Chemtrails, crisis, and loss in an interconnected world Alexandra Bakalaki Abstract

25 Pages·2016·0.46 MB·English

by  Mark Westmoreland

Chemtrails, crisis, and loss in an interconnected world
Alexandra Bakalaki
So many people
Where do they go?
You and me watching a sky full of chemtrails
That’s where we belong
All I can take from these scars is hope
But all I can see in this night are boats sinking
Oh, ooh, ooh
Down by the sea swallowed by evil
We’ve already drowned
You and me watching a sea full of people
They’ve already drowned
From the lyrics of “Chemtrail song” by Beck (2008).
Abstract: The narraOve whereby the earth’s atmosphere is systemaOcally and deliberately
sprayed with hazardous chemicals became increasingly popular in Greece aRer the onset of the
economic crisis in 2009. This paper explores concern over and mobilizaOon against aerial
spraying in Greece drawing on research in relevant websites and interviews. More specifically, I
examine the connecOons people draw between the alleged spraying operaOons in the Greek
sky, the Greek financial crisis, and the emergence of a New World Order. The paper also focuses
on the implicaOons of visual material evidencing spraying on the relaOons between seeing,
knowledge and protecOon from danger.
Keywords: conspiracy theory, chemtrails, Greek economic crisis, photography, New World
Order.
Alexandra Bakalaki teaches social and cultural anthropology at the Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki.
The word “chemtrail” refers to trails leR behind by airplanes allegedly spraying the
atmosphere with chemicals that damage the environment and all lifeforms. The chemtrail
narraOve emerged in North America in the 1990s and, like many other narraOves that challenge
official knowledge about nature and causes of global dangers, spread around the world through
the internet (Soukup 2008). Aerial spraying was first brought to the a[enOon of the Greek
public by a report Otled, “Dangerous experiments in the Greek Skies,” that appeared in Ethnos, a
major naOonal newspaper on February 12, 2003. Readers were informed that the experiments
were performed by American airplanes in search of soluOons to global warming and that they
involved undisclosed risks. A few days later, blog posts in Demothoinia, a naOonalist website,
suggested the experiments were set up by U.S. Zionist and Masonic circles who want to
undermine the poliOcal autonomy of Greece and referred to weather manipulaOon as an
emergent global danger.i In May 2004, the municipality of Aigina, a small island near Athens,
organized a public discussion on the subject with the parOcipaOon of Wayne Hall, a Greek-based
Australian who subsequently became a prominent figure in the local and internaOonal anO-
aerial spraying movement (Chrysou n.d.). However, concern about chemtrails started to
become widespread aRer the onset of the Greek financial crisis in 2009.
Between 2006 and 2013 six depuOes of leRist, right-wing and extreme right parOes
addressed the Greek Parliament requesOng the government to respond to popular concern over
aerial spraying and issue an official statement on whether the rumors causing the concern had
any basis. Four of those requests were submi[ed between 2010 and 2013. By the Ome I began
my research, in the fall of 2012, this concern was a frequent topic of everyday conversaOon, and
the focus of newspaper arOcles, websites and blogs as well as short documentary films. In
2013, three major TV channels hosted talk shows dedicated to issue. On October 13, 2013, the
newspaper Ethnos reported that according to a public opinion poll conducted three days earlier,
33% of a sample of 1106 agreed with the statement “they are spraying us” (mas psekázoun),
58.4% disagreed and 9% had no opinion or refused to answer.ii This finding sparked a flood of
reacOons in the form of arOcles that appeared in the mainstream press and in online news
websites, which suggested that the percentage of “conspiracy theorists” (synomosiológoi) who
recognized aerial spraying as a fact was unexpectedly high.iii
In “The paranoid style in American poliOcs”, historian Richard Hofstadter (1964: 4)
argued that conspiracy theories exemplify a paranoid worldview centering on alleged
persecuOon against a naOon or a culture by means of covert acOon. As many scholars have
pointed out more recently, narraOves that a[ribute troublesome phenomena to conspiratorial
acOons are emblemaOc manifestaOons of a climate of suspicion that pervades late modernity
(e.g. Birchall 2002, Briggs 2004, Comaroff and Comaroff 2003, Fenster 1999, Harding and
Stewart 2003, Marcus 1992, Sanders and West 2003). In other words, in the context of late
modernity there are no absolute criteria by which responses to economic and poliOcal
grievances may be divided into paranoid and raOonal. Moreover, hardly peculiar to conspiracy
theories, the assumpOons that things are not what they seem and that everything is connected
undergird both common sense and scienOfic knowledge pracOces (Birchall 2002:65-90, Dean
2002:48, Latour 2004a). In this essay I refrain from labeling the chemtrail narraOve as conspiracy
theory because doing so precludes examining it in its own terms. My aim is not to assess
whether the chemtrail narraOve consOtutes an adequate representaOon of reality or whether,
by standards external to it, it is a form of resistance or a symptom of dominaOon (cf.
