The Chemtrail Conspiracy Theory: A Media Landscape
David Mullings & Rodrigo Garcia
The Chemtrail Conspiracy Theory, or Secret Large-Scale Atmospheric Program theory (SLAP) as it is known in academic circles, first surfaced in 1996 as a response to a theoretical paper on weather modification as a means to military ends. This theory spread and evolved into a sprawling and occasionally inconsistent complex that pervades public thinking in the modern day.
However, before discussing how this theory propagated, it will be helpful to put forward an operative definition of “conspiracy theory” by drawing on past experts. Starting with the most basic construction possible, a conspiracy theory is, very simply, a theory that a conspiracy is occurring. While this definition is unquestionably valid, it does not provide much insight into the practice of constructing or believing in conspiracy theories. For a better definition, we turn to Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood. They define a conspiracy as “any narrative about hidden, malevolent groups secretly perpetuating political plots and social calamities to further their own nefarious goals” (Oliver and Wood, 2018). The takeaway is that conspiracy theories imagine plots with stakes. They seek to explain unknowns that matter, like perceived widespread illness in the case of SLAPs, and they tend to trickle down from elite to plebeian in their accusations.
However, even this amended definition fails to account for the prevalence of SLAP. An overwhelming majority of climatologists and scientists have discredited the idea, yet its following still exists (Mercer et al., 2011). Why? The followers of SLAP and other conspiracy theories are not interested in evidence: their conspiracism is endemic due to their deep distrust of public institutions. William Thomas, the journalist who popularized belief in SLAPs, once responded to criticism of his lack of evidence by saying, “Until the lab results are in, lack of ‘proof’ should not obscure an overwhelming preponderance of pattern and precedent.”
This “new conspiracism” is best put by Russel Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum, “Not only does the new conspiracism fail to offer explanations, there is often nothing to explain” (Muirhead and Rosenblum, 2019). The rational, if deluded, conspiracy theories of the past have fallen way to pervasive conspiracism whose adherents are impervious to refutation, and SLAP is only one example.
Chemtrail History
In August of 1958, the Federal Aviation Act was signed into law; this law established the grid-like system we have for airplanes traveling in U.S. airspace. This grid-like system is one of the main points of the Chemtrail Conspiracy Theory, even though its main reason for existence is safety and efficiency. It is said that the contrails left from airplanes are spraying some type of chemicals meant to control society, weather, and/or other aspects of the world.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Chemtrail Conspiracy Theory picked up the pace. Numerous websites are born dedicated to the conspiracy, with hyper-dedicated owners updating their site daily with warnings and images they took of contrails in the sky. Along with this boom in the media, there is also a slowly rising monetary aspect to the theory. All websites have some sort of link to purchase either books created by the owner, protective equipment, or documentaries. The most notable aspects of these websites are their dependence on fear mongering, constantly posting headlines of “DO NOT GO OUTSIDE” and “SPRAYING AGAIN TODAY,” and blatant lies such as fabricated stories of the US government admitting to spraying mind-controlling chemicals from airplanes and governmental entities researching chemtrails on the owners’ website.
Throughout the late 2000s to early 2010s, it is difficult to precisely track the Chemtrail Conspiracy community, but in 2014, there seems to be a new site dedicated to chemtrails just like the ones from the early 2000s: chemtrails911.com and carnicom.com. This new website, geoengineeringwatch.org, is virtually the same as the old sites: cluttered with all capitalized warnings and lies. However, “geoengineeringwatch” seems to be less shy in displaying advertisements and purchasable media. It seems like the common thread of these websites revolves around selling false information to gullible individuals for a profit.
Along with the numerous websites dedicated to the conspiracy theory, there are additional reports during the 2010s of peer-reviewed research proving that the contrails of airplanes are of no harm to the general public. One group of Harvard researchers was receiving death threats from Chemtrail conspiracy theorists because the researchers were accused of killing humankind by releasing balloons into the atmosphere. The individuals sending the death threats clearly thought that the stakes were high enough to threaten another’s life. These people are best described by Hofstader’s concept of the “paranoid spokesman:” [They] constantly live at a turning point. Like religious millennialists [they express] the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and [they are] sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse” (Hofstadter, 1952). Similar to adherents to other conspiracy theorists, those that subscribe to SLAPs are characterized by their belief in a binary world — a world of good vs. evil.
Additionally, the book When Prophecy Fails depicts the conditions a conspiracy theorist poses to reject any disproving evidence of their belief (Festinger et al., 1956). The first condition is that an individual must hold a belief with deep conviction and has some relevance to action. The second condition is that a “person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo.” Regarding the Chemtrail conspiracy, it is difficult to determine the extent to which a person has taken some important action that is difficult to undo, but perhaps the loose nature of the theory is what allows fluid transformation in a believer’s mind. The Chemtrail conspiracy may not contain as strongly devout believers as other conspiracies, but its casual and largely unharmful nature allows for believers to evade disproving evidence simply with other lies or theories.
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