The Dangerous Coronaviruas Conspiracy Theories Targeting 5G Technology, Bill Gates, and a World of Fear

Over Easter weekend, arsonists set more than twenty 5G cellular towers in the United Kingdom on fire—forming a pattern of bunny-eared infernos that points to one of the many conspiracy theories surrounding the spread of the novel coronavirus. The basic idea is that 5G, a new generation of wireless communication, is responsible for the coronavirus crisis, and the idea has spread rapidly. According to some surveys, it is now the most widely disseminated pandemic-related conspiracy theory in the U.K., and has spread in Europe (there have been cell-tower attacks in the Netherlands and Belgium) and in the United States (where the actor Woody Harrelson posted about it on Instagram, albeit with a note saying that he hadn’t “fully vetted it”). The theory is false: the illness covid-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus sars-CoV-2, which is highly contagious. But the first question when confronting the theory is how people could even believe that 5G could be responsible. The answer provides the framework for something of a general taxonomy of conspiracy theories, each of which is disorienting and distinct but in related ways.