Theodossopoulos 2014). Rather, I approach the chemtrail narraOve as a cosmological discourse
that explains the state and prospects of the world by establishing mulOple relaOons between
different scales of geography, power and Ome.
In the first part of this essay, I examine the appeal of the chemtrail theory in the context
of the breakdown of the Greek economy and a[end to the connecOons people draw between
aerial spraying operaOons and the subjugaOon of the world’s populaOon to a powerful minority.
In the second part, I focus on visual pracOces by which aerial spraying is evidenced and suggest
that these pracOces underplay the importance of geographical and naOonal differences, and
thus emphasize the fact that aerial spraying endangers the whole planet. Then, I examine
quesOons of temporality in people’s claim that the struggle against aerial spraying is a race
against Ome that may already be lost. Finally, I address the relaOons between the perpetrators
and the vicOms of aerial spraying. My main argument is that the struggle against aerial spraying
situates itself in an interconnected world perhaps already in its last throes. The visual pracOces
by which spraying is evidenced provide a perspecOve from which the demise of the Greek
economy is part of an unprecedented and potenOally irreversible global crisis. The essay draws
on two years of research in the course of which I regularly visited Greek web sites and blogs
focusing on aerial spraying, collected relevant press material, conducted short interviews in
which I asked ordinary ciOzens about their views on the issue and parOcipated in informal
conversaOons in which the topic of aerial spraying came up. In addiOon, I conducted a long
interview with a prominent Greek acOvist against aerial spraying.
Crises
In what is the main excepOon to the academic silence surrounding the issue,
eEnvironmental scienOst Rose Cairns (2014: 12-17), the main excepOon to the academic silence
surrounding the issue, approaches the chemtrail discourse as “a constantly shiRing ideoscape”
consOtuted by many accounts, which are in constant flux and are oRen antagonisOc to one
another. These accounts converge on the understanding that large scale aerial spraying takes
place and that it is extremely dangerous, but diverge with respect to the agencies responsible
and their purposes. Thus, as Cairns points out, according to some versions of the chemtrail
narraOve, aerial spraying is a geoengineering method for weather and climate control, but one
that is ineffecOve, and, in addiOon, entails considerable hazards, which are systemaOcally
concealed from the public by state and scienOfic authoriOes. However, the view that aerial
spraying has been specifically designed as a destrucOve weapon that engenders climate change
and the extreme weather phenomena it is supposed to prevent is more popular among anO-
spraying acOvists. Aerial spraying is also said to be used to cause earthquakes and volcanic
erupOons and to introduce diseases that destroy plants, animals and humans. It is depicted as
“the largest crime against humanity in human history” (Cairns 2014: 14). AcOvists a[ribute the
crime to agencies that are greedy for economic, poliOcal and military power; they orchestrate
disasters with the purpose of turning them into profit in weather insurance, pharmaceuOcals
and resilient seed varieOes or in new possibiliOes of access to resources, likee.g. oil drilling in
the warming polar regions. AcOvists may also say that aerial spraying is a means of interfering
with enemy satellites and communicaOon systems, turning weather and the atmosphere into
weapons against hosOle forces, controlling populaOon growth and exercising mental and
psychological manipulaOon (Begich and Manning 1995, Cairns 2014: 15-16).
