The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)
harpers.org
harpers.org
Another data point for that thesis: Arabs are very into what we would call conspiracy theories. A decade ago there were all these polls showing fairly broad approval among Arabs for Osama Bin Laden. That makes sense when you consider other polls showing that most Arabs didn't think Bin Laden was involved in 9/11 [0].
Personally I have a soft spot for conspiracy theorists. At least Alex Jones is thinking for himself. Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are on HN a lot and I feel similarly about them -- which is not to say I put them in the same category as Jones. I think they get some stuff right, I appreciate their fire-and-brimstone approach (at least it's fun to read), but both of them frequently write sentences that cause my eyes to roll back in my head.
I think the ultimate source of conspiratorial thinking is linked to reductio ad absurdum. In our minds, we seem drawn to the extremes. Everything reminds everyone of Hitler, Stalin, Maoist struggle sessions, and so on. Trump is a vile white-supremacist-fascist. Biden is kowtowing to critical-theory-reading neo-Marxists. Reducing an argument to the absurd makes sense in logic and math but perhaps not in the real world where there's no guarantee that an argument is based on anything logical.
Or maybe it makes sense in the real world too. It seems to me, sometimes, that conspiracy theorists are actually fairly good at identifying the ultimate goal of an ideology. But ultimate goals are ideals, they're never realized and, in practice, they provide a direction rather than a destination. It's one thing to identify the ultimate goal of the ideology animating leftists but are you so sure our society shouldn't be a little more left-wing? Because, in practice, that's what electing the left-wing candidate is likely to accomplish. It's unlikely to recreate The Cultural Revolution.
On the other hand, maybe the fact that such ultimate goals came astonishingly close to being realized, on the right and left, in the 20th century, is a good reason to be alarmed.
[0] - https://newrepublic.com/article/94546/middle-east-radical-co...
Conspiracy theories are fun and all until stuff like this happens:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/this-sandy-hook-f...
And the then claimed that actually, he was literally psychotic when he was saying that stuff and blamed "mass group think":
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/alex-jones-psychosis-sandy...
A refusal to consider conspiracy theories is also all fun and all until stuff like this happens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#Casualty_estimates
(Death estimates range from 150,000 to 1,000,000).
> And the then claimed that actually, he was literally psychotic when he was saying that stuff and blamed "mass group think"
Did anyone responsible for the war have to atone for their error?
I happen to think total body count is a perfectly reasonable metric (one of many) for evaluating the risks inherent in various styles of thinking (or not thinking, as the case may be) - I'm curious if you agree or disagree?
When someone targets random people like, I don't know, parents of murdered children, when it turns out they're wrong, the failure case is absolutely devastating. The failure case when the conspiracy is "George W Bush did 9/11" is going to involve a whole lot fewer death threats to random private people.
Telling stories about powerful people matters a lot less because even if they're lies, powerful people will go along with their day. They'll be fine. So, sure, entertain stories about powerful and possibly malevolent public figures. It's when people with significant power like Jones take to telling stories about random parents of murdered children that they do serious damage.
This is a rather interesting detour. How about when the conspiracy is "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction"? Did that result in any deaths? Like, oh I don't know, many many hundreds of thousands? Was that "failure case" devastating, or is there some sort of a conversion factor between brown skinned Middle Easterners and Righteous Pale Westerners that I should be aware of?
> It's when people with significant power like Jones take to telling stories about random parents of murdered children that they do serious damage.
In the range of multiple hundreds of thousands of innocent dead people?
I would enjoy reading any serious reasoning for why Alex Jones' Sandy Hook rantings are more serious than the innocent civilians killed in Iraq. Is that not what multiple people here are asserting? If you have no regret (as a taxpayer who funds the war machine) about the situation, I wonder if any of you people have any sympathy?
My son was learning in school last year about the Holocaust, and part of the curriculum was how it was possible that the German public could go along with something that was so obviously wrong. I am going to show him this thread when he gets home from school today, so he can get a real world, firsthand, modern day impression of how human psychology can so easily find a way to justify war crimes.
