We're all familiar with conspiracy theories, but not so familiar with their history and development. Their changes over time should tell us something about either society, politics, or social psychology or all of these.
In 1964, shortly after JFK was assassinated, the historian Richard Hofstadter published a piece called "The paranoid style in American politics" about the history of conspiracy theories running through U.S. politics from the inception of the republic to the 1950's McCarthy era. He finds a continuity and development from the 19th century fears that Catholics are coming to take over our gov't and society, and calls for action before it's too late, to the 20th century fear that the communists are not just coming to take over our gov't and society, but are already infiltrating gov't, and calls to root them out before it's too late.
The common trait of these conspiracy theories are the paranoid "they're coming for us" and "we must act now before it's too late". The conspiracy theories are a call to arms.
In 2014, thirteen years after 9/11, Lance deHaven-Smith published a short book titled Conspiracy Theory in America, in which he identifies the conspiracies that have become familiar in our political discourse, what he calls state crimes against democracy (SCADs), focusing on events perpetrated by gov't itself, not by some group infiltrating the gov't or society. Those conspiracy theories are not about "they are coming to infiltrate our gov't". That alarm is already too late. The agent perpetrating these SCADs is the gov't itself. They control our gov't; they are our gov't.
Setting aside whether any of these conspiracies are true or not, SCAD theory is a radical departure from the older conspiracy style. For one thing, you can't really do much about SCADs, so the alarmism isn't a call to action so much as a call to understanding, drawing aside the veil of truth. It's a confirming of distrust of the gov't but also of any media that endorse gov't propaganda. It's not just a distrust of a particular immigrant population or political ideology or a particular interest. It's a world of paranoia, with distrust of information at its heart. AI arrives at the worst moment in this trajectory towards distrust of information. The prognosis is dark.
In 2023, Naomi Klein published Doppleganger, shortly after the Covid pandemic mania subsided. Although she doesn't mention deHaven-Smith, she finds the deHaven-Smith style of conspiracy thinking rampant in the AltRight in its response to Covid: the AltRight sees a gov't lying to us about masks, about vaccines, about the origin of the virus. (Klein assumes and accepts the Democratic-NYTimes/Atlantic/NPR-blue Covid policies, recommendations and propaganda without question and without any scientific support or citation or any support or citation. Almost all of her citations are of fictional accounts -- novels -- about doppelgangers. Lots of those.) Her criticism of these AltRight SCAD theories is that they are missing the real danger which is not Bill Gates plotting to control the world, but capitalism; not a nefarious cabal that run us, but a profiteering system that is out of control. The immediate fear portrayed in the book is the fear of the AltRight appropriating all activism and criticism of gov't and its capitalist system. The AltRight is replacing the Left's Marxist criticism with fringe deHaven-Smith style conspiracy theories. IOW, the purpose of the book is to call the alarm that the AltRight, full of false fringe SCAD conspiracy theories, is coming for us, is infiltrating our politics and social discourse and we must wake up to their threat before it is too late!!
Full circle. Need I mention that the vaccines, though they seem to have prevented many, many deaths, did not prevent infection or contagion, the virus posed little threat to the younger generation, mask mandates did not work, and the lab leak theory is more probable than the wet market theory. And all of these facts were well-known from the beginning. When the vaccine was first rolled out, those who first got it knew that it would not prevent infection or contagion but would ameliorate symptoms, lowering the likelihood of death by Covid, not saving others from Covid. (I asked the old guys who were the first to be vacccinated, and they were quite clear and candid about it.) Anyone looking at people's masking behaviors, restaurant allowances, flight dinners in crowded plane cabins, use of cloth masks and wearing masks under the nose etc. -- any rational being knew that mask mandates could not possibly work even if masks themselves worked. Contact tracing and forcible quarantining might have worked, but this was not asked of us.
These facts do not, of course validate the AltRight SCAD theories. It doesn't validate any anti-capitalist theory either. The system to blame is not capitalism, but two-party democracy and a body politic divided between rural and urban, progressive and traditional, professional-prestige-class and disparaged-disrespected class, the educated elite privileged NYTimes readers, who reap the many benefits of the society and its gov't, and the non elites who know they are not respected by those elites; a two party system divided between red team and blue team, Us vs Them, distrust of in-group for the out-group. The structure to blame is the polarization within our society, and the politicization of pandemic response very much aligned with MAGA on one side and Trump Derangement Syndrome on the other.
To be fair, the facts do validate the AltRight's distrust of mainstream information, and that's the essence of the deHaven-Smith style conspiracy cultivated on the Right. And the facts do something else as well. They show that Klein's unquestioning acceptance of the Democratic-NYTimes/Atlantic/NPR-blue propaganda was wrong. What she gets right is her Hofstadter paranoid conspiracy "they are taking over". Distrust of information is spreading widely. COVID killed trust for many.
We're living now in a society of conspiracy theories on every side. Social capital -- the trust of one another and of gov't and of gov't for its people -- is waning. Polarization feeds distrust, and liberal democracy -- the engagement of voters in governance and the engagement of government officers in its voter base -- feeds polarization. The erosion of social trust and trust in information may be the great weakness of liberal democracy, its danger and downfall.
PS after the Trump inauguration: the autocratic means of administration may in the long run be healthy for our divided public.
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