27. Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, “When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions,” Political Behavior 32, no. 2 (June 2010): 303–30.
28. See Charles J. Sykes, “The Danger of Ignoring Alex Jones,” New York Times, June 17, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/sunday/the-danger-of-ignoring-alex-jones.html.
29. Thomas Wood and Ethan Porter, “The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes’ Steadfast Factual Adherence,” Political Behavior (forthcoming), last revised January 2, 2018, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2819073.
30. Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, “The Effect of Fact-Checking on Elites: A Field Experiment on U.S. State Legislators,” American Journal of Political Science 59, no. 3 (July 2015): 628–40; Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, “Do People Actually Learn from Fact Checking? Evidence from a Longitudinal Study from the 2014 Campaign,” November 30, 2016, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~nyhan/fact-checking-effects.pdf.
31. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching, Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 141.
32. Ari Berman, “The Man behind Trump’s Voter-Fraud Obsession,” New York Times, June 13, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/13/magazine/the-man-behind-trumps-voter-fraud-obsession.html.
33. David Cottrell, Michael C. Herron, and Sean J. Westwood, “An Exploration of Donald Trump’s Allegations of Massive Voter Fraud in the 2016 General Election,” August 23, 2017, http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dcott/pdfs/fraud_draft.pdf.
34. Berman, “Man behind Trump’s.”
35. David Weigel, “Election Integrity Commission Members Accuse New Hampshire Voters of Fraud,” Washington Post, September 8, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/09/08/election-integrity-commission-members-accuse-new-hampshire-voters-of-fraud/?utm_term=.d293c18abadc.
36. This is how the Kansas City Star editorial board characterized the work of Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. See “Why Has Kris Kobach’s Voter Fraud Commission Disappeared?,” editorial, Kansas City Star, November 1, 2017, http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/editorials/article182150656.html.
37. Mark Berman and John Wagner, “Almost Every State Resists Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission,” Chicago Tribune, July 5, 2017, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-most-states-resist-voter-fraud-commission-20170705-story.html.
38. Dan Merica, “Trump Labels U.S. Justice System a ‘Laughingstock,’ ” CNN, November 1, 2017, http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/01/politics/trump-justice-laughing-stock/index.html.
39. The Situation Room, full transcript, November 1, 2017, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1711/01/sitroom.01.html.
40. “New York City Terror Attack News Conference,” C-SPAN, November 1, 2017, https://www.c-span.org/video/?436710-1/york-city-terror-attack-news-conference.
41. Nicholas Fandos, “F.B.I. Agent Defends Actions in Russia Inquiry in Contentious House Testimony,” New York Times, July 12, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/12/us/politics/fbi-agent-house-republicans.html.
42. Fandos, “F.B.I. Agent Defends Actions.” Strzok’s evidence of his own professional responsibility was that he was one of the few people who knew about Russian interference in the election on behalf of Trump during the campaign yet did not expose this potentially explosive information to derail Trump.
43. See Rosanvallon, Good Government, 162–63, 245–51. As Rosanvallon writes, conflating legibility and transparency (as well as the several distinct meanings of transparency) “leads to confusions” (251).
Conclusion: The Crisis of Democracy
1. Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Signs of Deconsolidation,” Journal of Democracy 28, no. 1 (January 2017): 5–16, http://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/signs-deconsolidation.
2. Data cited in William Galston, Anti-pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 12. Galston provides an itemized list of populist sentiments and beliefs on p. 112.
3. The term invokes political scientists’ preoccupation with democratization and its consolidation. Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk, “The Danger of Deconsolidation,” Journal of Democracy 27, no. 3 (July 2016): 5–17, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/article/danger-deconsolidation-democratic-disconnect; Foa and Mounk, “ Signs of Deconsolidation.”
4. Among the best assessments of the signs of authoritarianism is Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die (New York: Crown, 2018), whose authors “offer a litmus test to help identify would-be autocrats” (6). For another trenchant example, see Benjamin Carter Hett, The Death of Democracy (New York: Henry Holt, 2018).