Yes, government conspiracies exist. That doesn't mean we should take every ranting of publicity-addled nutcases seriously. People like Jones are not performing a public service, and aren't going to actually uncover future real conspiracies. That's not the business they're in. They're in the business of making shit up for money.
I find it hard, as the poster seems to, to imagine a scenario in which even 100k clones of Alex Jones could cause the same level of harm. And while Alex himself may never uncover any real conspiracies (and really, how could you personally guarantee that?), that doesn't mean the same tactics used on him won't be turned on someone who has uncovered genuine malfeasance. (keep in mind, I've never been a fan, and I think he is a personally odious, obnoxious, and ill-intentioned individual who no one should listen to. Still, he shouldn't be silenced.)
> while Alex himself may never uncover any real conspiracies (and really, how could you personally guarantee that?),
I can probably "uncover" real conspiracies by claiming that every single government action is a lie or a false flag. At some point, I'll be correct. That doesn't mean I'm actually performing a public service, a mindless chatbot could do that.
If he's not lying[0] and actually was psychotic when he said those things, then we should not take any of the conspiricizing he says seriously because it was literally the product of his own disordered thinking. If he was lying, then he's the sort of person who will disclaim all his positions as soon as they get uncomfortable for him to hold.
[0] he is
Several had more than just something to say about it:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17659026/alex-jones-deplat...
>> The great de-platforming of Alex Jones began last week, when Spotifyand Stitcher removed Infowars podcasts from their respective networks. (Spotify initially removed a handful of episodes before removing whole shows.) On Sunday night, Apple followed suit, removing his podcast from iTunes for violating its rules against hate speech.
>> Apple’s move was followed almost immediately by a rash of similar moves. Facebook removed Jones’ pages, citing repeated hate speech violations. YouTube followed suit, terminating an account that had 2.4 million subscribers. Pinterest came next.
> I was talking about the damage he's caused
Exactly how much damage has he caused? Serious question.
> and why people shouldn't just shrug and say, well, he's "thinking for himself"
People also shouldn't accept their subconscious heuristic predictions about the thoughts of others as representative of reality - this is a wise strategy not only when it comes to people who have a different skin color than you.
> ...as if there's some independent virtue to coming up with nonsense that outweighs the damage that coming up with nonsense can do.
Present your numbers and we can discuss.
> I can probably "uncover" real conspiracies by claiming that every single government action is a lie or a false flag. At some point, I'll be correct. That doesn't mean I'm actually performing a public service, a mindless chatbot could do that.
Are you suggesting that "claiming that every single government action is a lie or a false flag" is what (the average) conspiracy theorists do? If you don't mind, could you please state, in detail, which specific conspiracy communities you frequent, and how much time you spend there per week/month? I have a hunch that you're running purely on intuition and stories that you've read about conspiracy theory communities, as most people here clearly do.
> If he's not lying[0] and actually was psychotic when he said those things, then we should not take any of the conspiricizing he says seriously because it was literally the product of his own disordered thinking.
This is some interesting logic.
> [0] he is
This is some interesting mind reading. You know who are often big believers in ESP? Conspiracy theorists.
You are exactly correct.
> ...against the vast hurricane of actual governmental conspiracies and the harm that can come from them, and that anything that might make it harder to hear about those conspiracies is far more harmful to the world than letting people say things that are untrue
There are several going on at all times. What's fascinating is how easily the vast majority of people, even smart ones, can so easily have heuristics planted in their minds that result in a Pavlovian response to the very mention of a conspiracy theory - any story that has had a "conspiracy theory" label attached to it by the media is from that point immediately classified as False - many people seem quite literally unable to concede there's a possibility that not every single conspiracy theory is wrong. What makes it even funnier is, from reading many comments on HN, it couldn't be more clear that people's knowledge of what the conspiracy world consists of comes directly from the mainstream media. The average /r/conspiracy subscriber has far(!) superior epistemic skills than the average that I've observed here.
