The Coming Storm, the latest podcast from the BBC, is a riveting exploration of the phenomenon that is QAnon.
QAnon is in many ways the ultimate expression of the culture wars that rage today between the over-educated and anti-educated. In that it states, in a matter of fact manner, that the America they are living in is not the one described by the liberal intelligentsia, but one that is in fact run from within the depths of the deep state by a coven of paedophile cannibals.
Incredibly, indeed incomprehensibly, some 23% of Republican voters in the US subscribe to this quote reality unquote.
Written and presented by Gabriel Gatehouse, international editor on BBC 2’s Newsnight, it is, for almost all of its 8 episodes, a genuinely sceptical enquiry. Giving equally short shrift both to its central claims, and to anyone who airily insists that only dim-witted Americans would be sufficiently cretinous to give credence to that sort of guff.
On the contrary, as he goes on to calmly explore, people everywhere have always believed that sort of nonsense.
This particular manifestation seems to go back to that twin phenomenon of the 1990s. The ruthless ambition and corruption of the Clintons and the resentment that that generated, combined with the vast blank and unregulated canvass that the Internet suddenly presented us with.
The Coming Storm is an extensively researched, deep dive into how all of that got started, and Gatehouse is commanding, genial and measured. Except that is for a couple of brief minutes, towards the end of episode 2, when he goes off script.
It’s then that he introduces us to Juanita Broaddrick, who alleges that Bill Clinton raped her in 1978. An accusation Clinton flatly and resolutely denies.
Broaddrick only made the accusation during Clinton’s impeachment trial, some 20 years later. And that was after she’d previously denied it, only months earlier.
Nevertheless, her detailed recollection of those events is all too credible and it’s impossible not to conclude she’s telling the truth. And Gatehouse is demonstrably of the same opinion. It’s what he does next that is, to use one of Alice’s words, curious. Because he concludes the re-telling of her story with:
“The media knew about her allegations but they sat on it. It was too explosive. The stakes were too high.”
No it wasn’t, no they weren’t and no they didn’t.
The mainstream media hounded Clinton during those weeks, months and years. Especially over anything that had the whiff of sex. But they decided that whatever had happened had taken place 20 years ago, and that all any of them had to go on now was her word versus his.
More to the point, by this stage the American public was bored to tears with tales of Bill’s sexual peccadillos, which were doing little more than further deepening the abyss that divided and divides the states there into red and blue ones.
What Gatehouse does in this telling is to present us with one of those classic examples of an Aristotelian syllogism that fails to function. One of those How-not-to syllogisms. All buses are green, that vehicle is green, therefore it’s a bus.
Assuming that her version of events is true, what we have here are two, independent, un-connected events. Event one, she was raped. And Event two, the mainstream media decides against giving her story the kind of extensive coverage that some might have liked.
There’s no causally connecting because here, but Gatehouse magics one into existence. Which is exactly how you construct a conspiracy theory, before sending it out and on its merry way, into the universe and the digital aether beyond.
You describe two, separate and unconnected events as if they were obviously linked. Indeed, as if that connection were so obvious, it’s surprising to you that anyone should call that so say connection into doubt.
In other words, and clearly inadvertently, Gatehouse has erected the scaffolding and is using the architecture needed to construct the very phenomenon he was supposed to have been merely reporting on.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Still, it’s a cracking podcast. And that minor blip aside, Gatehouse is thoughtful and measured and is a wonderfully engaging host.
You can listen to it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001324r
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