Abstract

A sociological reflection is offered on the origin, meaning and scope of implausible conspiracy theories in the context of the emergence of covid-19. The analytical proposal of Cornelius Castoriadis' social imaginaries is used to problematize the difference between "plausible imaginaries": the origin of covid as a bacteriological weapon, and "implausible imaginaries": the extraterrestrial origin of covid, in order to interpret how it has been possible the increase of certain beliefs, among others, in reptilians, illuminati and extraterrestrials, who are accused of trying to dominate the world.

Keywords: conspiracy, covid-19, crisis of meaning, social imaginaries, reptilians

notes on the reptilians and other beliefs in times of covid-19 and conspiracy theories: implausible imaginaries from a castoriadis perspective

This piece takes a sociological approach to the origin, meaning, and scopes of implausible conspiracy theories that surfaced during the covid-19 crisis. The Castoriadis theory of the social imaginary is used here to examine the difference between plausible imaginaries (covid as a bacteriological weapon) and implausible imaginaries (covid as an extraterrestrial disease) in order to understand how certain beliefs took hold. Among the beliefs examined are lizard people, illuminati, and aliens, all of whom are accused of trying to take over the world.

Keywords: social imaginaries, conspiracy theories, crisis of meaning, covid-19, lizard people.

Introduction

The publication of the book Los reptilianos y otras creencias en tiempos de Covid-19. Una etnografía escrita en Chiapas (Lerma, 2021) aroused curiosity in some readers interested in understanding the emergence of conspiracy theories in the context of the confinement brought about by the sars-CoV-2. The title of the book, while suggesting a sociological approach to conspiracism, was in fact a "multi-situation autoethnography" (St John, 2012),1 dedicated to narrate how seven families in a neighborhood, located in a "magic town",2 San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, we lived fifteen weeks of voluntary confinement. In one part of the story, however, I recounted that in a moment of conviviality with my neighbors (almost all foreigners) we had a conversation around a campfire about the origin of covid-19.

For some, this virus had been provoked by reptilian beings and other power groups interested in controlling humanity. To achieve this, they planned to insert microchips in people's bodies, via the anti-covid vaccine, which in the future would be intervened by G5 antennas. For others, covid had been created in a laboratory by Malthusian scientists who sought to exterminate the most vulnerable in society: the elderly, the sick and the poor. Other arguments were that it was a Chinese fabrication to take over the world with the sale of the drug or that, in reality, the planet was experiencing a capture of superhuman beings in the streets and the world order had arranged to empty the public space to avoid witnesses. Although at first I tried to keep these implausible explanations as secondary to the ethnography, they escalated throughout the book, to the extent of occupying the title. These were not simply ancestral beliefs or naïve narratives; on the contrary, I realized that such interpretations allowed me to explore real systems of social representation, produced by some sectors, as a result of the crisis we were going through. Reptilians and other beliefs in the time of Covid-19... thus became a sociological text -a novel type- that reported on the way in which a middle-class sector, self-defined as "alternative thinking", appropriated and disseminated at the micro-social level conspiratorial imaginaries that influenced daily life and induced ethical positions and political tendencies.

The reason for these notes is that the book, because it was not rigorously conceptual, raised questions -which it did not resolve- and to which, as author, it fell to me to respond: what is plausible and implausible conspiracy theories? and why did conspiracy theories increase in the context of covid-19? These were beyond the explanatory spectrum of my neighborhood, so, with the task of developing sociological interpretations of the subject on my shoulders, I was invited to give some lectures on the subject. Thanks to this I was able to elaborate a few reflections that I now present with the intention of outlining coordinates of analysis for anyone interested in developing a more in-depth study. These notes will serve this purpose.