"Conspiracy theory" is a category with a high false positive ratio. It's better for all of us to at least entertain them and give them a fair shot before dismissing them.
No. It cannot be used to evaluate "risk", without quantifying what you mean by "risk" or even having something like full information. How much was (bad)luck? How much was inevitable, regardless if it was March 20 or 21 where the SEALs had cameras on the beach, waiting for them to appear? We will never have full information to understand what was going on, but the stated reasonings behind the Iraq War, outside of the shoot-first Bush Doctrine^, were lies of convenience^^, at best. The thinking was not simple, nor were the initial motivations strictly good or bad. I would argue the outcome was bad.
^ If you don't help us find the terrorists that ran into your country, you're against US
^^ Knowing Iraq has used chemical weapons in the past, it was a bet that old weapons or evidence of them could be found...making a claim of WMDs convenient.
Dead bodies laying around on the ground is usually considered a sign that some sort of risk was in play, but I'm clearly not as well versed in the field as you. Your absolutely flawless logic has certainly changed my mind.
I wonder if the relatives of the dead are as as easily convinced as me. What's your intuition on that (if you care enough to bother generating an opinion that is)?
I think the most common mistake to think of the solution as civility and/or facts or evidence based politics. The "paranoid style's" primary (IMO) attribute is presenting the opposition as beyond salvation. They disingenuous, immoral, lying, evil people. Believe nothing they say. Question their motives. etc.
The actual opposite of this is broadly "Gandhism." Pared down: Assuming that your opposition is decent, responds to generous gestures, and can be convinced of your position because it is true. That doesn't mean that they aren't your opposition, but the idea is to recruit and oppose simultaneously. You're not trying to defeat anyone.
Ultimately, politics is a proxy for conflict. People understand conflict. It's usually about creating a seething solidarity among your side to defeat an opponent. The "paranoid style" is also the rhetoric of generals motivating their troops. Your enemy is cruel and wicked.
Multi-party democracies with proportional representation tend to be more civil, as the presence of multiple factions to negotiate with means you need allies, and you may find yourself allied with one party on one issue, while you’re aligned with another party on another issue. The requirement to operate by coalition makes demonization of the other party a bad strategy.
For a deep dive on this I highly recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44244963-breaking-the...
It's true though that the campaign itself, in a two horse race, tends to be more negative.
1. https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-show/e/7...
That's quite an oversimplification of Gandhi's philosophy, which evolved quite a bit over his lifetime, starting from the position of trust and assumption of good faith that you describe (and indeed even a deference to India's colonial rulers), but later evolving into the less dependent philosophy of satyagraha, which makes no assumptions of the decency of one's opponent, nor holds any expectation of benevolence from an oppressive power, but relies solely on one's own rigorous and unflagging dedication to non-violent resistance to achieve change. It is the latter philosophy which formed the substance of his life's work and moved the needle on India's independence struggle.
After a while, it becomes self-fulfilling. If your opponents are your enemies, then you act like their enemy, and they have to perceive you as one. Fringe elements of your own side will eventually escalate to violence. And you won't discourage them too much -- if you've ceded the middle, you need to keep your extremes.
It's not clear to me that Gandhism will succeed as a policy. Sometimes it works; sometimes you get bowled over. Gandhism requires a charismatic leader who can focus attention. Without that, you just seem boring and ineffective. It's especially hard today, when social media can quickly spread anti-Gandhi propaganda. Even Gandhi isn't Gandhi today; he's got a lot of negative things on his record and they'd eat him alive.
So you may eventually become enemies for real, and not just as a matter of rhetoric. Breaking that self-reinforcing loop may be impossible.
The problem is, as has been demonstrated many times, is: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. This is sort of an inflammation response that is wrong some percentage of the time but not 100%.
But what if none of these are true? What if they don't respond to gestures (see the history of "bipartisanship")? What if, Nixon passim, they have no sense of decency? What if they can't be convinced of your position because their income depends on not being convinced of it?
People definitely like conflict as entertainment. Hence the clickbait industry. The problem is that this can be ramped up to the levels where it starts getting dangerous.
