I just finished reading a book.
Actually, I am always reading at least one book, but I’m going to write about this one, as it involves current events, something I usually avoid in books. The book is called A Lot of People are Saying; the New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, written by Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum. I hesitated about buying it, as I thought there was a better than even chance that it wouldn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. My mind harkened back to Dog Whistle Politics, by Ian Haney Lopez, a book that exhaustively documents the racist basis of the present day Republican Party, which I put aside since, despite it’s merits, as it told me nothing I didn’t already know.
People are Sayingis different, if only that it illuminates some corners of the Republican/conspiratorial mind into which I have not glanced heretofore. I should state up front that so far there is no phony both siderism here, though they come near to it once, oddly enough when discussing the same or a similar poll that led me to direct my umbrage at Steven Pinker.
They make the not so obvious (though it seems obvious, once they make it) point that today’s conspiracists are not like yesterday’s. Today’s conspiracists feel no need to prove their conspiracy theories, it is good enough that they are theoretically possible, even if astoundingly improbable. Those who believed Kennedy was not shot by Oswald alone went to great lengths to marshal their evidence. Today’s conspiracists do nothing of the sort. It is sufficient, for example, if it is possiblethat Hillary Clinton and John Podesta ran a child sex ring out of a pizza joint. Actual truth is wholly optional and the fabricators are mostly upfront about that.
They also point out that unlike the classic conspiracists, today’s conspiracists seek only to delegitimate:
The new conspiracists are not talking about legitimacy in the philosophic sense. they have neither a theory of government nor of justice that would tell us what kind of regime is worthy of support. The new conspiracism drains the sense that democratic government is legitimate without supplying any alternative standard.
Which is true, though, at the hazard of engaging in conspiracist thought, I’d suggest that the people who originate these conspiracy theories, or at least some of them, know precisely what they want, they are just careful not to be upfront about it.
Also at the hazard of engaging in conspiracist thought, I’d suggest that some of the conspiracies they cite are in fact happening, except it’s the accusers that are engaging in them. They cite Trump’s oft repeated claim that there were three million illegal votes in 2016 (all of whom voted for Hillary) as an example, and it is, of an evidence free conspiratorial assertion. But this claim of electoral rigging by Democrats, often made by Republicans, may also be a case, as is so often the case when Trump accuses others of misdeeds, of one side accusing the other of what it is doing itself. Stacey Abrams might have a thing or two to say about rigged elections, as might the people of North Carolina. This doesn’t undermine the book’s basic thesis, but I do think that it’s part of the motivation behind the creation of these memes. If their charge of X is baseless and evidence free, that automatically renders a similar charge from the other side baseless and evidence free, even when that’s not the case.
I’m not sure their proposed solution is feasible, as, at least in part, it would require the existence of principled Republicans, which are in extremely short supply. Anyway, I recommend the book, as it certainly casts a good deal of light on what is a new variant of an old phenomenon. There have, after all, always been conspiracy theories and scapegoats.
I do take issue with one point they make. They rightfully point out that “[t]he new conspiracism feeds off and in turn fuels a tribal mode of politics”, but lose their way when they allege that it is “akin to Boston Red Sox fans’ belief that ‘Yankees suck’. Such an assertion is not an affirmation of a proposition that is meant to correspond to facts in the real world.” It absolutely isan assertion about facts in the real world. The Yankees do suck. There are no two ways about it. A lot of people agree with me about that.