Some of the conspiracy context

Covid-19 was identified by the World Health Organization as a new virus on January 5, 2020. From that moment on, the emergency led to security measures and restrictions at a global level to avoid contagion, its spread and the increase in mortality. No one in the world was exempt from experiencing the direct or indirect effects of the pandemic: restriction of mobility, intensification of hygienic measures, use of masks and home confinement. In this context, there were several interpretations known as "conspiracy theories", dedicated to explaining the origin of the virus. It was said that it was a zoonotic transmission, an experiment or a geopolitical conspiracy, that it had been extracted from a military laboratory or that it was a "Chinese box", fabricated by social media and new information technologies. Such explanations, although unsubstantiated, emerged from imaginaries anchored in possible logics; therefore, I called them "plausible conspiracy imaginaries". These conspiratorial imaginaries refer to phenomena that could have happened as they were explained and, indeed, be the product of confabulation. The strange thing was that, at the same time, other less credible elucidations gained relevance, qualified here as "implausible conspiracy imaginings". An example of the latter was - to mention one - the theory of reptilian conspiracy. In detail, some people believed that "reptilians" (reptiles from outer space who live with us under a false human appearance) are the ones who dominate society because they occupy spaces and places of power in the world hierarchy. Reptilians, according to the argument, saw in the then president of the United States (usa uu), Donald Trump, a threat to his privileges. The president - the conspiracy narrative claimed - had proposed to eliminate on the black market the reptilian food, which consisted in the consumption of the spinal cord of infants kidnapped and abused by an international network of pedophiles. According to the "conspiracy theorists", Trump's mission was to reveal to the world who the reptilian public figures were. To achieve this, he had to denounce the existence of a system of subway tunnels that connect different cities in the United States and the world, used by the reptilian species, and which serve as a place of confinement for the martyred infants. Faced with the threat of Trump, the reptilian dynasty had produced the covid-19 with the aim of sickening society, paralyzing the economy and provoking a world crisis capable of overthrowing the stock market, breaking the international market and putting in check the American hegemony, in order to prevent a possible reelection of Trump in 2021.

This explanation of the "implausible imaginary" was perhaps the most extraordinary, but not isolated: it was - and is - part of other conspiracy theories that assume the existence of an alternate reality known to few. In this "other reality", "the real one", "the one hidden by governments and dominated by world order lodges", the Earth is flat, the Moon is a planet whose dark side is inhabited by enslaved humans, vaccines make people sick, we are the creation of an extraterrestrial species, we are monitored by drones that appear to be birds on wires and that record our every gesture, which are carefully supervised from control centers.

Although these imaginaries already existed prior to Covid 19, they found an opportunity to proliferate given the uncertainty caused by the disease. It is therefore suggestive to analyze why conspiracy theories intensified in that phase. To reflect on the matter, it is pertinent to refer to the proposal of Corneluis Castoriadis (2007), who devoted a large part of his work to analyzing the way in which social imaginaries are produced.

The "implausible" social imaginaries from a castoridian reading

Castoriadis' notion of social imaginaries is comparable to social representations, to schemes of perception or to the conceptualization of social reality; the distinction with these other ways of approaching the construction of collective subjectivity is that Castoriadis (2007) emphasizes the creative potential that emerges from the imagination. That is to say, for the author, what makes possible the interpretation of reality, its crystallization, institutionalization and even transformation, is the human capacity to imagine: a creative possibility that allows each generation of a given era to interpret its socio-historical block and promote new imaginary forms of society. This creative possibility, according to the author, is produced by in and reproduces What magma of meanings. It is configured both by inherited hermeneutics (philosophy, religion, politics, established social order), as well as by crystallized institutions, emerging ideas and practices (instituting imaginaries) that modify the instituted, radical imagination (the innovation of new paradigms) and by imagination.

Imagination, as the most important creative component of society, makes it possible to find (imagine) the relationship between different "objects", "object-subjects" and between "subjects"; relationships that make it possible to imagine new ways of interpreting social reality. That is why imagination is a producer of new scenarios and a promoter of transforming actions. Constantly generated, the magma of meanings is reconfigured all the time, although only some imaginaries take shape in institutions (due to the constant limit imposed by inherited hermeneutics). Other imaginaries do manage to become concrete - thanks to their potential for grasping material reality in a plausible interpretation (such as science) - or because they are imposed by force or by custom: such as the notions of State, community, nation, educational system, etcetera. Thus, for Castoriadis the possibility of freedom lies in the rupture with custom and the search for autonomy, through the creative imagination. Just as we recognize the instituted imaginaries of our present, each socio-historical block constitutes a body of institutions that configure "its reality". Our reality, then, is an imaginary socially produced at a specific moment in history to interpret a specific moment in society.

