Mark Rosenberg
A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, by Nancy L. Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead, Princeton University, 232 pp., $26.95
On Fox News chyrons, in presidential Tweets, and throughout the alt-right web, it’s often suggested that climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by a Chinese Communist Party hellbent on world domination, that the impeachment process sparked by Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “witch hunt” conducted by deep state operatives, and that immigrants are “invading” the country and threatening to “replace” white people. American politics has always been characterized by division and deceit, but in public discourse and the media, the truth seems more obscured than ever before. How did we get here? And what are the consequences for democracy?
It’s tempting to dismiss as aberrations figures like the North Carolina man who entered Comic Ping Pong pizzeria with an AR-15 to “self-investigate” the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, or Alex Jones, the far-right talk show host who has argued, among other things, that bereaved parents and students at Sandy Hook and Parkland were paid “crisis actors.” But Donald Trump’s presidency has made conspiracism a cornerstone of American politics, granting half-baked theories a gold-plated seal of approval. In A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, Russell Muirhead, Professor of Democracy and Politics at Dartmouth, and Nancy Rosenblum, Professor Emerita of Ethics in Politics and Government at Harvard, argue that the increasing centrality of conspiracism presents a crisis for America’s political system.
As Muirhead and Rosenblum see it, there are two separate forms of conspiracy theory. The first, “classic conspiracism,” entails scrutiny of obfuscating narratives and a deepening of civic engagement. The authors trace its lineage to the Declaration of Independence, which accused the British crown of a coordinated plot designed to subject the colonies to “absolute despotism.” The Declaration’s supporters sought to convince the public that King George III’s “long train of abuses and usurpations” (imposing taxes, denying representation, quartering troops) were part of a grand plot that would inevitably lead to martial law and absolute tyranny; the only proper response was to revolt. One can see a similar impulse in antebellum Republicans’ assertion of a “Slaveocracy” conspiring to dominate the federal government, or Progressive Era reformers’ efforts to root out Gilded Age corruption through muckraking. Classic conspiracy theorists are skeptical of those in power. They seek to explain covert political machinations and bring them to light. To be sure, many conspiracy theories (9/11 was planned by the government, the earth is flat) are baseless and absurd. But they still entail a search for truth — an effort to question, to explain, and to understand.
The “new conspiracism,” the authors write, is different. Its practitioners flatten political complexities in an effort to discredit their political opponents, and demonstrate little desire to uncover the facts. The vocabulary is by now familiar. News is “fake.” Elections are “rigged.” The “deep state” is out to get you. Instead of gathering evidence, groupthink suffices: if “a lot of people are saying” it, or if tens of thousands of people have retweeted it, then it must be true. Because the new conspiracism tends to align with the ideals of anti-government conservatives, it exhibits what Muirhead and Rosenblum call a “partisan penumbra”; it is primarily practiced by the right. There is no call to action, just a constant undercutting of political opponents. The result, the authors explain, is the delegitimation of democracy — a loss of faith in the value of democratic institutions and processes.
How does this process of delegitimation unfold? Political parties, Muirhead and Rosenblum write, are the new conspiracism’s first target. Democracy is dependent on choice. Candidates and parties channel the diverse interests and values of the electorate into concrete political programs. Without opposition, democracy devolves into autocracy. But the new conspiracism undermines opposition by casting candidates and entire parties as illegitimate. It seeks to substitute a fascist system in which, as the authors write, “the one, homogenous, ‘true’ people stand behind their leader without the party as an intermediary institution.” The assault starts with individual candidates: Barack Obama is cast as a Kenyan, Hillary Clinton as a criminal. The claim soon extends to the entire party, which is charged with overturning the constitutional order and conspiring to turn control over to foreign governments or immigrants. Democrats are the most frequent targets, but Republicans are not immune. Under the new conspiracism, only Trump and his loyalists carry a legitimate claim to power.
The attack soon expands to the nefarious “deep state” — to the community of scientists, intelligence officials, economists, statisticians, and academics who produce the expert knowledge essential to the operation of executive branch agencies. Climate denialism provides a useful example. Conspiracists argue that climate change is a “hoax” propagated by climate scientists collaborating with the Chinese government in an effort to diminish America’s economic standing. Through bare assertion and repetition, the scientific consensus is undermined. “Climate” disappears from the mission statement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The Environmental Protection Agency defunds satellites and ocean buoys that keep track of atmospheric changes and stops policing toxic chemicals. Scientists depart from government agencies en masse, and the government stops incorporating research into policy decisions. The scientific process is eliminated. Only the allegations of the new conspiracists remain.
If you’ve passed through conspiracist country — seen Alex Jones screaming into a mic, borderline asphyxiated from sheer vitriol, or gone down an unfortunate Twitter spiral — you’ve entered a world that feels as though it is under siege. The new conspiracism’s practitioners channel the “paranoid style” historian Richard Hofstadter once identified as central to American political discourse. “The paranoid,” Hofstadter writes, “is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, the quality needed is not a willingness to compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Nothing but complete victory will do.”