The "paranoid style" is just an extraordinarily resilient meme. It might just be genuinely unbeatable.
It's anti-intellectual in the sense that it can be disdainful of intellectuals and intellectual institutions like newspapers, universities. But form-wise, it tends to be formulated around alternative facts, studies, experts and whatnot.
Flat earth or intelligent design theories are more pseudo-intellectual than anti-intellectual. They have their own studies & citations... mimicking scientific intellectualism rather than dismissing it. The from is of rogue or dissenting intellectuals against the mainstream. If they're in a tussle with Richard Dawkins, the criticism is that he is not really being scientific. It's rarely a criticism of science as an approach.
Identity politics is a great example. Late 20th century leftists brought identity politics into fashion, but it was the right that really took it and ran with it with Bush's politics of the "base" and then Trump's identity politics.
A deeper example would be "culture jamming" and the maybe-ironic prankster/trickster political style. That came out of the 60s/70s left with stuff like the Church of the Subgenius, and stuff like alternate reality gaming (ARGs) pioneered in the 90s. The intellectual basis for it ultimately comes from postmodernism. The right is now weaponizing this style and implementing it at scale with Qanon.
Edit since it won't let me reply:
I'd define identity politics as the idea that your biology or cultural background places you in a group that should define your ideas and political affinities.
It makes some sense if you take an intersectional approach to your social analysis, but as soon as you decouple it from intersectionalism it leads to disaster.
Class politics, for example. It can either be ideological in the sense that you think people should group together politically based on class interest. Or, it can just be what happens. IE, the society has a politically prominent class structure and people group politically around that. Same for tribal politics, etc.
[...]
> The right is now weaponizing this style and implementing it at scale with Qanon.
That's an interesting observation at the surface level, as there are small tactical and strategic elements of culture jamming involved in the production and dissemination of disinformation like the right is creating, but this style shares more in common with "ratfucking" (dirty tricks) than culture jamming.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ratfucking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Segretti#Overview_of_"d...
IMO, reactionary is more descriptive of political climates than movements. When antagonism is a primary/defining motivator, all reactionary cliches show up. There are, obviously, movements than lean in.
You think fake news and misinformation is new?
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day..."
https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_sp...
Go look up how "conspiracy theories" were used as a weapon by the media/elites to silence those they did not like just a few decades ago.
It's all like generational groundhog day. Each generation lives through the same story over and over again.
Those advocating for what amounts to a Ministry of Truth should really know better. We've already learned this lesson. This lever of power should not exist because it is impossible for it not to be abused.
For all the downsides of too much information and a torrent of crappy opinions that exist on an open internet, it's still much better than the results you get with authoritarian oversight.
It would be quite interesting (but I suspect unpopular) for HN to have an experimental mode where people must give a reason for downvoting. :)
But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
I’d go as far as to say the protectionism and conspiratorial thinking is the result of an actual betrayal that the larger population have not emotionally reconciled. The right wing, along with the left wing, sold out to corporate interests in a steady manner over decades.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to accept betrayal. It’s similar to grief, you can’t believe it’s real - Say it isn’t true, there must be another explanation. Tell me it’s these social welfare programs, and immigrants, say it isn’t the systematic erosion of the working class.
My kid? Failed fifth grade? Me? A bad parent? Impossible, the teachers are bad, the education system .... Who is ready to accept this stuff immediately? The American public have been voting against their own interest for a long time. You have shitty healthcare and benefits because you got duped. You spent your tax money on foreign wars because you got duped. Your stock market is an unregulated casino where bankers toy with your money with impunity, and you’ll bail them out, again because you got duped into eating the bullshit. No, not my kid, he’d never murder anyone, the cops must have set him up. This is certainly the denial stage for the right wing.
The Left has it’s own grief coming soon enough. Lots of promises, lots of stuff that’s never going to come true. Lots of stuff about the Democrats that’s no different than the Republicans, and one day they’ll have to conjure up some conspiracy to deal with the dupe.
