the search for culprits always begins. Clearly, the mass population has a deep-seated need to identify individuals or groups to whom they can apportion blame. And if it is impossible to identify the group that bears direct responsibility for the disaster (as is the case with earthquakes, epidemics, floods, etc.), people will quickly blame any “officials” who have made mistakes in fighting the disaster. And because mistakes are always made during crises, it is not all that difficult to find suitable “culprits.” In terms of the corona crisis, Democrats can rightly point to Trump’s failings as he and his administration got off to a bad start by massively underestimated the scale of the crisis. And Trump can rightly condemn the European Union for its huge mistakes in the battle against the coronavirus crisis.
Scapegoats In The Corona Crisis
Depending on the country and prevailing political ideology, different scapegoats for the corona crisis are currently being denounced around the world. In China, absurd conspiracies are propagating claims that the virus was developed by the United States/CIA for use as a bioweapon. Rumors are also being widely circulated in Russia and Iran that the coronavirus is a U.S.-made bioweapon. Across the Arab world, disinformation campaigns are peddling the idea that the pandemic is the product of a Jewish or Jewish-American conspiracy to decimate the world population. In Iraq, for example, conspiracy theorists are pushing the narrative that a rich Jewish family, the Rothschilds, is behind the global outbreak.
Historical Parallels
The search for culprits is an inevitable feature of every crisis, whether it is an epidemic, natural disaster or economic crisis. In Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period, between 40,000 and 60,000 people, mainly women, became victims of witch hunts. These “witches” were blamed for the spread of diseases, for failed harvests, for natural disasters and for other negative events that people could not otherwise explain. Jews were also often accused—there were frequent claims that Jews went around poisoning wells.
In some cases, disasters were also interpreted as punishment for sinful actions. For example, in 1542, after an earthquake, the city of Florence issued strict edicts against sodomy and blasphemy. A modern variant of this philosophy can be seen in the climate religion: whenever there’s a flood, drought or storm, yes, in relation to any extreme natural event, climate activists claim that “Mother Nature” is striking back because we have treated her so badly.
During and after the 2008 financial meltdown, “greedy bankers” were used as scapegoats. The causes of the Global Financial Crisis were so complex that most people could not hope to understand them. In situations like these, the search for scapegoats is inescapable. Rich people, or capitalism in general, have now become popular targets for scapegoating. People either directly blame the rich or the capitalist system for negative developments or they are indignant that whenever a crisis hits (e.g. an earthquake), it is members of the lower classes that bear the brunt of the crisis and not the better off.
Scapegoating
In a survey conducted by the Ipsos MORI and the Allensbach Institute, respondents in four countries were presented with the following statement: “Those who are very rich and want more and more power are to blame for many of the major problems in the world, such as financial or humanitarian issues.” In Germany, 50% of interviewees agreed with this statement, roughly twice as many as in Great Britain and in the United States (25% and 21%, respectively). This finding suggests that in times of severe economic upheaval, it would be easier to exploit preexisting hostility toward rich people in Germany and that German politicians would be more likely to target rich people than would those of Anglophone countries.
Attribution theory emphasizes that people try to understand complex events that elude simple explanation by assigning explanatory attributes, including simple guilt, to certain persons or groups. The psychologist Peter Glick argues that only groups perceived as having the power and intent to cause negative events will be scapegoated. And these groups are, by definition, not defenseless minorities. As he explains: “High status or powerful (e.g., socioeconomically successful) minorities that are viewed as competing with the dominant group are subjected to envious prejudice: they are admired for their success, but also resented for it; stereotyped as highly competent, but as having hostile motives. Because envied minorities are viewed as having the power and intent to harm, they are at risk of being blamed for causing group-level frustrations.”
Conspiracy Theory Crackpots
This is typically the root of conspiracy theories, in which scapegoated groups are portrayed as omnipotent. Conspiracy theorists have, of course, already put forward a variety of theories on the corona crisis. However, I prefer to call such people “conspiracy crackpots” rather than “conspiracy theorists” because the word “theory” is rarely applicable in such cases. The claims pushed by these conspiracy crackpots frequently have an anti-capitalist bent. For example, conspiracy theorists have recently been claiming that they have “evidence” that Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, leading philanthropist and one of the richest people in the world, is to blame for the corona crisis. The words of Bill Gates, who has been warning of a global pandemic for years, are now being twisted and used to support claims that he actually brought the virus into the world. Another popular “theory” alleges that the pharmaceutical industry deliberately unleashed the coronavirus in order to make billions of dollars from the vaccine.
Anti-Semitism and the myth of a world-wide Jewish conspiracy has been the root of persecution and massacres throughout history. Conspiracy crackpots can be recognized by the fact that, on the one hand, they are particularly simple-minded, while on the other they consider themselves to be the only ones who are really well informed. They also feel the need to chime in whenever they are mentioned and you can easily identify them by the fact that they are the first to tell you that the term “conspiracy theory” is itself the result of a conspiracy and that it was invented by the CIA. Now, in the midst of the corona crisis, this same pattern is repeating: conspiracy crackpots are extremely active online, spreading malicious “explanations” for the crisis and offering up potential “guilty parties.”
People Rarely Understand Complex Cause And Effect Relationships
The consequences for scapegoated groups can be fatal. As Glick explains, “If a scapegoated group is viewed as both powerful and malevolent, even the most extreme actions against them (e.g., murder) can be rationalized as self-defense.” It is especially in crisis situations, Glick argues, that people seek scapegoats, because most people cannot understand the true (and complex) causes of the crisis at hand: “Incorrect attributions may occur because information and people’s cognitive abilities to process it are limited, especially when coping with large-scale problems in complex, modern societies. For example, even professional economists may be unable to adequately explain an economic crisis. Scapegoat movements attract followers by offering simpler, culturally plausible explanations and solutions for shared negative events.”
I was awarded my first doctorate in history in 1986 and my second, this time in sociology, in 2016. I started my career at the
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