In Greece popular concern over aerial spraying frames and is in turn framed by
preoccupaOons over the causes and effects of the Greek financial meltdown glossed as the
“crisis.” The view that the crisis this condiOon was purposefully orchestrated by powerful
foreign interests to serve as pretext for the development and worldwide implementaOon of
neoliberal measures and reforms is widespread among Greeks (ArgenO and Knight 2015,
Herzfeld 2011: 25-26, Knight 2013, Theodossopoulos 2013). The chemtrail theory adds a twist
to this idea by poinOng out that the a[ack against Greece involves financial and poliOcal
weapons and airplanes. Spraying operaOons are said to compound the work of austerity
measures, imposed on Greece by its lenders, by causing extreme weather phenomena that
damage infrastructures, property and agricultural producOon and interfere with tourism. While
the effects of the crisis are oRen described publicly through metaphors of bodily and
psychological illness, spraying is blamed for tangible symptoms that include weakness, and
faOgue, headaches, respiratory problems and psychological malaise. These symptoms are said
to undermine people’s capaciOes for protest and resistance against measures and policies that
rob them of their livelihood (Bakalaki 2014). During a conversaOon about the crisis, a middle-
aged working-class woman who had just lost her job asked me rhetorically: “Many are
unemployed, those working are underpaid, the social security system is collapsing, they are
trying to finish us off. We should all be out in the streets, shouOng. Why is this is not
happening?” For my interlocutor, the answer was obvious: “they are spraying us.”
In the course of everyday conversaOon, such claims are usually not accompanied by
explanaOons regarding the precise meaning of the pronoun “they.” When asked, people point
to the standard external and internal figures of poliOcal and economic power commonly blamed
for the crisis: European Union leaders and especially the government of Germany, the Central
European Bank, the InternaOonal Monetary Bank, transnaOonal financial insOtuOons and elites,
but also subservient Greek poliOcians and economic elites. Both aerial spraying and the
undermining of the Greek economy are contextualized in a long series of foreign intervenOons
that have prevented the naOon-state from achieving economic independence and poliOcal
autonomy (ArgenO and Knight 2015, Herzfeld 1982, 1992: 139-142, 2003: 293, 298, Knight 2013,
Su[on 2003, Theodossopoulos 2013: 202). This sense of history generates feelings of solidarity
with other naOons similarly exploited and marginalized (Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2009:
86, 93, Kalantzis 2015: 1043). However, along with blaming external others, Greeks stereotype
themselves as prone to blaming one another for avoiding responsibility for self-inflicted
collecOve and individual troubles and for being less modern and raOonal than the ciOzens of
wWestern Europe orf nNorth America (Herzfeld 1997).
The 2013 opinion poll that measured the appeal of the chemtrail found that it was
higher among Greeks with elementary or secondary educaOon and lower among university
graduates. ORen, the arguments through which the la[er debunk the theory are cast in terms
that carry the presOgious authority of social science. For instance, some of my middle-class,
university-educated informants explained the appeal of the chemtrail narraOve, as a
displacement of a profound anxiety caused by the recent sudden economic, poliOcal and social
transformaOons. They also said that the narraOve is irraOonal and that proneness to irraOonality
goes with parochialism, backwardness and insufficient exposure to scienOfic raOonalism. An
arOcle Otled, “Aerial spraying: the dope of the Omes,” that appeared on June 5, 2012 in Lifo, a
modernist lifestyle online and print periodical, on the 5th of June, 2012, compared chemtrail
believers to “primiOve people” hooked on supersOOon: for them “all problems come from the
sky.”iv
According to Michael Herzfeld (2002), Greece belongs to the company of crypto-
colonies, that is, naOon-states that have not been directly colonized, but have experienced
prolonged and humiliaOng dependence on colonial powers that has fueledfuelled anxieOes over
their recogniOon as proper members of the modern Western world (see also Herzfeld 1987: 49-
76, 1997: 89-108). Longstanding and especially strong among the Greek bourgeoisie, these
anxieOes have been recently reinforced in light of the uncertainty surrounding the country’s
future in Europe (Kalantzis 2015: 1043). Middle-class, university-educated informants who
viewed the appeal of the chemtrail narraOve theory as a symptom of insufficient modernizaOon
assumed that the narraOve originated in Greece, and were genuinely surprised to hear that it
is a U.S. import. Similarly, the fact that prominent internaOonal criOcs of neoliberal
globalizaOon have a[ributed the Greek financial crisis to internaOonal economic and poliOcal
interests sounds surprising to Greeks who dismiss this view as a locally craRed, populist
narraOve.v
[place figure 1 here]
However, although people who believe that the Greek skies are being sprayed also tend
to say that the financial crisis was an intenOonal creaOon, many of those who agree with the
la[er statement reject the chemtrail theory on the grounds that it subsOtutes imaginary
dangers for real poliOcal issues and thus undermines the prospects of resistance against the
austerity measures (cf. Theodossopoulos 2013: 204). The various perspecOves from which the
chemtrail theory is rejected converge in the understanding that it is a tool for ideological and
poliOcal manipulaOon. In the vernacular, “the one who has been sprayed”, (psekasménos), has
come to be a metaphor for being naïve, confused and irraOonal, but also easily duped by others.
