Kelly Weill, a reporter for 'The Daily Beast', found it hard to believe Flat Earthers really thought our planet is as flat as a pancake. But after Weill spent years hobnobbing with Flat Earthers at conferences across the United States, and interviewing them on weekends, Kelly realized that "Flat Earthers are as serious as your life."
In this book Weill traces the Flat Earth movement from its beginnings in the 1800s to current times, when Flat Earthers tend to get tangled in additional conspiracy theories.
The first 'modern' proponent of a flat Earth was Samuel Birley Rowbotham, a 22-year-old radical who was "occasionally high off his mind on laughing gas when he began imagining a new world in 1838....a moment ripe for conspiracy theories."
Samuel Birley Rowbotham
This was a time of rapid industrialization and income inequality, and laborers worried that new technologies would leave them unemployed. In addition, early evolutionary biology was starting to challenge biblical descriptions of creation. Weill writes, "Conspiracy theories help us feel safe by providing an explanation for things that feel incomprehensible and beyond our control. This dynamic can influence us in measurably silly ways."
The modern configuration of the solar system has been known since the 1500s, and by Rowbotham's time (most) people knew the Earth is round.
Configuration of the Solar System
Rowbotham didn't accept this, however, and referred to the Bible for confirmation, saying a round Earth would mean "there could be no heaven for man's future enjoyment; no higher existence than on this Earth; no spiritual and immortal creatures, and therefore no God or Creator."
Rowbotham suggested that scientists, intellectuals and academics - who said the Earth is round - had some evil agenda, and he railed against them in his speeches. Rowbotham managed to convert some some people to his way of thinking, though LEGITIMATE experiments ALWAYS proved the Earth is round.
Nevertheless, Flat Earthers couldn't accept the truth. In 1870, a wealthy Flat Earther named John Hampden placed an advertisement in the publication 'Scientific Opinion' offering £500 (about £60,000 present day) for proof the Earth is round.
John Hampden
The well-known scientist Alfred Russel Wallace took up the challenge, and a test was conducted at the Bedford Canal, "the mecca of England's Flat Earth scene." After a series of experiments that Flat Earthers tried their best to sabotage, Wallace won the £500 prize.
Alfred Russel Wallace
Hampden was furious and sent letters full of violent abuse to Wallace and many of his friends, charging the scientist with fraud and conspiracy. For example, a letter from Hampden to Wallace's wife read, "If your infernal thief of a husband is brought home some day on a hurdle, with every bone in his head smashed to a pulp, you will know the reason....he is a lying infernal thief, and as sure as his name is Wallace he never dies in his bed. You must be a miserable wretch to be obliged to live with a convicted felon...." Hampden eventually had to pay libel claims, lost all his money, and went to prison because of his behavior.
Rowbotham's Flat Earth movement was continued by John Alexander Dowie, then by Wilbur Glenn Voliva, who was exceptionally aggressive about spreading the word.
John Alexander Dowie
Wilbur Glenn Voliva
In the 1900s, Voliva pushed his Flat Earth agenda by launching a religious radio station, publishing newspapers, making speeches, going on world tours, and establishing his own town called Zion City - where schools taught the Earth is flat. After Voliva died in 1942, his movement abated....but didn't completely go away.
Sign in Zion City
One would think Flat Earthers would be forced to admit the truth in 1966 when NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1 sent back pictures of the Earth that showed a clearly round planet.
Photo of Earth from NASA's Lunar Orbiter 1
These images didn't convince Flat Earthers, though, who claimed they were doctored, staged, and so on. This was a harbinger of the conspiracy theorists who questioned the moon landing in 1969, insisting "the government and the news media conspired to hoodwink the public."
Neil Armstrong walking on the moon
Weill writes that after a Flat Earth evangelist called Charles Johnson died in 2001, the Flat Earth movement became relatively dormant.
Charles Johnson
The author goes on, "Then in 2015, the year Donald Trump launched a conspiracy-laden presidential campaign that many dismissed as a joke, Flat Earth began a much-mocked comeback....By November, 2018, Trump had spent two years in the presidency shaping U.S. policy after his paranoid impulses, and the Flat Earth movement was bigger than ever."
The Flat Earther resurgence was largely due to the internet. Weill observes, "conspiracy theorists became experts in exploiting the web, breaking the internet in ways that shaped how we use it today." Of course Flat Earthers were not the only conspiracists spreading their ideas on the World Wide Web.
Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter were employed to promote anti-vaccine conspiracies; claims that Covid-19 was a hoax; Pizzagate (a conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton's emails contained coded messages connecting Democrat Party officials and U.S. restaurants with a human trafficking and pedophile ring); QAnon (a theory that President Trump was waging a secret war against Satan-worshipping pedophiles in government, business and the media); the belief that Trump won the 2020 presidential election.....and on the extreme right, Neo-Nazis, other anti-Semites, and people against LGBTQ rights.
Moreover Flat Earthers, who are frequently on the internet, tend to embrace additional conspiracy theories. (This is not to suggest they're all Neo-Nazis or anything like that.)
In 2019 Flat Earther Mike Hughes planned to launch himself into the sky to prove the Earth is flat
Unfortunately for Flat Earthers, they are often the victims of their beliefs. In 2018 an Ohio pastor named Nate Wolfe was fired for planning a Flat Earth sermon.
Wolfe says his firing was traumatic, and his family was devastated. He notes, "The church was most of our family and close friends. When I got fired, there was only a handful, like literally four or five people out of two hundred, that reached out to us....It was like, all of a sudden, we didn't exist." According to Weill, Flat Earthers are often shunned by family, friends, and the general public, and believers claim they've been called things like crazy, retard, flat-tard, etc. On the part of the Flat Earthers themselves, they tend to form a kind of cult that has "Jesus and the online Flat Earth community."
Weill is fair-minded in her approach to Flat Earthers, some of whom she considers friends. The author writes that Flat Earthers can't be 'converted' to Globe Earthers with facts, which they'll reject. Psychologists offer the following advice for people trying to pry someone from a cult like Flat Earth: "Keep in communication with that person. Remind them that another world exists outside their faith community. This, in itself, can be difficult, especially when the group preaches ideals that are baffling, even amoral, to the person on the outside."
However, two 'reformed' Flat Earthers, Jose Gonzalez and Craig Pennock, were able to move on from the Flat Earther cult "with support from real-world communities who welcomed them back when they returned to the globe." Gonzalez says about the time he was a Flat Earth conspiracy theorist, "I was laughed at. I had a lot of issues with my family." But after Gonzalez left Flat Earth, "everything came back to life."
Former Flat Earther Jose Gonzalez
Weill has done extensive research and covers all facets of Flat Earthism, as well as various other conspiracy theories, in detail. If you're interested in the subject, this is the book for you.
Rating: 4 stars
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