America's Conspiracy Theory Kink
Truly, there has never been a nation that gets off on pure manufactured nonsense the way that America does.
What’s the worst rumor or conspiracy you’ve heard since, say, Labor Day?
Is it that Haitian immigrants are eating the cats and dogs of their neighbors?
Is it that Black Rock was given a federal government contract to mine lithium in the mountains of North Carolina after Hurricane Helene caused massive devastation?
Perhaps it’s Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s assertion that “they” control the weather, with lots of hints equally directed at Democrats and/or Jews doing the controlling?
What about FEMA aid not getting to hurricane survivors because of aid going to Ukraine/Israel?
Or Kamala Harris being a puppet for a third Barack Obama term as president?
The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a now-legendary article for Harper’s Magazine back in November 1964 as the election between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson for President was underway. Titled The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Hofstadter wrote of the many moral panics that were underpinned by conspiracy theories throughout American history, dating back to a mere decade after George Washington was sworn in as President. His aim was to tell people that the Radical Right was not solely responsible for the conspiracy-mongering and moral panics of the day, but rather was just the latest in a long line of groups that utilized these panics for political gain.
What has changed in the sixty years since Hofstatder wrote that article is the way in which communication has spread and grown. The Internet has provided us with near-instantaneous methods to share information when it used to required access to a printing press or regulated broadcast airwaves. There aren’t gatekeepers to serve as a filtration system for all of the insane ideas we the people think up because we have too much time on our hands or too little education, because the Internet changed that. And while it was once a net gain to society to have this openness and freedom, malign forces took the opportunity to corrupt it. Authoritarian regimes not only blocked information that would harm their ability to repress their people, but they discovered how easily they could take the tools used to help plan organizing for democracy and turn them into tools for destroying it.
Information warfare is very serious and very real. It’s why Alex Jones, the right-wing lunatic, named his company InfoWars. He understood the power of the term and hijacked it for his own personal profit. Vladimir Putin, the onetime KGB colonel turned Russian president-for-life, has managed to upend the strategic balance of the world by using information warfare against us. He knew, from the KGB’s long history of operations in America, that we were a nation particularly susceptible to the predations of conspiracies. He recognized how easy it was to push us apart with the right tools, using our own arguments and conflicts. This chart, from a major political science journal study about conspiracies and political ideology, demonstrates how four years of a Donald Trump presidency, aided by information warfare conducted by Russia, pushed America apart on all major issues.
The irony is that the only area where people agreed was the growth of political extremism. Both sides believed the other was more extremist in 2020 than in 2017. To some extent, they’re right; at the same time, leftist extremism grew in response to the barrage of right-wing violence, racism, sexism, and militias that exploded after Trump won the election in 2016. Then COVID happened, and George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officers on camera in slow motion, and Trump set armed militia upon peaceful protestors in DC. By the election, everyone was convinced the other side would “steal” it from them—again, both justified and unjustified feelings. Regardless, there was a winner, and the right wing didn’t accept it, and created conspiracies to explain how their cult leader cum President lost by ten million votes. They were primed by months of his complaints that the election would be rigged against him.
Today, we’re seeing how the rumors around FEMA and hurricane relief are, just like the beliefs about extremism, one of the cases where horseshoe theory is totally applicable. Many on the far left blame Israel aid from preventing aid to Helene victims and the far right blames Ukraine aid for the same. Neither is true, because yes, our government can do multiple things at one time, and both conspiracy theories ignore the real, twin-track stories taking place. First, a lot can and should be said about how Joe Biden’s focus on domestic issues and withdrawal of our military from foreign wars means that unlike the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there’s actually the right equipment and trained Guardsmen available! Those of us who remember that week in 2005 know how fatal an unprepared, underfunded, disorganized FEMA can be for the victims, and FEMA is doing extremely well, actually, because it’s run by competent people currently.
Second, any shortages in funding for FEMA won’t hit until December, and the only reason there’s a potential shortage is that Republicans in Congress, including nearly every Florida Republican, voted against additional funding during the short-term continuing resolution last month. But, telling those stories don’t fit the theory, so instead you get the top of the Republican ticket, Donald Trump and JD Vance (remember, a former president and current senator), propagating numerous conspiracies. Lies about legal immigrants that have caused very real violence to occur. Lies about abortion that have killed real women. Lies about FEMA aid not being sent because it’s all gone to Ukraine, which makes it more likely that people do not accept necessary aid, that they don’t evacuate when authorities tell them their lives are in extreme peril, and generally drive the gap between belief and reality further apart.
More so on the right than the left, conspiracies are now an article of faith for them. A number of right-wing states have now codified their election conspiracies into law, changing the election rules in ways that make them the riggers of votes. Trump and Vance continue to refuse to acknowledge the basic truth that Donald Trump lost the last election, and are driving conspiracies about this one, so that if they lose, it will be the fault of some Hidden Hand, and not that they are disfavored by the bulk of the country’s population. It can’t be us, it must be the nebulous them. The problem is, the problem always has been, that those who propagate conspiracies to explain losing don’t actually believe the conspiracy—they just want power by any means. The conspiracy is a means to an end for them, but it’s also a kink— something they get off on, something that makes them feel good about themselves because the vast majority of people don’t buy their crap.
Given that it’s been around our politics since 1798, it’s safe to say that conspiracies are America’s favorite kink. What a sad commentary on us that is.