However, proponents of the chemtrail theory confront these stereotypes by drawing on the
widespread understanding that the Greek crisis consOtutes an unforeseeable rupture that has
destabilized the limits between the conceivable, the probable and the unthinkable. Like
Russians who have experienced the collapse of the U.S.S.R. (Oushakin 2009: 106), many Greeks
feel that nothing disastrous is unthinkable anymore. In the words of a middle-aged man
struggling with a small family business, “the idea that we are being sprayed may sound
outrageous, but this does not mean it is false. A few years ago the thought that Greece would
plunge into this terrible crisis would have sounded equally outrageous. Does this mean that, if
there had been warnings that we are heading toward disaster, they would be false, or does it
mean that we just think we are going through a crisis when all is well?” The rhetorical quesOon
turns the stereotype of gullible chemtrail believers on its head by suggesOng that it is those who
mistake the stereotype for truth who need to be more skepOcal (see also Birchall 2006: 40).
Anxiety over aerial spraying in Greece may be compared to another preoccupaOon that
emerged in the 1990s over home burglaries said to be perpetrated by poor immigrants. From
the perspecOve of both concerns, Greece is effecOvely borderless and open to infiltraOon by
foreign bodies who destroy it from within. But there is also a big difference. The alleged
increase in property crimes perpetrated by immigrants reinforced the Greeks’ sense that their
country had finally joined the modern developed world, where both property crime and the
presence of immigrants are common phenomena (Bakalaki 2003, see also Herzfeld 2011). In
contrast, the idea that Greece is part of the world endangered by spraying leaves no room for
any sense of achieving an enviable modernizaOon.
The sky from the earth and vice versa
MobilizaOon against aerial spraying includes peOOon signing and lobbying, but mostly
takes the form of digital evidence aiming at the “awakening of the public” (afýpnisi tou koinoú)
as it is commonly referred to in both internaOonal and Greek websites and other relevant
outlets. Relevant web sites feature graphs and wri[en test results indicaOng the presence of
heavy metals and other deleterious substances in water, earth and organic Ossue samples as
well as narraOves that blame extreme ecological phenomena and medical symptoms on
spraying. However, the evidence deployed most frequently comes in the form of photographs
indexing abnormal sky acOvity. But even if “the biggest secrets are hidden in plain view”, as the
slogan of Greek anO-aerial spraying website goes, to spot them one needs to know what to look
for as well as where and how to look for it. Thus, photographs of chemtrails are juxtaposed to
photographs of contrails, that is, lines of condensed water vapor leR by ordinary planes so that
viewers can see that the la[er are straight and narrow, while chemtrails form circular or
crisscrossing pa[erns that index the back and forth movement of airplanes over an area in
order to spray it. Also, photographs are used to show that, in contrast to contrails, which
dissipate quickly, chemtrails develop into wide whiOsh streaks that linger for hours before
shaping into formaOons which the uniniOated may easily mistake for ordinary clouds. Visitors of
anO-aerial websites are constantly urged to keep their eyes open and trust their vision. This
admoniOon draws on the self-evident understanding that vision is the most reliable path to the
truth and that photographs offer unproblemaOc access to this truth (Bloch 2008). The argument
that chemtrails are real because they are visible came up in all my conversaOons with people
concerned about spraying.