Seen in this way, it would be assumed that an instituted imaginary should be able to solve the problems of the socio-historical period with the institutions it has shaped. When the institutions we imagined and crystallized fail to solve a crisis, imagination is activated as a way of looking for (non-instituted) alternatives, in order to interpret and solve reality and return to the stability of the instituted. That said, in Castoridian terms, the crisis can be defined as a juncture within a given socio-historical block in which the instituted fails to solve the emerging problems, so it must deploy new mechanisms of imagination to solve them.

Precisely, when I speak of "implausible social imaginaries", produced during covid-19, I am referring to "inconceivable imaginaries" (impossible or unusual), outside the logic of the instituted, which emerged as an alternative to explain what was happening at a time when the crystallized institutions of society had no answers. The imaginaries that emerged in this context were not radical imaginaries: of social transformation, concerned with achieving greater equity and justice. The implausible imaginaries chose to relate the disease to fantastic beings (reptilians or extraterrestrials) in an effort to find the culprits. They saw in information and communication technologies, as well as in nanotechnology (supposed "human control microchips"), devices at the service of a global conspiracy against humanity.

Conspiracy theorists, among them, the implausible

Conspiracism is a social phenomenon that is composed of imaginaries and unregulated actions, the product of distorted interpretations of reality that seek to explain social situations as the product of supposedly hidden actions carried out by groups that manipulate society. Conspiracy narratives, configured in contexts of crisis, seek to interpret events that keep the public in the dark. shock The population under the conjecture that earthquakes, droughts, pandemics and wars are caused by groups of conspirators who want to stay in power and preserve their privileges. So the "conspiracy theorists" (those who have uncovered the secret machination) aim to find the "culprits" of disasters and social suffering. In this sense, it could be said that every conspiracy intends to build a responsible person, who is also a culprit and who is also an enemy; therefore, the "conspiracyists" have the objective of finding the "culprits" of the disasters and social sufferings, there is no conspiracy that does not aim at building potential enemies. Conspiracism assumes that one can only understand how reality works if one takes into account that "appearances are deceiving", "the enemy always wins", "conspiracies drive history", "power, fame and money account for everything" and "nothing is random" (De-Haven, 2013).

Conspiracy theories are often linked to spiritual and religious beliefs: they are based on faith, fears and prejudices, rather than empirical evidence. Conspiracy theorists are always opposed to instituted explanations, but they draw on instituting explanations to institutionalize their narratives. For example, some conspiracy theories of the past, based on plausible imaginaries, sought to hold vulnerable sectors responsible for the crisis: foreigners, the poor, the insane and women (all human). The holders of Covidian conspirationalism, on the contrary, based on implausible imaginaries and total rejection of inherited hermeneutics, find culprits in extrahuman beings.

The implausible conspiracy imaginary assumes that our senses of perception are blocked by the conspirators to limit our ability to perceive reality, so they try to awaken in themselves extraordinary capacities to counteract the opacity of reality: they pretend to develop telepathy, levitation or healing with the power of the mind; they promote magical thinking and belief in fantastic beings. They assume that the majority of the population lives in subjugation by "human" and "non-human" groups that dominate the world: reptilians, extraterrestrials, illuminati, celestial dynasties (such as the offspring of Jesus Christ) or humans as common as homosexual groups, which, according to some conspiracy theorists, make up a powerful lodge. According to these narratives, these are beings with social and political superiority.

