A bumper crop of QAnon-aligned candidates ran for office during the U.S. midterms. Russia doubled down on its long-running bio lab conspiracy theory to justify its Ukraine invasion. Hard-right conspiracy theorists who would like Germany to recapture its moment of empire in 1871 staged a coup. It has not been a quiet year for conspiracy theories.

Russian bio labs 

Shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, the internet was set alight with a pro-Russia conspiracy theory that the U.S. was running secret bioweapons labs on Russia’s borders. The theory was used as part of Russia’s justification for invading Ukraine, and was pushed by Russian state media before being picked up by online conspiracy theorists and QAnon adherents, as well as influencers like Alex Jones. Even British comedian and social commentator Russell Brand ran with the narrative, weighing in on the lie to his five-million-strong following. The myth that the U.S. is building bioweapons on Russia’s borders goes back years. Chinese officials and state media also promoted the conspiracy theory, using it as an opportunity to parrot its long-running claim that the U.S. was behind the Covid-19 pandemic.

The U.S. bioweapons narrative is nothing new. For years, the Kremlin has made extensive claims that the U.S.-owned Lugar Lab in Georgia — which monitors infectious diseases — was secretly running “germ warfare” operations, and has said it’s responsible for everything from Covid to the Zika virus to plagues of stink bugs. Thanks to this conspiracy theory, even biolabs in the U.S. itself are facing opposition and conspiracy claims. A new biolab in Kansas opened recently to study some of the world’s most dangerous pathogens. Though some concerns about the lab were legitimate, they were accompanied by a torrent of conspiracy theories, reminiscent of those in Ukraine, pushing the notion that the lab was really building bioweapons. 

Anti-vaxxers refuse to back down post-Covid 

At the outset of the year, Canadian truckers drove cross-country to participate in a standoff with the Canadian government, protesting Covid restrictions and vaccine mandates. Their action inspired motorists in France, Israel, Finland, Australia and the Netherlands to stage similar protests demanding an end to pandemic measures. Many of the “Freedom Convoy” social media groups were being run by fake accounts tied to content farms in Vietnam, Bangladesh and Romania. They were heavily endorsed by QAnon influencers, and QAnon logos were seen emblazoned on trucks during the protests, while other organizations among the truckers claimed that the pandemic had been orchestrated by Bill Gates with the intention of injecting 5G microchips into the population.