The Cost of Lies:

Why We Identify With Deadly Misinformation

From Covid to climate change, understanding the role unevidenced conspiracy theories fulfil for individual and social identity in a shifting world can help explain our ‘post-truth’ age, writes Hardeep Matharu

Killing People

In the first wave of the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, I interviewed an NHS nurse who told me that “people are being taken into hospitals and murdered”.

Those in her profession were running “death camps” that were “no different” to those of “the Third Reich”, Kate Shemirani said. “When I liken this to Auschwitz and the cattle trucks, you tell me the difference? I am science-led and I am law-led … I call it genocide”.

At the time, some criticised Byline TV for giving Shemirani a ‘platform’ for her conspiracy theories. When challenged on her outlandish claims, she called me a “special snowflake”. Admittedly, I found it difficult to know how to deal with such an interaction as a journalist. One viewer commented that I looked almost “frozen” while listening to her impenetrable monologues. The interview stayed with me for days afterwards. It was disturbing.

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