‘This is genocide’: Inside the bizarre rise of coronavirus conspiracy theories

A weekday afternoon in Leeds city centre and a furious speaker is telling a crowd of 40 or so onlookers that coronavirus is a scam dreamed up by a shadowy cabal of global elites seeking to control the rest of us. “This is not a conspiracy theory,” she shouts to applause. “This is Bill Gates.” She found the truth, she tells me later, after starting to question the world while in lockdown. Where was it? In Facebook posts and YouTube videos, apparently. “But they get removed so fast,” she...