Inside Job's Deconstruction of Conspiracy Theories
While reading How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley, especially the discussion of conspiracy theories in the chapter on Unreality, I couldn't help thinking about Inside Job.
The premise of Inside Job is "what if every conspiracy theory was true?" Lizard people, the Illuminati, Hollow Earth (but not Flat Earth, that's ridiculous even in this universe), cryptids, government experiments, clones and sentient AI...
Conspiracy theories are a very muddled topic. While things like cryptids are often just imaginative folk tales and urban legends, and wealthy and powerful people do actually do shady shit and should never be trusted implicitly, larger scale "cabal" type theories are almost universally anti-Semitic and xenophobic in origin. After learning about the origins of these conspiracies, I wasn't sure how to feel about Inside Job.
But after thinking about it, and after reading more about their purpose in fascist and totalitarian regimes, I think Inside Job does something really clever and subversive beyond just wacky comedy setups.
What really made this idea click was Stanley's recounting of the "Pizzagate" incident, a demonstrably false conspiracy that Democrats were running a pedophilia ring out of a pizza restaurant. Someone actually showed up, armed, to the location, only to be condemned by the very people spreading the conspiracy.
If the Pizzagate conspiracy were real, this guy's reaction would be valid and normal. But the people spreading this conspiracy never fully believed it was real. It just validated their preexisting feelings of disgust and resentment toward Hillary Clinton and her associates.
Conspiracy theories of this sort aren't meant to actually uncover a truth. They're meant to divide. And that's what makes them such effective tools for fascism.
On the other hand, in Inside Job, Reagan starts off as someone who's antisocial and suspicious of everyone. Exactly the kind of person to be attracted by these conspiracies even if she didn't grow up knowing they were all real.
But as she and the viewer learn more about Cognito, Inc. and its partners and adversaries, Reagan starts to make friends with widely disparate people. Her coworkers have widely varying ideologies. The Illuminati appears to be Cognito, Inc. with less-shiny branding. The lizard people are just... people. Very physically affectionate people.
Reagan even falls in love with Ron, a member of the Illuminati, supposedly in competition with Cognito, Inc. But their common ground leads to them forming a genuine connection.
Reagan's ability to connect with people - often unwittingly - is what leads her to be able to stand up to her father and J.R., causing a major shift in the structure of the shadow government. We never see the full conclusion of this, but it's clear that it's significant.
And I think it scares the Order of the Black Robes.
The environment of division works in their favor. Higher-ups in the shadow government seem to nominally know there's a higher elite group pulling the strings, but they're still too caught up in interpersonal drama to turn and face the real enemy.
And to me, that sounds eerily familiar.
The Robes' belief that some people are just inherently intellectually superior and therefore are responsible for ensuring humanity's survival... that rings very fascist. Fascism uses anti-intellectualism as one of its key pillars of control, but those at the top of the hierarchy are not subjected to the incomplete education of the masses. And if a fascist regime can create a brain trust that is both intelligent and buys into the propaganda, that is a very dangerous tool in its arsenal.
And at the end of Season 2, they seem to have that in the form of Reagan.
Or at least, they think they do.
But the show was unjustly cancelled, so we'll probably never know for sure.
Despite this, I still think what we saw of the story tells an important message. The friendships formed throughout the course of Inside Job aren't just feel-good sitcom stuff. They're resistance. Because when people can't look down on their neighbors, there's a chance they could start looking up.
And the cliffhanger ending, with Reagan accepting the Robes' deal, serves as a warning: Intelligence does not make you immune to indoctrination. Always stay vigilant.
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