[place figure 2 here]
Cairns (2014: 19) reports that acOvists against aerial spraying remember the first Ome
they were able to recognize that certain lines in the sky were chemtrails, the likes of which they
had seen in photographs, as a moment of revelaOon that triggered their conversion. Greek anO-
aerial spraying websites and blogs are full of chemtrail photographs taken and uploaded by
iniOates duOfully documenOng spraying acOvity in order to “awaken” others who will, hopefully,
follow their example. This proliferaOon of visual evidence is intertwined with the increased
availability of miniaturized, portable and cheap photographic equipment, as noted also in other
contexts (Pinney 2008). Perhaps, the fact that chemtrail photographs are taken by such
ubiquitous quoOdian equipment makes their evidenOary character all the more self-evident.
Nevertheless, these photographs have a surreal quality that comes from presenOng the sky as a
domain at once familiar and strange or mysterious.vi In addiOon, however, the chemtrail
photographs convey the strange feeling that, no ma[er how distant from one another, the
earthly spots from which the photographs have been taken are alike in that they are all
enveloped by the same poisoned atmosphere. In this sense, this photography operates as a
universalizing apparatus.
[place figure 3 here]
Greek anO-aerial web sites present updates on acOviOes taking place in other countries
and upload relevant material that has appeared in internaOonal outlets. However the global
character of the struggle in which they are implicated is also enacted by the chemtrail
photographs evidencing that spraying takes place. A common element of these photographs is
that most of their frame is taken up by the sky. If visible at all, the ground occupies a small part
of the image. Photographs taken in Greece are almost always accompanied by capOons that
menOon the places they have been taken, but oRen also by textual accounts explaining that
local damages are part of a global phenomenon. The assumpOon that specific places consOtute
a local level subsumed in a global level undergirds the combinaOon of a localist rhetoric that
presents spraying as a threat to the homeland with an internaOonalist, cosmopolitan rhetoric
that presents the homeland as part of a global world. The local and global scales are at once
differenOated, arOculated, mixed and fused and the same goes for opposing aerial spraying in
the capacity of Greek patriot and that of a globalizing agent (see also Briggs 2004:175). In short,
the chemtrail theory disrupts the stereotype according to which naOonalism necessarily
emphasizes the uniqueness of the homeland’s predicament.
[place figure 4 here]
“Awakening” the public to the dangers of aerial spraying also involves the deployment of
satellite imagery featuring nebulous formaOons hovering over the earth’s surface that are
allegedly caused by spraying. From space, the earthly dwelling places of humans appear like
small, insignificant dots on a round planet. Although they are emblemaOc of modernity,
satellite images of the earth convey a knowledge that resonates with ancient cosmologies
whereby the sky is a loRy place from the perspecOve of which earthly life is insignificant (Ingold
2011: 112-113). The lyrics of a Greek song composed in 1967 and Otled. “From the airplane,”
highlight the strangeness of the ground’s view obtained from above: “houses look so much like
matchboxes, humans look like ants.”vii “They are spraying us like flies,” (Mas Psekázoune san ?s
Mỳges), the Otle of a Greek documentary on aerial spraying,viii encapsulates the idea that the
agencies behind aerial spraying situate themselves above ordinary humans and treat the la[er
as pests. Since spraying is said to interfere with the perceptual and cogniOve capaciOes on the
basis of which humans rate themselves above other animals, the phrase suggests that spraying
literally turns humans into “lower” organisms, literally (cf. Kambouri and Hatzopoulos 2011,
Wolfe-Meyer and Collins 2012).
Taken from the ground or from space, the images deployed as evidence of aerial
spraying suggest that the earth is a unitary enOty wherein no place is safe. What is important
about the places between which this evidence circulates is not the specific environments and
human habits by which they are differenOated, but the fact that they are all part of a unified,
global world that is becoming increasingly fragile and vulnerable by virtue of being sprayed. Like
dwellings and bodies which become the focus of a[enOon when they begin to deteriorate, the