5. For an overview, see Nadia Urbinati, “Populism,” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (forthcoming, 2019). See too Nadia Urbinati, Democracy Disfigured: Opinion, Truth, and the People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); Galston, Anti-pluralism; John B. Judis, The Populist Explosion (New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016); and Frances McCall Rosenbluth and Ian Shapiro, Responsible Parties: Saving Democracy from Itself (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018).
6. David Runciman, How Democracy Ends (New York: Basic Books, 2018), 7.
7. Bill Chappell, “ ‘I’m the Only One That Matters,’ Trump Says of State Department Vacancies,” National Public Radio, November 3, 2017, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561797675/im-the-only-one-that-matters-trump-says-of-state-dept-job-vacancies.
8. Justin Wise, “What You’re Seeing in the News ‘Is Not What’s Happening,’ ” Hill, July 24, 2018, http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/398606-trump-what-youre-seeing-in-the-news-is-not-whats-happening-inbox-x.
9. We have in mind an intensification of the disinclination to participate in or to pay attention to politics that is already a prominent tendency in what John Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse call “stealth democracy.” See John R. Hibbing and Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, Stealth Democracy: Americans’ Beliefs about How Government Should Work (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
10. American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Perceptions of Science in America (Cambridge, MA: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2018), 3, https://www.amacad.org/content/publications/publication.aspx?d=43055.
11. Turkuler Isiksel, “Prepare for Regime Change, not Policy Change,” Dissent, November 13, 2016, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/trump-victory-regime-change-lessons-autocrats-erdogan-putin.
12. On the connection between “legibility” and conspiracism, see Pierre Rosanvallon, Good Government: Democracy beyond Elections, trans. Malcolm DeBevoise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 161–64.
13. Quoted in James Risen and Tom Risen, “Donald Trump Does His Best Joe McCarthy Impression,” New York Times, June 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/20/22/opinion/sunday/donald-trump.
14. Archibald MacLeish quoted in Jill Lepore, “The World That Trump and Ailes Built,” New Yorker, June 5 and 12, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/06/05/the-world-that-trump-and-ailes-built.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We extended our work on political parties to the subject of conspiracism at the invitation of Alfred Moore and published our first article, “Speaking Truth to Conspiracy: Partisanship and Trust,” for a 2016 volume Moore edited for Critical Review. We amplified our argument in a 2017 article, “The New Conspiracism and the Delegitimation of Democracy,” at the invitation of Leo Casey for a special issue of Dissent magazine on the crisis of democracy. We are grateful for these opportunities.
Rob Tempio, our editor at Princeton University Press, was enthusiastic about the project from our earliest conversation over coffee at the Film Society of Lincoln Center café. He shepherded the manuscript through publication, peppered us with probing questions and useful quotes, and prodded us to meet a very tight deadline!
For editorial suggestions w
e thank Madeleine Adams and Ashley Moore. For help with research, we thank Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis and Leah Downey.
Nancy Rosenblum is grateful to Robert Jay Lifton for sharing her preoccupation with the campaign, election, and presidency of Donald Trump. Our never-ending conversation about “malignant normality” was invaluable, and even a sort of balm.
Russell Muirhead thanks Toni Barry for her loving encouragement throughout and Margaret Muirhead for her hearty support and careful attention to several iterations of the manuscript.