Where to begin the study of conspiracy theorists: a few key points

The analysis of conspiracism leads us to ask ourselves about the theoretical and methodological approaches useful for analyzing the phenomena that accompany it. In addition to Castoriadis' analytical proposal, as far as the link between conspiracy theories and religion is concerned, we cannot say that we are starting from scratch. In the history of mankind there are numerous cases of conspiracy based on differences of creed. The persecution of Jews and Muslims by Castilians and Aragonese, for example, shows how non-Christians were stigmatized at the time: they were accused of having religions that instigated them to eat children, worship demons or develop undesirable character traits (Martínez Gallo, 2020). A similar case is that of the Gypsies, who, as blacksmiths, were accused of making the nails with which Jesus was crucified, were blamed of stealing children, poisoning fountains and even of being Dracula's guardians (Fonseca, 2009).

Thus, a first approach to the study of conspiracism could be a historical review of the critical moments in which certain social sectors have been accused of hiding "their true identity and intentions", whether because they are spies, covert enemies, sorcerers or vampires. In relation to an analytical reading, it is essential to return to Michel Foucault (2000, 2005), who addresses the social construction of the criminal, the abnormal and the madman - considered out of order "of the discourse of truth" - as dangerous subjects. Following this track, we find that the accused are usually characterized as outside the human, with "monstrous traits", either because they are mad or deformed, because they handle different knowledge, are foreigners or hold other beliefs. The idea of the "abnormal", non-human, monstrous, prevails in today's conspiracy theorists: the culprits are subhuman beings -reptilians, extraterrestrials, fetus-eaters- or, in opposition, superhuman beings -divine, super-powerful, illuminati, blue-blooded heirs-. They are either sublime or discreditable beings.

Another author who can help to reflect on the subject is René Girard (2006), who through his mimetic theory shows how the rivalry of two groups that envy, imitate and dispute the same goods, leads to blame a third party for the crisis they face: so that the scapegoat must be sacrificed to restore their pact. The scapegoat, as we know, bears the blame for the rivalry and in his sacrifice settles the collusion between the parties. Similarly, the scapegoat in the conspiracy context exonerates the misfortunes, either because (even unintentionally) he or she has brought about evil or concealed a truth.

Émile Durkheim (2007) and Erving Goffman (2006), for their part, allow us to rethink the notion of strangeness. The former does so through the concept of anomie: the rupture of organic and mechanical solidarity leads, according to the author, to a context outside the norm that affects the collectivity. In this situation, society loses stability and anomic social events increase: suicides, fanaticism or crime. Goffman (2006) allows us to pay attention to the different ways in which the deteriorated identity is constructed by otherness and how stigmatization leads to the creation of discredited subjects, who are blamed for clouding the context or endangering the rest of the group. It would be interesting to recover the detailed observations made by Primo Levi in If this is a man, The sunk and the saved, y The truce (1989) to explain the depersonalization strategies of stigmatized subjects. In his memoirs he shows how in fascist contexts people are stripped of their humanity before being humiliated and exterminated so that the victimizers do not bear the blame.

But, above all, and perhaps more important in the analysis of the emergence of conspiracy theorists, it is to take up epistemological discussions on the notions of plausibility, veracity and reality, including the distinction between orders of subjectivity such as fantasy, imagination, "creative possibility" and inventiveness, and to identify what we can identify as true or falsifiable among the plurality of knowledge and assumptions produced by collective subjectivity. In particular, it is interesting to delve into the conspiracy theorists' elucidations of scientific knowledge. They accuse science of not offering definitive explanations; that is, given that scientists often question their own knowledge when they declare that their discoveries are falsifiable hypotheses (Moulines, 2015), the continuous "testing of knowledge" reinforces in conspiracists the idea that yesterday's scientific knowledge was wrong; therefore, one cannot trust a knowledge that tomorrow will be falsified. Seen in this way, for today's conspiracy theorists, given that rationalist and empirical knowledge is falsifiable, it is not plausible. Paradoxically, despite the pseudo-criticisms, it must be said that conspiracists use a pseudo-scientific language that seeks to imitate the method of empirical sciences, with the difference that the basis of plausibility of their knowledge is not to test it for corroboration or falsification, but is based on "the faith of the group", so that credibility is permeated by a sense of loyalty. There is trust in the truth of the group, which is "corroborated" in particular experiences: "I saw it", "it happened to me", "I felt it", "it changed me", "a friend experienced it".

