Having written about American conspiracy theories, I was not surprised that my daughter-in-law passed along a friend’s text of YouTube videos debunking COVID vaccines. As expected, the theorists were well practiced in the art of selling and passionate in their cause. She was confused. I wrote the following to her as a short course on conspiracy-telling in America.
When our forefathers and mothers disembarked at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, they were already obsessed with fears of conspiracies. In the American environment, the list of suspects remained intact and grew longer: Native Americans, Salem witches, Catholics, Jews, Black slaves, bankers, communists, Japanese Americans, anti-war activists and civil rights demonstrators. Conspiracy tellers have been diverse and include filmmakers, media personalities and U.S. presidents.
The beat goes on in the Age of Trump. Diverse conspiracy theories travel at the click of a mouse to national and global communities. According to theorists, deep staters, pedophiles, CDC scientists and election fraudsters are bent upon destroying the American experiment and making our nation a province of a global New World Order. Internment camps await patriots who resist vaccines and hold tight to their guns. Critical race theorists plot to stoke white guilt and weaken resistance to the demands of ungrateful minorities.
Unlike the pre-21st century world, conspiracy has become less a theory and more a tweet or slogan. The old days of slowly unraveling plots and finding the devil in the details have given way to the pervasive power of repetition for validation. Faith in our core institutions has eroded under the siege of outrage delivered on cable news, talk radio and social media. What had been at the fringe has now absorbed into the American mainstream. All of this in a nation armed to the teeth.
We try to quiet the incessant drum beat in a variety of ways. Shaking their heads, commentators insist on evidence and logic to bat away claims of a stolen election, or killer vaccines, or false flag events. We are advised to engage with the conspiracy minded and find common ground. Or we retreat into ourselves to avoid scenes and disruption of family and neighborhood harmony.
Perhaps our first line of defense is to understand the new contours of conspiracy making and believing. Conspiracy thinking is no longer about proof or persuasion. It is about preaching to the converted. Based on long-held theories of Jewish power or government machinations, believers already have the targets in their sights. The dog whistle that conspiracy theory has become is a means to rally supporters, organize them and build a community replete with recognizable hat, shirt and button merchandise. With this mobilization enemies are identified, targeted and promised, at long last, just punishment. The conspiracy-minded have found comfort in clarity, identity and purpose.
But conspiracy thinking offers more. Today’s conspiracies tightly enmesh believers because they are not rooted in fact, but hope. In pursuing the enemy, railing against an oppressive present and rejecting authorities and institutions, conspiracists offer a glimpse of a promising future. Once Americans awaken to the danger and defeat their enemies, a national rebirth will come to pass. In this, the diverse conspiracy theories merge, presenting a united front.
By challenging federal mandates, gender fluidity, critical race theory, election results and globalism, believers hope to reverse time. They can reclaim an idealized past. They can deny personal failure. They can rebuild themselves and America. Then, they can proclaim the supremacy of Christian values, restore America’s place in the world, recreate the patriarchal family and preach the myth of a color blind world. This is the vision of QAnon which prophesizes a coming storm and a great awakening that will see America’s return to God, the Bible and the Constitution. The future, then, lies in the promised and mythical land of the past.
This is our present. Faith in our institutions has eroded. The media, churches and courts have weakened under the onslaught. Now, opponents are not merely seen as wrong or misguided, they are subversives who plot treason. If this seems alarmist, note a George Washington University survey in July 2021 which posed the statement: “That a time will come when patriotic Americans will have to take the law into their own hands.” Forty-seven percent of Republicans surveyed agreed.
The cancer of conspiracy has metastasized. It is time to press our leaders to speak out. It is time to confront conspiracy peddlers, boycott their sponsors and abandon their social media vehicles. We can no longer be bystanders to the failure of our democracy.
| Courtesy Robert Goldberg
Robert A. Goldberg is a professor emeritus of history, University of Utah.