Some part of me almost understands the Trump voter. He transparently manipulates you (oxymoron?). If you’ve been lied to for decades, there is some dignity in accepting someone that straight lies to you versus the bells and whistles liars like some Presidents have been.
Definitely lots of stuff that already hasn't come true, and the left can't seem to get a plurality in a primary.
> Lots of stuff about the Democrats
Oh wait I thought we were talking about the left.
2020 will be really interesting, assumes Trump loses this election... honestly I'd not be surprised when the Republicans break up.
The Republicans have not been absurdly successful in an democratic support sense. over the past 25 yesrs, they've steadily increase their reliance on electoral college bias, voter suppression, and a Republican judiciary. When the party's success depends on Supreme Court decisions made by a previous President they helped get installed by the Supreme Court overruling the voters, they are on very thin ice democratically.
Republicans haven't won the popular vote for a non-incumbent since 1988, or 1980 if you consider VP GHW Bush as an incumbent.
What is true is that most people are more suspicious of all politicians, thanks to the Internet's information distribution peers. No shakeup of the orthodoxy will change that.
By 2016 the Republicans had it all back as well as 34 governorships. It took only 2 years to get Congress back.
People spoke of a Democratic Party that had no future and even the chance of a constitutional convention if republicans could get a few more seats in 2016.
It’s easier to make a claim for power when you don’t have it. Governing is harder than organizing and campaigning. Both parties over the last 2 admins could have done whatever they wanted at certain points but still weren’t able to. We don’t have M4A and we never built the wall.
Democrats will get power, be accused of overreach at some point from republicans and of not living up to promise by some democrats creating disillusion. And then pass the power back.
I don’t think most Trump voters (or Americans) are racist, at least by the definition of the word most people outside the university system today use.
They hoped for change ("yes we can", "change we need"), but Obama failed to deliver as he was blocked by the Republican Senate for six years straight (thanks to "Moscow Mitch" McConnell). Trump and his "we will drain the swamp for real this time" message was exactly the right thing to offer to this voter group, especially as the Democrat candidate was Hillary Clinton - as "establishment" as one can be.
If there's one thing that Obama and the then-Democrat leadership abysmally failed, it is that they did not use the House+Senate+Presidency tripe majority to actually enact change in the first two years. I bloody hope that the Democrats can gain the Senate and especially that Biden will have learned his lesson!
This is where Trump and the now-Republican leadership failed as well. Unfortunately the mainstream media and the perpetual insane tantrums thrown by the losers have crippled his entire term.
> I bloody hope that the Democrats can gain the Senate and especially that Biden will have learned his lesson!
I bloody hope that the Republicans can keep the Senate and that Biden will fade into obscurity like "Crooked Hillary" Clinton!
The GOP needs to do what John Smith, Tony and Gordan did and kick out the entryist faction that is destroying the party but I suspect its to late.
Personally I don't think America can be fixed at this point.
The gap between the tribes is now so extreme it's practically evolutionary speciation, and Democrats and Republicans are barely breeding with each other.
This is not a joke. The differences seem to be rooted in psychology - strongly correlated with parenting - and perhaps through inherited brain structure.
At some point "They are not like us" stops being rhetoric and becomes biological reality. I think we're closer to that point than we realise - in the US, and also the UK.
> This is not a joke. The differences seem to be rooted in psychology - strongly correlated with parenting - and perhaps through inherited brain structure.
I have a hard time believing this. my own two parents are on more or less opposite ends of the mainstream political spectrum. in my generation, it seems pretty common to find right-leaning (especially libertarian) men dating liberal women. the socially conscious girlfriend gently scolding her boyfriend for saying something non-PC is so common, it's almost a trope at this point. the far-left progressives and full-on MAGA types seem incapable of coexisting in the same room for more than five minutes, but I don't think there are nearly as many of either of these as you would conclude from watching the news and reading social media.
most people just want to live their lives and don't see a compelling reason to scream their political positions out into the world. I think one of the likely outcomes in the next ten years is that we collectively realize the polarization of US culture was mostly an illusion.