Conspiracy plausibility acts as faith. As in various religions, especially Christianity, the disseminators of conspiracism believe that we live in a false world, opposed to a "true reality"; they believe in the existence of a "deceiver", who schemes in the dark for his own ends (the Devil): his goal is to lead to death; they believe that those who manage to see the truth will be saved; they believe in the near destruction of the world and the rise of reality; they believe that "those who know the truth" are often reviled. There is, then, a conversion to conspiracism. Testimony is stronger than rationality and common sense. As in any community, among conspiracy theorists the sense of belonging and the bonds of loyalty are relevant; therefore, the group produces and legitimizes its own specialists. In many cases, these are people who shunned science for lack of success and who found in conspiracy theorists a public to whom they do not have to prove anything.

Although I did not say it before -to expose my own reading of the phenomenon-, it is worth mentioning that there are already studies on conspiracy theorists. Here I will mention two relevant ones: the one by Alejandro Martínez Gallo, Conspiracy theories: from the lunatic fringe to the center of the collective imaginary (2020), in which he discusses its history - from Sumerian myths to the current rhetorics of right-wing groups in usa uu. and Europe - through the spread of Christianity, the burning of witches in the Middle Ages, fascism and the anti-terrorism unleashed after the attack on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Martínez Gallo describes conspiracism as a latent phenomenon, prior to authoritarianism. The second, The age of conspiracism. Trump, the cult of lies and the assault on Capitol Hill.by Ignacio Ramonet (2022), makes a similar criticism to the one I made in Reptilians and other beliefs in the time of Covid-19 (2021): concludes that conspiracy theories are promoted by far-right groups, predominantly from the white population belonging to the working class. For Ramonet, the different "conspiracy theories" (the flat Earth, the pizzagateThe reptilians) are part of a media campaign, orchestrated by Trump, their main promoter, to generate political instability for his benefit. Both authors agree on the danger of these imaginaries, since they oppose rational debate and refuse to submit to any epistemological reflection; on the contrary, their strength lies in the devaluation of critical arguments, labeling them as attacks and as part of the plot.

The matrices of Covidian conspiratorialism

Why do people believe in implausible conspiracy theories? I note three points: first, the crisis of modernity and lack of utopian aspirations in postmodernity discourages the present. Second, the persuasion of right-wing political tendencies generates radical actions that appear to be revolutionary alternatives in the absence of new social paradigms. Third, the American imaginary of "invincibility" propitiates the search for interpretations in "the lunatic sphere".

First: conspiracy beliefs are increasing as disenchantment with modernity and the absence of socio-political paradigms. Given this assertion, it is worth questioning whether we were ever really modern in the sense that "modern rationality" aspired: to consider that spiritual beliefs were a redoubt of an atavistic phase, which transited from the metaphysical to the positive stage, as Auguste Comte supposed (Frausto, 2021). In reality, in opposition to positivism, what has been seen throughout history is that beliefs: religious, magical, divinatory and "conspiratorial", were maintained and developed together with industry, along with concepts such as the modern-secular state, democracy, citizens' rights and the development of science. Beliefs were always there, disdained by rationality; to the extent that some scholars considered religious believers as "non-rational" people. However, as recent studies (Meza, 2024) show, anti-atheism has found followers in academic spaces, showing that it is possible for scientific thought and religious beliefs to coexist.

The emergence of implausible imaginaries in the current era reveals a dispute over the interpretation of reality, revealing the plurality of new beliefs as disenchantment with the rationality of modernity. Conspiracy narratives are not only skeptical about the world that modernity has produced, but also reveal a strong criticism of the social paradigms that until the second half of the last century gave meaning to ideologies: developmentalism and socialism. For this reason, the current socio-historical bloc is a stage without socialist, anarchist or communalist utopias. Conspirationalists, despite their distorted reading of reality, manage to elaborate a critique of a social system in which rationality and science have not been able to solve some problems: famine or ensuring that the entire world population has access to subsistence resources; a society in which democratic participation and citizens' rights have not become equitable for all sectors, and in which war is still a way of resolving differences between nations. According to these terms, the idea of modernity and rationality do not represent coordinates of thought and action for all subjects. Therefore, for conspiracy theorists, modernity, as a project, is a form of deception and the future is seen as a post-apocalyptic context.