Muirhead and Birnbaum’s book provides a useful diagnostic, but it doesn’t provide a clear picture of when and why the “new conspiracism” emerged, or how paranoid pundits and politicians have become so popular. The authors suggest that Trump’s ascent to the presidency brought a festering tendency into the open and has given conspiracism a sense of credibility it would otherwise lack. “Because of the rhetorical power of [Trump’s] office and his institutional capacity as president, his compromised relation to reality ascends from a private to a public condition,” they write. “As president, Trump’s conspiracist claims have initial authority, a moment of presumptive plausibility, that they would otherwise lack.” Social media, they suggest, has further flattened our political discourse and provided the oxygen that allows conspiracies to spread.
This explanation is compelling, but it takes the rise of conspiracy out of context. The book’s emphasis on Trump effaces the role of America’s media ecosystem in obscuring the truth and suppressing public discourse in service of corporate interests. Muirhead and Rosenblum briefly note the role corporate media has played in the rise of conspiracy; as they write, “conspiracism is a lucrative business.” But there’s a longer story here.
At the start of the twentieth century, labor unions operated thousands of newspapers that provided an important source of information for the working class. In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission enacted the “fairness doctrine,” which declared that public television networks were a public resource and required broadcasters to include diverse political perspectives in their programming. Since the 1970s, the landscape has shifted: labor unions have declined, Ronald Reagan’s FCC scrapped the fairness doctrine, and the 2010 Citizens United decision eliminated restrictions on political contributions by individuals and corporations. Corporations like ExxonMobil, a champion of climate denialism, have joined the fray, promoting narratives that undermine the facts and provide grist for conspiracists elsewhere.
In this environment, ultraconservative media outlets, often backed by big donors, have flourished. Libertarian activists like hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah have poured millions of dollars into outlets like Breitbart and the Media Research Center, whose stated mission is to “expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media.” According to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, when billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch founded Fox News in 1996, he sought to appeal to white working-class viewers through fearmongering and sensationalism; within six years, Fox was America’s leading cable news network. Since Trump took office, Fox has repeatedly championed conspiracy theories from climate denialism to white supremacist theories of an impending immigrant “invasion” echoed in the manifestos of mass shooters. The revolving door between Trump’s cabinet and Fox News is unprecedented, as are his frequent phone calls to contributors like Sean Hannity for policy advice. But the infrastructure was in place — and the labor press subdued — well before 2016.
As far back as the 1980s, right-wing tabloids boosted Trump’s celebrity, from the Murdoch-owned New York Post to the National Enquirer. (More recently, the Enquirer has purchased and buried negative stories about Trump, including his alleged affair with model Karen McDougal). Trump’s reality TV years rebranded him from a failing developer to an American icon and primed him to become the new conspiracism’s standard-bearer. On his show, “The Apprentice,” a contestant would often distinguish themself during the week’s contests only to be fired by Trump on a whim, as reported by the New Yorker’s Patrick Radden Keefe. When this happened, the show’s producers were forced to reverse-engineer the episode, combing through hundreds of hours of footage to cast the contestant in an unflattering light so that Trump’s decision would retroactively make sense.
Trump runs his White House the same way: as a self-construed monarch operating on the basis of his “great and unmatched wisdom” and disregarding any realities that stand in his path. Peter Navarro, the President’s trade czar, has said that Trump’s intuition is “always right” and the job of his advisors is to “provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition.” Conspiracism is his cudgel. Birtherism, the campaign to sow doubt over Obama’s citizenship status, was Trump’s entrée into politics — Fox provided the platform — and the allegations have swelled since: the “deep state” planted a spy in his campaign, the National Park Service covered up the size of his inauguration crowd, the Mueller investigation was a “witch hunt,” and on and on and on — 13,000 falsehoods and counting. Trump elevates theories espoused on 4Chan message boards or the recesses of Twitter, and his followers proudly trumpet their assent. Coronavirus, of course, has only provided more fodder; one pro-Trump cable network recently speculated that Covid-19 is a bioweapon funded by public health officials seeking to destroy the economy and undermine the President’s chances at re-election.
Though Muirhead and Rosenblum don’t devote much space to explaining the new conspiracism’s rise, they provide a compelling explanation of its popular appeal. The authors trace its origins to the Enlightenment, noting how philosophers of this era embraced personal agency and interpreted events as the outcome of intention — of discrete decisions made by rational actors. In truth, history is cumulative and contingent, but nuanced explanations that account for chance can be unsatisfying (and they certainly don’t boost cable ratings). Conspiracies provide a useful tool to determine agency and assign blame. They provide a way to make sense of cataclysmic events like the 9/11 attacks or the Kennedy assassination. And when generational sociopolitical shifts come to a head, as is the case in America today, conspiracies provide a simple, legible explanation.
