In Praise of Conspiracy Theories: From The Camp of the Saints to Camps in the Darién Gap
6th February 2024
Last week, the American journalist Tucker Carlson interviewed Bret Weinstein, a professional biologist who became a public intellectual after he and his scientist wife were driven out of their woke university for refusing to cooperate with a diversity program they regarded as racist. Though he has been a lifelong leftist and atheist, Weinstein’s iconoclastic observations and commentaries have been embraced by conservatives who are more interested in truth than ideological conformity. It turns out that people like him, who find themselves thrust outside the bubble of epistemic closure, often see things that the rest of us do not.
On the Carlson program, Weinstein reported on his recent visit to the Darién Gap, the densely forested patch of land in Panama, through which all migrants headed north from South America must pass. For most of the millions of migrants who have passed this way headed to the United States in recent years, this is the most perilous part of their journey. Weinstein, who is familiar with the area from his field research there as a biologist, was shocked to see NGOs everywhere in the Darién Gap, and also the United Nations migration office.
“The United States Government is facilitating this economic migration,” he said on the show. “It’s unmistakable.”
Of course they are. Duh.
Even more shocking was a separate refugee transit camp for Chinese migrants. This was the only camp that Weinstein and his companion were not allowed to visit by the Panamanian government. These are all men who made their way from China to Ecuador (where they can be admitted without a visa), and then northward towards the United States. When the Americans approached Chinese men who had left their camp to buy supplies, the Chinese set themselves apart from all other migrants by refusing to talk about their journey.
Weinstein concluded that these Chinese men are not interested in reaching America for the sake of economic opportunity, like most of the migrants. Theirs, he believes, is an “invasion” cloaked within an economic migration—one that the Biden administration has taken no actions to stop. What’s more, he says, this cloaking makes it hard to discuss the Chinese issue.
The scientist was shocked to see no mainstream U.S. journalists on the ground there, reporting on this extraordinary event—the presence of large numbers of fighting-age men from an enemy superpower making their way to the U.S. border. Why is the U.S. government not only letting this happen, but paying for it? Why doesn’t the media care?