Second, conspiracy theories reflect conservative positions, interested in defending trends of opinion in the political arena. For example: the idea that reptilians feed on fetuses induces opposition to abortion rights or that homosexuality is promoted as a gender ideology with the intention of birth control and depopulation of the world - as well as to strengthen the homosexual lodge - is a homophobic belief; the stigma that African-Americans, migrants and Muslims are potential terrorists produces distorted identities of the other and their culture, criminalizes people and their religious beliefs; the idea that Chinese, Russians and Koreans manufacture diseases and drugs that kill the white American and European population are forms of xenophobia. Indeed, as Ramonet develops, it is no coincidence that the QAnon organization, the strongest of the conspiracy groups, has promoted Donald Trump as the only hero, capable of confronting the reptilians. This point speaks of the interest in forming social and political capital through a creed that allows to build groupness. It is in the interest of creating shock groups that can be used in conjunctures of political disadvantage, such as happened in the seizure of the Capitol in Washington in 2021, orchestrated by a white supremacist, armed and ultra-right, who behaved "as an ethnic minority". Interestingly, implausible conspiracism was not prevalent among these minorities, at least not in the pandemic. As noted in various media, conspiracy manifestations were mainly promoted in that period among the white-skinned population in Europe, usa uu. and Australia.

A third question remains: if the imagery of human enemies is possible, why do we resort to producing extraordinary, reptilian, extraterrestrial or superhuman enemies? To answer this question it is worth bringing into dialogue the lecture given by anthropologist Francisco de la Peña (2013) on Hollywood blockbuster cinema at the Meeting of Anthropologists of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur) in 2013. De la Peña commented that if Hollywood movies have spread the image of the United States as a heroic extraplanetary nation, capable of facing aliens, meteorites and natural catastrophes, it is because this country considers that its alter ego can only be extraterrestrial; that is, it is so powerful that its enemy can only be from another galaxy. This imaginary allows us to understand why implausible conspiracy theories are so popular in the United States and other developed countries: their population cannot conceive that -being first world societies- they are beatable, and if someone dominates them, he cannot be from this world!

The implausible conspiracy imaginary is comfortable to the "tired society" (Byung-Chul Han, 2012) because, from the superficiality of happiness and the alienation of reality, imaginary beings are held responsible for social differences -and crises- without having to consider the socioeconomic causes of inequality. Social inequality is projected in the conspiracy imaginary towards implausibility, alienating the population from the critical analysis of social reality. For this reason, the middle and upper classes are the most assiduous to these beliefs: they are less responsible for a system of inequality and exploitation. Conspiracism is perfect because it allows them to wash their hands of it.

A final point would be to say that conspiracism became relevant as a result of a history of disbelief in the political system, as "democratic" and anti-democratic governments alike privileged their elites. Conspiracism, moreover, was encouraged during the Cold War by rumors of spies, the threat of communism and other strange ideas that claimed there was a "button" that would someday push the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (urss) or usa uu. to detonate nuclear war. The current conspiracy was nourished by all this. Also from the emergence of new diseases, from the lack of access to health care and from the enrichment of pharmaceutical companies. All this has left its mark on us: we are, therefore, heirs of historical conspiracy theories.

Production, circulation and consumption

Implausible imaginaries, like any ideology, are produced as power devices through various media. Cultural industries and new information technologies contribute to their configuration. The creation of virtual content, promoted by platforms and digital social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Tik-Tok, YouTube) stands out, spaces in which, although there are cancellations, information is unrestricted, which makes the Internet a device that produces multiple realities, different from empirical experience, and which have the same level of importance, as well as more or less the same ease of access to a scientific article as to a meme. In addition, the speech that has more value is rated more valuable. likes than the plausibility of the rational imaginary.