That is only signed up and dues paying members of the party vote to select candidates
Everyone they could put up would just get smeared and mercilessly attacked by the entire political and media right wing, from the far right Tea Party/QAnon/MAGA/Breitbart/Fox following of the Republicans to the fringes of the Democrats, as "socialist", "communist" or whatever. Even Joe fucking Biden who doesn't support something as basic as M4A gets called an "anarchist ally", it's madness.
I am not sure how the US is ever supposed to fix this, given literal decades of red scare brainwashing. I'm afraid that the only real way out of the current mess, assuming that either Trump "wins" (or wins for real) or Biden gets locked by a R-majority Senate under "Moscow Mitch" McConnell may/will be some sort of revolution - when there are millions upon millions of people who are out of a job and homeless, who have nothing to lose any more.
The way I explain my view on the election is that it is a choice between a shit sandwich and a shit sandwich without the bread. Which one is which depends on the topic/policy that matters most to each voter, but they are both terrible choices.
So I guess what I'm saying is I would be surprised because I don't think any single camp within the Republican party is dominant enough to beat the rest of the party. But on the other hand I was surprised when the party picked Trump as their candidate, so I could be surprised again.
- white conservatives and reactionary nonwhites, primarily unified by racialist ideas about rights and citizenship
- white liberals and socialists, and a vast cohort of nonwhites, ranging from Marxist to fire-and-brimstone conservative
It’s really a huge mistake to lump the latter cohort in the “left” and deeply related to why almost all conservative black people (excerpt for the truly radical or careerist) refuse to vote for Republicans.
It's basically impossible to be politically successful and accept blame. Politics is an "us" game. Even in the most leader-oriented set ups, the leader is an avatar for the group.
If something is bad, it can either because "we" did something wrong or because we were deceived, manipulated and exploited. By blaming others we absolve us.
Sure, there is big money behind candidates, and strong regional interests. Other countries face this too.
I am not convinced that psychology has as much to do with the idiotic state of public discourse (and at least one candidate's debate style) in the US as the practical problems in US democracy: moronic "news" reporting that misinforms for profit, and the Electoral College and First Past the Post, which rob citizens of their voice.
Trump is too egotistical to serve anyone but himself, and he's too wild and unpredictable to be a reliable agent to anyone. The allegation was that Trump accepted help offered by Russian agents, which is likely as I'm sure he would have accepted help offered by anyone.
I just thought Russia may have covertly backed him in an attempt to get an intensely repellent and divisive candidate into office and damage America's reputation. There's a good deal of evidence that Russia is still in the ring for Trump, such as Russian state TV running anti-Biden stuff all day right now. There is also evidence for Russian propaganda targeting the Democrats and the left too, like sock puppets infiltrating BLM chat rooms and pushing the most divisive messages possible. The ultimate goal is destabilization and damage to America's reputation, not the victory of any specific candidate.
That being said, I think the ultimate goal of this Russian propaganda may be more inward-facing than outward-facing. Putin needs to portray American democracy as a failure in order to hold onto power in Russia. Meddling in American and other democratic processes can be a way to do that.
There is, however, considerable circumstantial evidence that he may be compromised by the Russians. The fact that Trump has been less than wholly forthcoming regarding his connections with Russia has only deepened this concern.
Multiple people in the Trump orbit--including Trump himself--have had repeated communications with Putin, Russian oligarchs, or their proxies, and have gone to considerable lengths (such as by conducting meetings in private and confiscating the translator's notes) to hide the contents of these communications from official records and lawfully constituted legal investigations.
Given that Trump is believed to be deeply in debt (see the recent NYT series on Trump's tax records), has had business dealings inside Russia (e.g. Trump Tower Moscow), and has benefited from Russian state-sponsored criminal hacking[0], hidden communications between the Trump orbit and Russia are cause for grave concern over whether Trump has inappropriate ties to the Russian government.
