The detective work of classic conspiracism can reveal important truths about government that are otherwise covered up. Think of what it took to expose the actions of Michigan officials whose violation of public health guidelines allowed the lead poisoning of water in Flint, Michigan, in 2015. Their persistent stonewalling and denial increased the damage to public health. Despite their obstruction, over time the Environmental Protection Agency, doctors and researchers at hospitals and universities, and watchdog groups like the American Civil Liberties Union finally unravelled the truth about this act against the public and the conspiracy to cover it up.13
Sorting out what is plausible from what’s not would be easier if all conspiracist claims could be dismissed as wholly unwarranted or as delusional. But there is nothing that makes conspiracy theories as such irrational or erroneous. To consult the recent history of actual governmental conspiracies—Iran-Contra, Watergate, or Tuskegee, for starters—is to confront the fact that “there are elements of treachery in the contemporary political and economic order.”14 Government officials do lie and do conspire, sometimes for what they see as protecting the public interest, often in the name of national security. For instance, after an exhaustive effort to uncover the truth about Osama Bin Laden’s capture and killing in 2011, the New York Times reporter Jonathan Mahler concluded that the true account of those events may never be known because of the delicate American alliance with Pakistan. “The more sensitive the subject, the more likely the government will be to feed us untruths,” Mahler says. “Of course, when enough people are obscuring the truth, the results can seem, well, conspiratorial.”15
Distinguishing warranted from unwarranted conspiracist claims is further complicated by the way conspiracism aligns with partisan identity. Democrats are more likely to say that Trump colluded with Russia to cripple Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Republicans are more likely to say that the media are manufacturing fake news to bring down the president.16 We find ourselves navigating a political world buffeted by warring conspiracist claims. Is the miasma of conspiracism settling over politics wholesale? Is there a symmetry of untethered accusation launched from all sides?17
As we write, one set of claims has a grip on the nation’s attention and has high stakes for our constitutional order. Robert Mueller, a special counsel appointed by the Justice Department, is investigating a massive conspiracy to breach national security and subvert American elections. Intelligence agencies have confirmed what is euphemistically called meddling in the presidential election of 2016. Russian actors hacked email accounts associated with Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee with the goal of publicizing information that could assist Trump. Russian tactics also included staging rallies, targeting divisive messages to voters in closely contested districts, and exploiting social media platforms to urge African Americans to withhold votes for “Killary” Clinton.18 The Mueller investigation also focuses on whether the Russian state conspired with individuals in the Trump campaign.
On the other side, Trump and his allies equivocate about whether they accept the known facts of Russian intervention. For example, John Bolton, appointed by Trump to be national security adviser in 2018, had earlier told Fox News, “It is not at all clear to me … that this hacking into the DNC and the RNC computers was not a false flag operation.” It was, he suggested, possibly the work of the Obama administration.19 New conspiracists charge that the investigation itself is a nefarious plot. Special counsel Mueller is engaged in a “witch hunt,” looking for something he knows in advance does not exist. In the most incendiary language, Trump’s supporters cast the investigation as the entering wedge of a coup d’état.20 And Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee ostensibly inquiring into Russian interference spin their own counternarrative in which Hillary Clinton’s campaign—not Trump’s—colluded with the Russians by gathering anti-Trump information and delivering it to a friendly FBI.
The warring charges have made many of us for whom conspiracist thinking is an entirely alien way of approaching politics veer toward classic conspiracy theory ourselves. Classic because it is not a matter of meeting “witch hunt!” with “treason!” but rather of connecting the dots, discerning the patterns, and constructing a narrative that makes sense of Trump’s behavior toward Russian president Vladimir Putin—a narrative that makes sense of the refusal of many elected officials to “get to the bottom” of the Russia probe and guard against the dangers to national security.
There are no truth-in-advertising labels that tell us which conspiracist claims are warranted. There are no bright lines.21 Some conspiracy theories are true, and some are false, and, increasingly, many are not theories at all. Confronted with a conspiracist claim, the question is, on one hand, whether we can set aside disbelief in the possibility of a conspiracy and entertain the charge and, on the other hand, whether we can set aside preconceived notions that agents are always out there, plotting with malignant intent. The question is how we assemble facts and draw inferences from those facts. When considering the possibility of conspiracy, do we consider contrary evidence and argument? Can we hold in mind facts that are in tension with one another? Can we maintain the capacity to acknowledge, for instance, that the same Centers for Disease Control that lied about the Tuskegee experiments (which pretended to offer free health care while deliberately withholding treatment from syphilis-infected African American sharecroppers) may not be lying when it publicizes proof that vaccines do not cause autism? Or that the CIA, which engaged in coups against foreign governments and experimented with LSD on its own unwitting agents, can contribute materially to an investigation of a conspiracy to defeat a presidential candidate?