Nor can it be omitted that conspiracy speeches produce economic gains to youtubers, tiktokersThere is a conspiracy industry, including content creators, artists, product sellers, writers, pseudo-scientists, activists, gurus, therapists, tour promoters, spiritual guides, festival organizers, among others. There is, therefore, an industry of conspiracy theories closely linked to the fake news as a market strategy (Velisone, 2021).

Another cultural industry that feeds it is science fiction literature. It is assumed that just as Jules Verne imagined travel to the Moon, exploration to the bottom of the sea and to the center of the Earth -some of which materialized in the invention of the rocket, the airplane and the submarine-, it is believed that today's literary imaginings will become reality in the future. Contributing to these imaginaries are the novels of Alfred E. van Vogt, Herbert G. Wells, Harlan Ellison and Philip K. Dick and some Japanese anime stories. For example, the belief in the existence of a human society on the dark side of the Moon may have originated in the anime series Freedom by Katsuhiro Otomo, while the dream that someday we will be able to buy a mechanical body to live forever, perhaps started with the anime Space Traina cartoon from the 1980s.

In the field of cinema, films such as the following have been referenced Matrix (about an alternate reality where humans are just energy batteries in an alternate reality), Avalon (a girl finds that "reality" is outside a video game and that reality is not ours, but another platform space), Terminator (a saga suggesting that we live in the past) or Prometheus (Jesus Christ is an extraterrestrial engineer crucified by humanity). As in the last case, conspiracism is strengthened when it is linked to imaginary inherited hermeneutics, among them, religious beliefs; for example, Facebook groups can be found such as the one called "Only Christian terraplanists, no atheist terraglobists", in which fans find the support of their beliefs in the Bible.

Conspiracism, precisely because it is the result of a configuration resulting from the magma of meanings (political, historical, scientific, religious, literary, institutional, institutional and radical imaginaries), makes more or less sense among different sectors, with different educational levels, of different ages, creeds and genders. An empirical example of these aspects can be found in the book Los reptilianos y otras creencias en tiempos de Covid-19. Una etnografía escrita en Chiapaswhich gave rise to this article.

Conclusions: final concerns for deepening the dialogue

The last question to be considered is what can/should be done in the face of this issue: how to assess its impact, should we tolerate it, should we cancel it, how, how far, how far? To answer these questions it is important to remember that, during the period of confinement due to the covid-19 pandemic, different "conspiracy theories" took on the task of contradicting the scientific discourse and denigrating governmental recommendations, boycotting health campaigns through social networks or causing disturbances in spaces such as hospitals or health clinics and public squares. It cannot be omitted that, due to misinformation, in some places in the south of Mexico, clinics treating covid were burned; in different parts of the country, medical personnel were attacked, some infected people were forbidden access to their own homes and, even, in an extreme case registered in Guadalajara, Mexico, those who did not wear masks were beaten to death. I think it is necessary to discuss the extent to which misinformation can reach (fake news), especially in contexts of crisis. As Martínez Gallo (2020) points out: conspiracism is amusing as long as it remains on the lunatic fringe and does not occupy the veracity of the discourse. When conspiracy takes relevance as "truth", it becomes dangerous. A tragic case, for example, is that of an American who crossed the California/Tijuana border to kill his children to prevent them from becoming reptiles. He was found to be an assiduous believer in conspiracy theories, a member of QAnon and convinced that the illuminati rule the world (Meeks and Campbell, 2021).

What should governments do in the face of these issues? Mainly in the global north, take responsibility for inequality and the global crisis. What conspiracism hides is that vulnerability and crisis are neither natural nor supernatural, they are the result of inequality and the preeminence of some societies over others. What can we see in the future with these implausible imaginaries? In the face of the hopelessness of modernity and the plurality of voices that can go viral in the virtual media -without the weighting of an epistemology of plausibility- we can see a society that is more adept at implausible theories, more uninformed and more polarized.