INDEX
Abbott, Greg, 145–46
Access Hollywood (television show), 68
administrative state, 83, 96
African Americans, 90
agency, personal vs. impersonal, 22, 44, 180n8
aggression, 38, 66
alternative facts, 67, 103, 109, 120
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 173
American Academy of Pediatrics, 103
American Civil Liberties Union, 10
American Protective Association, 57
Antifa, 89
anti-government sentiment, 5, 39, 40, 74, 96–98
antipartyism, 93–94
antipluralism, 63, 64, 84
Apple, 156
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, 20
Arendt, Hannah, 70, 128–29
Armstrong, Neil, 4
assent, to conspiracism, 32, 43, 50–54, 69, 127, 134–35, 184n26
assertion. See bare assertion
atheism, 57
authoritarianism, 86, 179n25
autism, 13, 124
backfire effect, 157
Bailyn, Bernard, 22, 23
Bannon, Steve, 30, 91, 96, 181n23
bare assertion, 3, 25–27, 32, 38–39, 49, 56, 72, 88, 104, 107, 123–24, 134, 153, 164, 168
Barr, Roseanne, 134
Beck, Glenn, 47
Benghazi conspiracy, 148–49
Berinsky, Adam, 48, 184n26
Bin Laden, Osama, 10
Binney, William, 72
birther conspiracy, 6, 26, 42, 51–52, 65, 67, 88, 103–6, 150, 178n10
Blankfein, Lloyd, 88
Blow, Charles, 77
Bolton, John, 11
bots, 33
Brexit, 62, 186n11
British Parliament, 142
broadcast technology, suited to new conspiracism, 40, 155–56, 168. See also internet, conspiracists’ use of
Bruner, Jerome, 52
Buchanan, James, 177n3
bullshit, 69
Bush, George W., 75, 90
Camus, Albert, 165
Castro, Fidel, 46
Catholicism, 57
Cato Institute, 109
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 13, 102, 102–3, 124
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 13, 144
Charlottesville demonstration, 28, 42
chemtrails, 4, 178n7
China, 107
Chobani, 4
citizen participation, in political decision making, 119
Citizens United case, 110
classic conspiracism: American revolution and, 21–24, 29; apocalyptic character of, 28; collective action advocated in, 31; historical occurrences of, 19, 21–24; investigative character of, 2–3, 10; new vs., 2–3, 19–21, 25, 27–28, 30, 32, 43, 164; purpose of, as revelation and explanation, 2–3, 20, 24–25, 164; theory underlying, 29
Clemenceau, Georges, 70
climate change, 107–12
Clinton, Hillary: attacks on, 53, 66, 88, 91, 106, 148; Benghazi conspiracy imputed to, 148–49; child sex crimes imputed to, 25, 42, 53, 124–25, 129, 131, 132–33, 169, 177n1; election fraud conspiracy theories aimed at, 3, 65, 174; hacked emails of, 11; and Russian election meddling, 12
Clinton Foundation, 72
closed-mindedness, 153–54, 163
CNN (news outlet), 53, 73, 113
collective action, 31
Comet Ping Pong, 31–32, 117. See also Pizzagate
common sense, 126–29, 135–38
Competitive Enterprise Institute, 109
confirmation bias, 47, 116
Congressional Budget Office, 102
conservatism: anti-government sentiment in, 40, 96–97; and climate change denial, 109; new conspiracism in relation to, 95–98; and the role of the press, 115
conspiracism and conspiracy theories: appeal of, 37; closed-mindedness characteristics of, 153–54; counterconspiracy campaigns against, 154–55; epistemology of, 43–49, 129–32; investigation of, 12–13; left-wing, 98; legitimate, 9–10; partisanship in relation to, 5, 10–11, 47, 48–49, 149; persistence of, 14–15, 70; popularity of, 9, 178n10; populism in relation to, 62; skepticism in relation to, 116–18. See also classic conspiracism; new conspiracism; presidential conspiracism
conspiracy entrepreneurs, 40, 54–55, 116, 134, 168
Conway, Kellyanne, 36, 103
counterconspiracy campaigns, 154–55
coup d’état allegations, 1, 12, 36–37
crisis actors, 4, 54, 55
crumbs (conspiracy theory), 27, 133
Cruz, Ted, 28, 42, 104, 105–6
Cuomo, Andrew, 161
dark money, 6, 34, 110
Davis, David Brion, 24
Declaration of Independence, 21–24, 29, 31, 135
deconsolidation, 167
deep state, 27, 64, 65, 74, 148, 163
defiance, 39
