The belief that the Earth is flat, the red-eye gene, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The belief that the Earth is flat dates back to ancient times, when the current means of understanding the shape of our planet did not exist.

Putin's protocols: a conspiracy that was hidden by spreading conspiracism
Tucker Carlson's pro-Russian hoaxes and the reason for their zero cost among his followers

The Flat Earth and the Red Gene

Despite these media and the scientific evidence they provide, there are still people who believe the Earth is flat. What's more, these beliefs, like other opinions, are fueled by conspiracy theories that claim we have been manipulated into believing the Earth is round.

This is no longer strange: today there are conspiracy theories to justify the most ridiculous theories. For example, a video published two days ago on TikTok claims that the Knights Templar eliminated a supposed "red eye gene", because "they believed that people with red eyes were possessed by demons". This colossal nonsense has already been "liked" by more than 860,000 people.

The dangerous cocktail of educational crisis and relativism

Throughout human history, we've never had as much information as we do now, but the media used to transmit that information also serve to transmit any lie. Many people lack the culture or maturity to distinguish between truth and lies in everything they receive through social media. It's a problem that censorship cannot solve; on the contrary. For conspiracy theorists, censoring these theories only serves to make them believe they're true and that hidden powers are trying to hide something they don't want us to know. We are facing a cultural problem, and therefore an educational one. And if this is happening today, it's because educational levels are declining, and at an alarming rate, often due to laws that lower the quality of education out of simple populism, as is happening in Spain.

Another factor plays a significant role in this problem: Relativism (the belief that there are no absolute truths) has wreaked great havoc on our society. For years, many politicians, journalists, and intellectuals have told us ad nauseam that Nothing is true or false, that everything depends on the lens through which you look at it. And based on ideas like this, all certainties and rational thought are destroyed, giving way to the greatest absurdities.

This cocktail has paved the way for Russian hoaxes

The results of this can be seen in the case of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Social media is full of people praising Russia and blaming Ukraine for the Russian invasion, claiming that NATO is our enemy, that the United States and the European Union are to blame for this war, that Putin is our leader in the fight against globalism, and that Moscow is the Third Rome. The amount of nonsense I've been reading from Putin fans since 2022 could fill an encyclopedia of nonsense. Of course, this avalanche of irrationality doesn't come out of nowhere: the Kremlin devotes a lot of resources to filling social media with disinformation. As I explained here three years ago, conspiracy theorists are one of the favorite targets of Russian propaganda, because they are the most likely to swallow all its lies without any objection.

The defense of truth and lost cases

Of course, combating this wave of falsehoods is complicated, but it is a necessary task. Defending the truth, so weakened by relativism, was once one of the raisons d'être of journalism, and remains the goal of many honest journalists who strive to do their jobs well today. The added problem is that bad journalists and irresponsible politicians fuel this disinformation by combating it in a clumsy and deceitful manner, not by seeking the truth, but by offering propaganda against propaganda and acting with little or no rigor, thus fostering distrust among many citizens.

Obviously, there are people with whom trying to reason is a waste of time. Sometimes I meet good people who genuinely believe that it is possible to convince those who support criminals like Putin with words. I'm sorry to disappoint them, but many fans of Russia are people completely immune to any kind of rational argument. They have been swallowing the most absurd nonsense for years, and some of them live, intellectually speaking, in a parallel dimension where freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength, as George Orwell pointed out in his novel "1984."

---

Photo: Fabian Bimmer / Reuters. A pro-Russian demonstration in Hanover, Germany.