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Part I of II
Why is it so much of the rhetoric coming from Republicans is one or another form of conspiracy theory?
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This is where "peanut gallery" readers can stop; the rest of the OP isn't written for your consumption.
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As Samuel Clemens used to say, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme, and this is the case among conspiracy voters among the GOP. If one's ever studied American history, however, one knows the 19th century equivalent of InfoWars had its own political party, and the GOP’s anti-immigrant stance mirrors the 1850’s Know Nothings. Truly, however, we don’t have to revisit the 1800s, a time when presidential candidates acted like, well, Trump, only to have their nastiness kindly glossed over by textbooks, to find the influence of angry conspiracy theorists on a major political party. Even within Mitt Romney’s base in 2012 one sees the influence of conspiracy theory pundits like Alex Jones unmistakably imprinted on the 2012 GOP platform.
The Republican Party is no longer the voice of conservatives but of a cacophonous confederacy of conspiracy theorists conjoined by cabal cognition and tradition. Feeling entitled to perpetual economic and cultural supremacy, and furious that they’re no longer the only voices or people who matter, they’ve conjured myria and elaborate theories as to why, and scapegoats to blame. Evidence for this can be found in a study by The Economist based on an idea called “crank magnetism,” which is the idea that conspiracy theories are like potato chips; you can’t have just one. Having verged into Tinfoil Land, one's more likely to cotton to other conspiracy theories; thus it’s akin to measure of one's susceptibility to conspiratorial ideation.
Many modern Republican bugaboos are borrowed from the paranoid screeds of the John Birch Society, which saw communist spies and traitors around every corner and under every bed. For more than half a century, the right has whipped up its voters and ideological sympathizers into a fervor by siccing them on their friends, neighbors, and families. Conspiracies now saturate the very fabric of GOP-ism.
As a result, the GOP base has become home to intuitionists. Instead of going by evidence and hard logic, they tend, abetted by the aforementioned long history of conspiracy-mongering by their favorite media, to abductivey navigate important issues, blighting family holidays with bigoted, paranoid, authoritarian rants, attacking their friends and families as America-hating traitors. This is why they disdain basic norms, believing it ridiculous to be polite to the cultural equivalent of enemy combatants and that those norms are just another conspiracy to silence them.
We witnessed the disdain for facts writ large at the GOP Convention. Journalists and fact checkers went hoarse correcting speech after speech which described the exact opposite of every data point collected by government and industry to no avail. Even if the data clearly contradicted literally everything they said, it felt true and therefore, was, GOP talking heads and party bigwigs said to incredulous reporters when asked for comment during their multi-day coronation of Donald Trump as the GOP Messiah.
(continued due to character limit)
Why is it so much of the rhetoric coming from Republicans is one or another form of conspiracy theory?
- Beliefs in conspiracies tend to accord with political attitudes, making it unlikely that any one conspiracy theory will be embraced by the country.
- Paranoid history of the GOP: How conspiracy theories poisoned the Republican Party
- Why conspiracy theories flourish on the right
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This is where "peanut gallery" readers can stop; the rest of the OP isn't written for your consumption.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As Samuel Clemens used to say, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it certainly does rhyme, and this is the case among conspiracy voters among the GOP. If one's ever studied American history, however, one knows the 19th century equivalent of InfoWars had its own political party, and the GOP’s anti-immigrant stance mirrors the 1850’s Know Nothings. Truly, however, we don’t have to revisit the 1800s, a time when presidential candidates acted like, well, Trump, only to have their nastiness kindly glossed over by textbooks, to find the influence of angry conspiracy theorists on a major political party. Even within Mitt Romney’s base in 2012 one sees the influence of conspiracy theory pundits like Alex Jones unmistakably imprinted on the 2012 GOP platform.
The Republican Party is no longer the voice of conservatives but of a cacophonous confederacy of conspiracy theorists conjoined by cabal cognition and tradition. Feeling entitled to perpetual economic and cultural supremacy, and furious that they’re no longer the only voices or people who matter, they’ve conjured myria and elaborate theories as to why, and scapegoats to blame. Evidence for this can be found in a study by The Economist based on an idea called “crank magnetism,” which is the idea that conspiracy theories are like potato chips; you can’t have just one. Having verged into Tinfoil Land, one's more likely to cotton to other conspiracy theories; thus it’s akin to measure of one's susceptibility to conspiratorial ideation.
Many modern Republican bugaboos are borrowed from the paranoid screeds of the John Birch Society, which saw communist spies and traitors around every corner and under every bed. For more than half a century, the right has whipped up its voters and ideological sympathizers into a fervor by siccing them on their friends, neighbors, and families. Conspiracies now saturate the very fabric of GOP-ism.
As a result, the GOP base has become home to intuitionists. Instead of going by evidence and hard logic, they tend, abetted by the aforementioned long history of conspiracy-mongering by their favorite media, to abductivey navigate important issues, blighting family holidays with bigoted, paranoid, authoritarian rants, attacking their friends and families as America-hating traitors. This is why they disdain basic norms, believing it ridiculous to be polite to the cultural equivalent of enemy combatants and that those norms are just another conspiracy to silence them.
We witnessed the disdain for facts writ large at the GOP Convention. Journalists and fact checkers went hoarse correcting speech after speech which described the exact opposite of every data point collected by government and industry to no avail. Even if the data clearly contradicted literally everything they said, it felt true and therefore, was, GOP talking heads and party bigwigs said to incredulous reporters when asked for comment during their multi-day coronation of Donald Trump as the GOP Messiah.
(continued due to character limit)