On the other hand, the increase in conspiracy theories shows us that we have failed in the dissemination of scientific knowledge and that we academics are in a soliloquy that we urgently need to break. It allows us to see that we have not stopped seeing crises as phases of dispute for survival resources, so that, in a world with multiple knowledge and ideologies, we need to recover and disseminate those plausible imaginaries that are viable for the reproduction of a more equitable society.

I also venture a hypothesis: the confinement by covid-19 unveiled the tip of an iceberg of struggles that we will witness more clearly in the future: the dispute between industrial entrepreneurship (owners of the industrial means of production) and digital entrepreneurship (owners of digital technology, information media, social networks and content creation) (Jiménez, Rendueles, Rendueles, Jiménez, Rendueles, Jiménez, Rendueles, Rendueles, Rendueles). et al., 2020). I consider that, just as the industrial capitalism of usa uu was strengthened by the use of prisoner labor (Melossi and Pavarini, 1977), by generating the prison-factory, the staggered confinement of almost two years during covid-19 induced the sedimentation of the house-factory, which, in the form of a home-office, represents the germ of digital capitalism, as pointed out by Aitor Jiménez, César Rendueles and César Rendueles. et al.:

The core of the actually existing digital society is a monopolistic network that allows immense private companies to control fundamental infrastructures of both productive activity and a large part of everyday life (Rahman, 2018). Liberal globalization has encouraged a situation of dependence on a handful of digital corporations that control technologies that are part of the contemporary economic base (2020: 96).

I find on the part of conspiracism - promoted by industrial entrepreneurship - a fierce struggle to destroy the means and practices that allow the reproduction of the work of virtual technology (attack on G5 antennas, refusal to work from home; accusations against virtual entrepreneurs, such as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, blamed for producing nanotechnology to control the world). I believe that the pandemic provided a glimpse of the type of ideological (conspiracy) weapons that will increase in the future in order to tilt the balance of public opinion towards one or another business group.

Likewise, the covid-19 crisis revealed that confinement generates profits for sectors linked to the Internet and strengthens different political tendencies, so that, in this contest, we will see the induction of future confinements under various pretexts.

I also think that in the future a new world order will be produced that will rearrange the distribution of power in the world system: on the one hand, there will be enclaves of virtual capitalism, such as Silicon Valley, in whose periphery industrial capitalism will continue to reproduce itself with lower profits. This rearrangement will generate greater social inequalities: there will be well-paid work for the sectors best trained in virtual technologies, constituting a new class of virtual technology entrepreneurs, while at the same time a peripheral population of people deprived of their critical sense will intensify, which will favor the sustenance of a new privileged class.

There is still much to read about the current context from the conspiracy perspective; however, I hope that these notes will be useful to build a dialogue to analyze a phenomenon that is sometimes approached with little seriousness, but which involves deep ideological, political and imaginary debates.

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Enriqueta Lerma Rodríguez defines herself as an ethnographer at heart. A sociologist by training and anthropologist by vocation, she has conducted research among the Yaqui peoples of Sonora, as well as among the Acatecos, Q'anjobales, Mames, Tsotsiles and Chujes of the Chiapas-Guatemala border. She is the author of three books: The inherited nest. Ethnographic study on cosmovision, space and ritual cycle of the Yaqui tribe. (2014). Mexico City: ipn; The other believers. Territory and thepraxis of the liberating church in the border region of Chiapas. (2019). Mexico City: unam; y Los reptilianos y otras creencias en tiempos de Covid-19. Una etnografía escrita en Chiapas (2021). In addition, he has published some thirty academic articles. In 2012 he was awarded the Alfonso Caso Medal for University Merit for the unam and the Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán Award from the Universidad Veracruzana and the ciesas. She is the founder of the Ethnography Laboratory of the Centro de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias sobre Chiapas y la Frontera Sur of the University of Chiapas. unamwhere she is a researcher. She is currently a tenured researcher B and a member of the sniHe obtained a diploma with honorable mention in the sogem. As for narrative chronicle, she has been a contributor to the following magazines Arts of Mexico, Laberinto Milenio Cultural Supplement and Grateful Signs.