Since the beginning of this pandemic, when many people on my friends list (who have now mostly been muted – I look forward to your messages about echo chambers) shared conspiracy theories about what was “really” happening, I have been thinking more and more about the reasons for the existence of theories at the edge of science and reason.  My conclusions are hardly earth-shattering but, hey, this is my timeline so I get to post them anyway!

Firstly, yes, I do know that some conspiracy theories are real (CIA MK Ultra being the best cited example) but this does not give credence to the rest.  Likewise, not believing in far-fetched theories does not mean you are a sheeple™, in thrall to the main stream media (or MSM as the cool kids have it) or not done your research (which mostly seems to involve hunting around the internet for stuff that you agree with). 

The one conspiracy I find most interesting currently, is that of Agenda 21 (now updated to include Agenda 30 and ‘The Great Reset’).  As with all conspiracy theories worth their (Himalayan) salt, these have been neatly incorporated into ideas counter to the mainstream coronavirus narrative.  This I mostly come across as deployed in comment threads as “read about Agenda 21” or “The Great Reset is coming true”. 

The Agenda 21 angle is one that has long intrigued me.  Having finished a BSc in Environmental Science in 1991, the 1992 Rio De Janeiro environmental summit that produced the ideas around Agenda 21 was of particular interest.  The central notion was to develop ideas around sustainable development that nation states could voluntarily decide to implement into to ensure that resources were not diminished for future generations.  It has no legal authority whatsoever and instead is like your eco-conscious aunt who suggests that doing your recycling and using less single-use plastic might be nice.

So far, not so scary right?  Well, I guess not if you are a fairly normal person, but to the political right, this notion that our actions as consumers might have consequences for the environment is like kryptonite (see also, global warming).  As a result Agenda 21 has become less of an eco-friendly suggestion box, and more of a shift to a New World Order which is impinging on your every freedom, including that of the right to life (one of the most interesting parts of the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory is that the understandable mention in the document that increasing population levels make global sustainability harder to pursue since we will have to consume less per capita to keep consumption at the same level, has been interpreted as a sign that a policy of depopulation will be enacted.  Given that Agenda 21 was presented in 1992, when the planetary population of Homo sapiens was 5.5 billion and at our current stardate of 2021, the target year of Agenda 21 (the clue is in the title!), is now 7.8 billion, this depopulation agenda doesn’t seem to be going particularly well.  Even the current pandemic, which some have said was released deliberately to cause mass annihilation, has not really made a dent in that, and neither has the global vaccine programme which has also been purported to be a part of the depopulation agenda (or maybe micro-chipping on a vast scale so Bill Gates can see when we go to the shops).  Admittedly we are doing much better when it comes to the depopulation of many other species but I don’t think this is what is meant).

Anyway, now that 2021 has come to pass and Agenda 21 has sadly neither produced much of either its intended sustainability goals, nor predicted New World Order and depopulation, we get to move on.  Governments will come together to set new targets which I am rather doubtful will be met any better (although still believe it is better than not having targets at all) and conspiracy theorists will kick the can down the road when it comes to the date of our inevitable enslavement to globalism and shadow government, in the fine tradition of the rapture and England winning the FIFA World cup. 

So now that 2021 is here and still rather lacking a New World Order (unless you count Priti Patel’s tenure at the UK Home Office, or think that being told to wear a mask counts as authoritarianism gone mad) Agenda 30 gets to be the new big bad together with The Great Reset.  Looking at their respective websites (https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda and https://www.weforum.org/great-reset/), you might think that Agenda 30 is pretty much more of the same kind of sustainability thread that Agenda 21 was based on (but that is what THEY want you to think, showing you a bit of their plans but hiding the New World Order and depopulation stuff in the fine print or only detectable if you play Greta Thunberg speeches backwards) and The Great Reset seems largely to be an attempt to make late stage Capitalism look pretty whilst carrying on exactly the same. 

