Conspiracy theories about corona, vaccinations, ‘the satanic blood-drinking elite’ and even the exchange of plane wrecks are gaining support in the Netherlands. Talk show host Arjen Lubach goes to war against what he calls ‘the myth trap’.
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In a fragment of more than 20 minutes, which was first broadcast on Sunday in Sunday with Lubach, the presenter proposes a number of theories taken seriously by thousands of his fellow countrymen, and shows that they are by no means just an American phenomenon.
The program thus points to the role of the well-known rapper Lange Frans, who disseminates on his YouTube channel that the MH17 has not crashed at all, and boasts that he could well shoot Mark Rutte.
This is not innocent: Dutch politicians, for example, were already the target of activists who threatened violence on the basis of the theories. In a number of films that Lubach shows you can see how they are called ‘pedophiles’ and ‘satanists’ by bystanders, while also receiving death threats.
In a test, Lubach shows how someone who watches a few movies about covid is quickly pushed by YouTube towards videos with conspiracy theories. Within a few clicks you get suggestions that the PCR tests are actually not good at all. According to Lubach, someone quickly ends up in a ‘myth trap’: you become so caught up in the stories that you cannot get out.
He puts the blame for the rise of faith in these stories partly on the social networks. ‘Thanks to Facebook and Youtube, everyone has their own truth. Those companies once created this monster, with the best of financial intentions. And now they have to tame it again ‘.
Lubach himself has not had a Facebook page for several years. In an item several seasons ago, he took the page down out of disagreement with company policy. The individual items are nevertheless viewed a lot online. After less than two days, the item about the ‘mythical trap’ already had almost a million viewers on YouTube alone. On Sunday evening, almost two million Dutch people watched the program.
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