delegitimation of democracy: Bannon’s goal of, 181n23; dangers of, 13–14; defined, 7; government officials as target of, 37, 170–71; historical trend of, 40–41; knowledge producers and experts as target of, 5–6, 82, 101–21; mistrust compared to, 34–35; new conspiracism’s goal of, 2–8, 33–36, 71, 73–74, 82, 98–99, 169, 170–72; political parties as target of, 77, 82, 87–92, 94, 98–101, 171–72; responses to, 14; reversal and relegitimation of, 158–65; techniques and process of, 35, 88–92
democracy: common sense’s role in, 126–29, 132, 135–38; corruption of, 73–74; direct participatory, 94; knowledge producers’ and experts’ role in, 82–83, 100–101, 114, 117–19; parties’ role in, 82–87, 93–94; power and power relations in, 164; Progressivism and, 29–30, 93–94; role of skepticism and mistrust in, 13, 34–35, 100, 116–20, 147; threats to, 123, 132, 166–68, 179n25; trust’s role in, 125. See also delegitimation of democracy; enacting democracy
democratic enactment. See enacting democracy
Democratic National Committee, 11, 72
Democratic Party: attacks on, 89–91; conservatives’ opposition to, 96; Trump attacks on, 58, 87
Department of Defense, 111
Department of Justice, 1, 36–37, 48, 72, 121, 150, 162–63
Dewey, John, 9
Diaz, Tracy, 134
Dickinson, John, 22–23
direct participatory democracy, 94
disenfranchisement. See voter suppression
disorientation: democracy threatened by, 129; as effect of conspiracism, 9, 38, 121–22, 131–32, 169–70, 199n9; inability to trust as result of, 123–25; psychological impact of, 173, 199n9; threat to democracy from, 123, 132
divisiveness, in politics, 60, 61. See also political polarization
Duverger, Maurice, 85
8chan, 133
Einstein, Albert, 119
election fraud conspiracies, 1, 3, 25–26, 48, 65, 72, 92, 114–15, 159–61, 169, 174. See also Russian election meddling and investigation thereof
elitism, 64
enacting democracy, 14, 138, 158–65, 175–76
Enlightenment, 21, 22, 135
Environmental Protection Agency, 10, 102, 111, 178n7
epistemic polarization, 129–32, 169–70
Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 62
expertise. See knowledge and expertise
Exxon, 107–9
fabulation, 49, 50, 54, 108, 116, 120, 132–35, 168. See also lies
Facebook, 134, 156
facts, rejection/delegitimation of, 70, 102–12, 115
fake news, 1, 24, 53, 73, 112–15, 121, 171
false flags, 11, 54, 64
fascism, 86
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): disdain for/attacks on, 36–37, 150, 162–63; Hillary Clinton’s relationship to, 12; school shooting conspiracy about, 55; wiretapping imputed to, 3, 48, 50, 177n5
Flake, Jeff, 149, 150–51, 164
Flint, Michigan water supply contamination, 10, 118
Flynn, Michael, 1, 53, 177n1
Foa, Roberto Stefan, 167
Ford, Henry, 57
fossil fuel industry, 107–10
4chan, 27, 133–34
Fox News, 11, 36, 72
Frankfurt, Harry, 69
Freemasons, 57
Friedman, Thomas, 73, 126–27
gatekeeping, on dissemination of information, 155–56, 168
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 93
Glass, Stephen, 53
Gohmert, Louie, 145
Google, 156
Grossmann, Matt, 97
Guantanamo Bay detention facility, 161
Habermas, Jürgen, 118
Hamilton, Alexander, 23
Havel, Vaclav, 69
Heartland Institute, 109
Hibbing, John, 199n9
Hofstadter, Richard, 44–45
Hoover, J. Edger, 154
Hoover Institution, 109
House Intelligence Committee, 12
House Judiciary and Oversight Committee, 162
Huckabee, Mike, 37
humiliation, 40, 57
imperial presidency, 137
inauguration crowd size, 69, 70, 103
Infowars, 112, 156
Inhofe, James, 107
innuendo, 3, 27–28, 32, 38–39, 49
intentionality, 45–46
Internal Revenue Service, 102
internet, conspiracists’ use of, 32–33. See also broadcast technology, suited to new conspiracism
Iran-Contra, 10
Jackson, Andrew, 125
Jade Helm conspiracy, 25, 42, 126, 143–46, 169, 196n7
Jay, John, 60–61
Jews, 57, 90, 133
Johnson, Ron, 150
Jones, Alex, 54, 144, 156
Keeley, Brian, 24–25, 25
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