You can still read the Agenda 21 document online (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/Agenda21.pdf) and, again, it is filled with measures to protect the environment and its people rather than calls for depopulation and global governance.  The different parts have titles such as ‘Managing fragile ecosystems’, ‘Combatting Deforestation’ and ‘Protection of the oceans’.  Can anyone object to these things?  Perhaps it is in section III and IV where we see why conspiracies have started to develop.  In section III there are suggestions for ‘Recognizing and strengthening the role of indigenous people and their communities’ and ‘Strengthening the role of workers and their trade unions’.  Even if there is also a part on ‘Strengthening the role of business and industry’, I can start to see why some people might take issue with Agenda 21 and, similarly, with Agenda 30. 

Libertarianism and laissez-faire capitalism has long been based on a premise of individual freedom and personal responsibility (although the personal responsibility part mostly turns out to be something to excuse the plight of poor and marginalised people).  However, this ideology is plagued with the issue that freedom for one person may impinge on the freedoms of another.  For example, someone’s right to own a gun impinges on those who wish to live in a gun free society.  Someone’s right to own a gas-guzzling SUV impinges on the rights of people who wish to live on a planet that is not experiencing man-made global warming (MMGW). 

So, given this, libertarians and laissez-faire capitalists (basically the American Right) needs to massively downplay, or deny completely, the idea that consuming resources has any consequence other than to stimulate the economy (Hurrah! *waves flags*).  There is no global warming, mass extinction of plant and animal species, desertification, destruction of habitats, build-up of hazardous waste etc or, if there is, this is done in the name of progress and is entirely acceptable. 

The existence of Agendas 21 and 30, which push ideas which say otherwise are anathema to individual liberty (or at least individual liberty which is decoupled from collective liberty, as life on a massively warmed and environmentally barren earth might be considered to be somewhat reduced) in pointing out that actions do have consequences and actually we might need to think about reducing our consumption levels and behaving as if other people, communities, and nations matter, this does not go down well.  However, saying that you don’t want to think about other people might sound a little, well, selfish, and be considered so by others, especially those who do not benefit so much from unfettered capitalism, so instead it is better to totally demonise the idea of controls on consumption and capitalism as the product of a kind of totalitarianism that will push us into a New World Order ushering in mass culls for depopulation and microchipping us all through a global vaccination programme to a made-up, or at substantially exaggerated, virus (refusal to wear a mask is somewhere at the low end of this, seemingly pushed by people who need to ignore science than admit that putting a small piece of cloth over their mouth is more hassle than they are prepared to countenance on behalf of their fellow humans). 

So, is everyone pushing these narratives on the right of politics?  I would say this is substantially true from what I have witnessed.  Just as some on the right got caught up in the fervour of QAnon as it gave a reason to ignore some of the things they didn’t like about Trump in pursuit of an apparent greater good, so ideas around Agenda 21 and 30 being evil globalist plans mean they do not have to look at reasonable ideas around sustainability, or their own personal responsibility for the world.

In the end, rather than being the product of ‘truth-seeking’ much of this kind of conspiracy is merely a way of supporting one kind of ideology, but rather than recognise the fact than you are basically pushing naked propaganda for free-market libertarianism, isn’t it so much nicer to be a truth-seeker who sees what no one else sees? 

That is not to say that the political left is not guilty of fitting facts to its own narrative also but they are rarely quite as far-flung as the lengths to which these conspiracies go.  Conspiracy theorists often say “you will see” but it is 2021 and the predictions they gave for Agenda 21 have just been moved to Agenda 30 and The Great Reset.  These conspiracies never actually come to pass but are always looming ahead as the great fear that means we never have to look at the here and now.

So what is the here-and-now?  It is the truth of environmental destruction, unbridled consumerism (which is untied to increased happiness), exploitation and marginalisation.  We as a species are free to ignore this but let us do so with open eyes rather than falling for propaganda that benefits the rich.  We have only been on Earth for around 300,000 years out of a total 4.6 billion so it is not as if the planet cannot do without us.  We could all choose to live in  sustainable way that is considerate of other or we could not.  But if you choose selfishness over altruism, at least have the guts to admit that rather than hide behind the pretence of being some kind of truther whilst blindly doing the dirty work of those who benefit from keeping us enslaved to a socio-economic model that is killing us.