As historian David Brion Davis writes, “collective beliefs in conspiracy have usually embodied or given expression to genuine social conflict.” Throughout America’s history, conspiracism has provided a helpful explanation for perceived threats to the nation’s core (read: white, democratic, Protestant, nativist) values. Paranoiac conspiracism arises when the nation reaches an impasse, when a political constituency perceives an existential threat; when, as Davis writes, “a displaced or embattled group … suddenly becomes aware of the gap between its own traditional way of life and a ‘new America’ of outrageous beliefs, styles, and values.” Muirhead and Birnbaum’s account, centering as it does on an institutional analysis of the new conspiracism’s effects, only gestures at this cultural impasse, but it is another important reason conspiracism has flourished on the right. Conspiracism’s champions include white supremacists and conservative extremists like Iowan Congressman Steve King who speak of “a clash of civilizations,” of preserving “Judeo-Christian values,” of protecting the West against an international siege. The widespread embrace of conspiracism, fueled by corporate media, suggests that much of Trump’s base inhabits this same world, or at least finds it alluring. Under this view, Trump’s opponents do not merely hold different opinions. They are traitorous; they threaten annihilation; they must be cast out.
Conspiracism produces the kind of confusion and distrust associated with totalitarianism. It’s a perpetual source of unease crackling below the surface. As philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, the proliferation of lies “pulls the ground from under our feet and provides no other ground on which to stand.” This phenomenon is personally disorienting and socially damaging. It is impossible to argue with someone who cites alternative facts as confirmation of their worldview. And it is almost as difficult to build a meaningful relationship with someone who occupies a reality separate from your own. As Muirhead and Rosenblum write, to discover that someone you know believes that climate change is fake is to experience a yawning gulf opening up between the two of you.
Moreover, conspiracism attacks the skepticism that public discourse requires. Institutions fail. They recommend the invasion of Iraq based on false intelligence and turn the other way when the water in Flint gets poisoned. Democracy demands that the public refuse to defer to those in power, ask tough questions, and demand better of politicians and experts when they lead their constituents astray. “Conspiracism,” Muirhead and Rosenblum write, “is not skepticism. In its indiscriminate denial of standing to knowledge-producing institutions, it undercuts the basis for criticism: a commitment to evidence, impartial analysis, and ongoing reason. And conspiracism undercuts the habits of doubt that empower us to question and test how we know what we think we know.”
Speaking primarily to members of the political establishment, Muirhead and Rosenblum point to several strategies for restoring democracy’s legitimacy. The first is simple: speaking truth, calling out falsehoods, resisting the temptation to acquiesce to conspiracist voters. The second is harder: an ongoing process they call “enacting democracy.” They write that legislators and judges should explain the processes and principles underlying their decisions, referring to legal precedent and citing their sources. The impeachment inquiry presented one such opportunity. In town halls across America, legislators defended the intelligence officials and diplomats who came forward to testify and explained the risk presented by Trump’s efforts to coerce Ukrainian officials into investigating his political opponents. Enacting democracy is not particularly glamorous or retweetable. It is a slow, grinding process — one made far more difficult in our current media ecosystem.
Though Muirhead and Rosenblum focus on conspiracism’s emergence on the right, it by no means strictly adheres to ideological boundaries — probably because people in the center and on the left share the same sense of disillusionment with the political establishment. During Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, conspiracy theories about Russian meddling in the 2016 election proliferated among liberal Twitter pundits, Facebook pages like “Occupy Democrats,” and anti-Trump blogs like “The Palmer Report.” Jeffrey Epstein’s death presents another noteworthy counterexample; according to one poll, 52 percent of the American population believes Epstein was murdered. There is no credence for this claim, but given that two presidents, Prince Andrew, and public figures from actors to academics to businesspeople all knew Epstein personally, took flights on his private jet, and turned a blind eye to his pedophilia, the public’s response to Epstein’s death isn’t coming out of nowhere. When elites act immorally, conspiracism is in some ways to be expected.
In this context, Muirhead and Birnbaum’s book is a reminder that democracy depends on collective action and on public scrutiny. When the truth is inaccessible, Arendt writes, the public tends to forget “of the actual content of political life — of the joy and the gratification that arise out of being in company with our peers, out of acting together and appearing in public, out of inserting ourselves into the world by word and deed, thus acquiring and sustaining our personal identity and beginning something entirely new.” The new conspiracism, Muirhead and Rosenblum write, is “the acid that dissolves the institutions and processes” that democracy requires. But truth, as Arendt says, “possesses a strength of its own” — as long as the public demands it.
Mark Rosenberg is a senior majoring in American Studies at Yale.