Read the Mueller Report and pay particular attention to what could not be proven because the necessary evidence had been destroyed or was otherwise inaccessible.[1]
Unlike the current flavor of Republican conspiracy theorizing, the Trump-Russia story is not a bunch of lunatics deluding themselves into thinking that the Democratic party is keeping children captive in the basement of a pizza restaurant. It's something backed by actual evidence and has lead to multiple prosecutions.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/15/what-happ...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_Hurricane_(FBI_inves...
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/judiciar...
IIRC parts of the dossier was compiled from Tumblr post. The "piss-gate" story has it roots in a 4chan/pol post. I can't find it now, but I've seen the original archive of 4chan users actively putting misinformation out there to troll the press.
It's kind of irrelevant though since there's rules for that sort of stuff (registering as a foreign agent) and Russia shouldn't expect any slack in lights of their geopolitical ventures on their western border.
> Results reveal that conservatives in the United States were not only more likely than liberals to endorse specific conspiracy theories, but they were also more likely to espouse conspiratorial worldviews in general (r = .27, 95% CI: .24, .30). Importantly, extreme conservatives were significantly more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking than extreme liberals (Hedges' g = .77, SE = .07, p < .001).
Also that's a bit of a straw man representation. Compromised, sure, but full on sleeper agent is a fringe belief at best.
Not to mention, both topics, and especially the climate change, has a huge political connotation. So the answers of people would often be merely a reflection of their political beliefs.
Why not pick the real, obvious, non-political conspiracy theories? Like 9/11 didn't happen; people didn't land on the Moon; earth is flat; etc?
Isn't this begging the question? Climate change has a political connotation exactly because conservatives believe it's made-up, and the only way they can square this counterfactual with the huge number of independent confirmations is the assumption that they are all somehow in cahoots - i.e., a conspiracy.
While I agree that a less politicized choice of topic would be more enlightening, I can imagine that going out of your way to avoid "political" topics may just be an exercise in mitigating the very effect you're trying to measure.
I haven't seen newspaper articles, magazine articles, online articles, nor television reports of this quality. Most of these generate revenue through ads, but some are behind a paywall or require purchase.
"He was a brilliant programmer and a vicious cartel boss, who became a prized U.S. government asset. The Atavist Magazine presents a story of an elusive criminal kingpin, told in weekly installments."
This does remind me... the closest articles I've seen to the quality of the OP's posted article I've found on Aeon. It can be hit or miss though.
The pattern of social conservatives demanding increasingly extreme positions from their leaders is not dissimilar to how addicts become desensitized to their drug of addiction and need increasingly higher doses to get their high.
In the 1960s, using dog-whistles to pander to anti-black racism (through the Southern Strategy[0]) was enough to bring out the social conservative vote for the Republican party. Over time, the demands of social conservatives have made the dog-whistles less quiet and the number of targeted groups has expanded from only African-Americans to Hispanics, people who live in urban areas, to scientists and other intellectuals, and now to all Democrats. By 2016, it took Trump's level of vile xenophobia--directed against anyone who wasn't a willfully ignorant racist--to motivate social conservatives to vote in large numbers. In 2020, the social conservatives are demanding fealty to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that is at odds with objective reality. Whatever degree of racist anti-intellectualism social conservatives demand in 2020 and 2024 will be worse.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/richard-hofstadter...
Tom Frank's new book, "The People, No", is scathing about Hofstadter's elitism and misportrayal of the Populist movement (Hofstadter only used anti-Populist secondary sources).
Perhaps conspiracy theory is just the first stage of hypothesis refinement, and that's where they mostly die. There are many times it's actually a healthy and correct choice to mistrust motives of an institution (e.g. No thanks, I don't need that oxycodone), even if the mainstream consensus is a few years out.
The challenge is, as it always was, to figure out which claims of bad-people-conspiring are true and which ones aren't. And when those bad-people-conspiring can taint/hide the information sources themselves (e.g. Nixon trying to withhold Watergate recordings by claiming "National Security", or astroturfing, or settle out of court, or using authority figures, or buying research) it becomes exponentially more complicated and the net gets cast much wider.
This piece is a very detailed historical read, but I'm not sure it has any bearing.