Conspiracy Theories and Planetary Health: Climate Denialism and Medical Populism As Two Sides of the Same Cultural-Political Trends

The speech will analyse the similarities in models of knowledge and culture between attitudes that negate scientific findings on climate change and attitudes that undermine official medical knowledge and the activities of public health institutions. The authors will defend the thesis that anti-Enlightenment trends which are directed against scientific medical knowledge (e.g. anti-vaccination movements) and reject scientific findings on the risk of climate catastrophe have much in common with and are an element of conspiracy theories. They can strengthen and integrate populist right-wing circles. Referring to Luc Boltanski’s concept of the functioning of two systems of logic in public circulation (the overt and official reality and the hidden, secret and sinister reality), the authors indicate that conspiratorial descriptions of the social world tend to combine into a larger whole creating a system of counter-knowledge that hinders any rational communication and progressive social action.

From this perspective, contemporary cultural and political counter-Enlightenment becomes an obstacle to social transformation in response to climate change and the challenges of new global epidemics. The analysis will be based on the results of surveys conducted on a representative sample of Polish society (1,000 respondents). The research results will show what social variables (level of education, class position, place of residence, age) correlate with anti-Enlightenment attitudes and what the political consequences of such trends may be, as well as what threat they pose to public health policy and climate policy.

The conclusion of the presentation is the thesis that although the causes of the contemporary Counter-Enlightenment are diverse (a lack of economic security among the working classes, rapid technological changes, cultural transformations, the collapse of traditional patriarchal relations, social reaction to globalization), its political effects always block the creation of rational responses to real threats, such as climate catastrophe, environmental catastrophe and new global medical challenges.