Sorting out conspiracist claims requires willingness to entertain new information as it emerges. It requires a capacity for self-correction.22 It requires resistance to resorting to round after round of spurious conspiracist counterclaims. If the Mueller probe finds no prosecutable evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, would we say that the special counsel has shown himself to be party to a right-wing conspiracy? Or would we be open to the possibility that the Justice Department investigated the matter with integrity and did not find sufficient grounds to prosecute? Assessing conspiracist claims requires skepticism and common sense—both democratic virtues.
This Moment and Beyond
The delegitimation of fundamental political institutions and the disorientation that follows from the contest over who owns reality are grave developments. But they do not constitute a crisis—we are not at an inflection point where democracy is fatally undermined. We are not in transition to another form of government—to an authoritarian or radical populist regime. Delegitimation does not entail revolution or uprising; it does not have the shape of a sudden authoritarian coup. What, then, is the danger? Delegitimation hollows out democratic institutions little by little, day by day. It incapacitates and enervates democracy. It works slowly on democracy’s foundations by eroding not just trust in institutions but their meaning, value, and authority. Combatting it requires identifying conspiracism for the threat it is.
We identify two responses to the new conspiracism. The first recourse is to call out conspiracists’ claim to own reality. Speaking truth to conspiracy is a moral imperative—particularly for elected officials. Speaking truth can be effective, even if it is ineffective with respect to dedicated conspiracists. We can mitigate the corrosive effect of the new conspiracism if partisans of all stripes cooperate in speaking out, if watchful and engaged civil society groups and the media do their work, and if each of us serves as a witness by speaking out to family, friends, neighbors, and coworkers.
In addition to speaking truth, there is what we call “enacting democracy”: the scrupulous and explicit adherence to the regular forms and processes of public decision-making. We are talking about a deliberate pedagogical response to the process of delegitimation. Enacting democracy makes government legible. That is, it gives citizens reasons to unders
tand and appreciate the meaning and value of institutional integrity and ordinary democratic processes—exactly what the new conspiracism attacks.23
Reversing the damage means relegitimation. We can say with confidence only that it is a long haul requiring patience and stamina. For conspiracist claims have an extended half-life. The charges outlive discrediting by reliable sources, refutation of the claimed facts by experts, reports by bipartisan commissions, and Justice Department findings. And conspiracism is abetted by technological developments that add fuel and velocity to its claims. Moreover, these claims have evident appeal, both political and emotional. Still, we argue that delegitimation of democratic foundations is a danger we can meet.
Max Weber’s 1919 treatise on politics as a vocation has long been a touchstone for thinking about political legitimacy.24 The types of legitimacy and conditions for creating legitimate authority are well studied. Delegitimation, however, especially in presumptively stable, wealthy democracies, is barely studied at all.25 Here we are on our own, confronting the unanticipated alien force we call the new conspiracism.
After Trump’s presidency passes from the scene, the new conspiracism will remain. Yet if we do our work as honest witnesses speaking truth to conspiracy and demonstrate the integrity of core institutions, we will succeed in exiling conspiracists from public life and returning them to the realm of entertainment or to their natural habitat at the political fringe. In preparation, there is the work of understanding the danger.
SECTION I
THE NEW CONSPIRACISM
Let the frame of things disjoin.
SHAKESPEARE, MACBETH (3.2.16)
1
Conspiracy without the Theory
The United States has harbored real conspiracies, encouraged vigilance against would-be conspirators, and imagined conspiracy where there was none. During critical episodes in American history—in the early days of the republic, for example, and at the time of the Civil War—conspiracist stories shaped national crises. Great contesting forces each cast the other as an enemy of the Constitution and the nation. Conspiracy was the filter through which each side viewed the other. Real or imagined, conspiracism in the past took the form of conspiracy theory—that is, what we call “classic conspiracism.”
In contrast, the new conspiracism is conspiracy without the theory. It sheds explanation, and it sheds political theory. We draw the distinction between classic conspiracy and the new conspiracism starkly not because every conspiracist claim falls neatly into one category or the other but rather because conspiracist claims that shed explanation and political theory have distinctive and destructive political effects: disorientation and delegitimation.
Classic conspiracy theory, whether it is true or not, tries to make sense of the political world. There are no accidents, no unintended consequences. As we mentioned in the introduction, classic conspiracism insists on proportionality and undertakes painstaking detective work: it is a kind of investigation that at least pretends to follow journalistic or even scientific standards.1 The conspiracy theories about 9/11, for instance, revolve around the collection and interpretation of supposed facts left out of official reports and covered up by so-called reliable sources: errant facts about the Twin Towers’ collapse, such as the temperature of burning jet fuel or the size of holes in the buildings. They strive to offer explanations that better fit these supposed facts—such as pilotless drone planes, even holograms that look like planes. And they fix on facts suggesting a cover-up, such as missing black box recorders or classified aspects of the 2004 9/11 Commission report. A visit to a website like Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth shows that classic conspiracism, with its effort to use standard epistemological methods to challenge official explanations, has not been superseded by the new conspiracism. “The official explanation of the failure” of the World Trade Center structure, the website says, “defies known scientific methods of analysis and is untenable in the face of logical investigation.”2 Once all the errant facts are scrupulously amassed, the thinking goes, we can understand the secret machinations that make sense of otherwise impenetrable events.3
The new conspiracist mind-set shares much with classic conspiracy theory. Both assume that things are not as they seem: malignant forces are at work beneath the surface.4 Both insist that right now is the critical saving moment, so with any delay in exposing the nefarious design all could be lost. Both are a grim business. They warn of danger and they are themselves dangerous. But the differences outweigh the commonalities.
The Declaration of Independence and the Logic of Classic Conspiracism
The United States was born of a conspiracy theory about Britain’s secret intention to extinguish liberty in North America. In the ubiquitous language of the eighteenth century, the revolutionaries resisted the British conspiracy to “enslave” America. If you read the Declaration of Independence on July 4, you are familiar with this earliest and most consequential American conspiracy theory, and with conspiracism in its classic form.
The Declaration is valued today for its inspiring avowal: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”5 The authors were Enlightenment figures, confident that inalienable rights could be understood by anyone who exercised reason and attended to the message of Christianity. The truth of the conspiracy directed against the colonies’ basic liberties, however, was not self-evident. The evidence had to be scrupulously laid out. The signers listed grievances against the Crown and broadcast them, drawing the attention of the world to the tyrannical plot and the imminent danger. In the view of American revolutionaries, a series of actions taken by the Crown, his ministers, parliament, and colonial governors were the dots that, once connected, formed a pattern. The grievances add up to “a long train of abuses and usurpations” all tending the same way—to reduce the colonies to “absolute despotism.” The revolutionaries saw more than malign intent; they saw planning, organization, and competence in the execution of the scheme. Those who doubted the conspiracy failed to comprehend the real, drastic meaning of these actions (or were Loyalists complicit in the plot). Finally, the Declaration directs a course of action: to dissolve the political bonds that connected them to Britain by armed resistance and to declare themselves independent states.
The historian Bernard Bailyn argues that the political consciousness of that time reflected a “hard-wired” disposition to interpret measures taken by the British administration as a ministerial conspiracy, as “evidence of nothing less than a deliberate assault launched surreptitiously by plotters against liberty both in England and in America.”6 By “hard-wired” Bailyn meant that “it was built into the political culture in eighteenth-century Britain and America”—a culture marked by long-standing Whig suspicion of government power—to see not merely “mistaken, or even evil, policies” but what appeared to be a despotic scheme.
The revolutionaries’ conspiracy theory was “hard-wired” in a broader sense.7 Historian Gordon Wood attributes the ready resort to conspiratorial explanations to a set of propositions about social reality shared by Enlightenment thinkers generally. These assumptions sited moral responsibility squarely in freely acting individuals and lent themselves to explanations in which intentions were the cause of events. If something important happened, it was because someone intended it to happen, though these intentions may have been concealed. American thought “was structured in such a way that conspiratorial explanations of complex events became normal, necessary, and rational.”8
John Dickinson, an author of revolutionary tracts, is exemplary: “Acts that might by themselves have been upon many considerations excused or extenuated derived contagious malignancy and odium from other acts with which they were connected. They were not regarded according to the simple force of each but as parts of a system of oppression.”9 The pattern can be deciphered to anticipate future actions; Alexander Hamilton predicted that Parliament meant to send “a large standing army maintained out of our own pockets to be at the devotion o
f our oppressors; the next step would be the martial law … the abolition of trials by juries, the Habeas Corpus act, and every other Bulwark of personal safety.”10 The political theorist Eric Nelson sums all this up succinctly: “A tiny tax on tea is never simply a tiny tax on tea” but a “fatal precedent,” “the thin edge of the wedge.”11 And as Bailyn argues, the logic of conspiracism was self-validating: “Once assumed, [the picture] could not be easily dispelled; denial only confirmed it, since what conspirators profess is not what they believe, the ostensible is not the real, and the real is deliberately malign.”12
This is fully articulated, classic conspiracy theory, and the declaration issued by the members of the Second Continental Congress is not the only example. Historians have uncovered nearly one hundred resolutions urging independence issued throughout 1776 by states and counties and towns, artisan and militia associations, and the provincial congresses of nine colonies.13 The tone, language, and form are consistent. In each, a narrative of self-defense against enslavement is built from fragmentary evidence. Each lists “abuses and usurpations” adding up to a tyrannical plot. These declarations also shared an aim: to ensure that the war that had begun against the British in 1775 resulted not in more petitions for a redress of grievances over taxation or better representation in Parliament but rather in independence. To see the conspiracy was to see the necessity of revolution. The authors delegitimized colonial political arrangements and, importantly, linked independence to a fierce commitment to a constitutional republic.
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