AS SEEN @ https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2019/4/11/18291061/trump-ukraine-barr-whistleblower-investigation
This book explains why conspiracism is on the rise in American
politics.
Conspiracy theories
are now at the center of American politics — and have led directly
to a sprawling impeachment inquiry.
President Donald
Trump is convinced that Ukraine, not Russia, meddled in our 2016
election. We know this because a whistleblower filed a complaint
about a July 25 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelensky in which Trump asked about a computer server in Ukraine and
a cybersecurity company called CrowdStrike.
“I would like you
to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine,
they say CrowdStrike ... I guess you have one of your wealthy people
... The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things
that went on, the whole situation,” Trump told Zelensky.
The working theory
is that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election and that CrowdStrike
was hired to cover it up. Thing is, this is complete nonsense. As my
Vox colleague Alex Ward reported, there’s no evidence that this
happened and Trump’s own aides have told him so.
But Trump continues
to glom onto this counter-narrative about Ukraine as part of a
broader effort to discredit Mueller’s Russia investigation. It’s
why, for instance, Trump’s Attorney General, Bill Barr, is
reportedly asking foreign leaders around the world to help him
investigate various other conspiracy theories about the origins of
the Mueller probe, including the notion that the Obama administration
had an Australian official spy on Trump’s campaign on behalf of the
Clinton campaign.
Trump’s
motivations are obvious enough, but a big reason he’s able to
persist in these delusions is that he lives in a right-wing echo
chamber that continually affirms these sorts of conspiracy theories.
And now, it seems, they’re driving his diplomatic engagements with
other countries.
Back in April, I
spoke to Harvard politics professor Nancy Rosenblum about her latest
book, A Lot of People Are Saying. Her thesis was that we’re living
in something like a golden age for conspiracy theories, where
bullshit narratives are getting both more absurd and harder to
refute.
The so-called
Pizzagate conspiracy is a good example. This was a fake news story
alleging that Hillary Clinton and her former campaign chair, John
Podesta, ran a child sex ring in the basement of a pizzeria in
Washington, DC. It was totally fabricated, but it proliferated enough
online that a man eventually showed up at the restaurant with an
assault rifle and fired at least one shot.
The Trump-Ukraine
conspiracy theory is perhaps even more dangerous because it appears
to have hijacked an entire administration and set in motion a massive
scandal that has embroiled the country in a divisive impeachment
process.
Given the outsized
role of conspiracism in the Ukraine story, I thought it was worth
reposting this conversation about the role conspiracy theories are
playing in modern life, why they’re so appealing, and why Rosenblum
thinks they’re becoming an existential threat for democratic
societies.
Sean Illing
Why write a book
about conspiracy theories now?
Nancy Rosenblum
Charges of
conspiracy have in the last two years become a malignant element in
public life, and I think it’s been really corrosive to our
politics. But what struck me and my co-author was this intrusion of
conspiracism, which we think is fundamentally different from
conventional conspiracy theories.
Not a day passes
without some sort of conspiracist claim about rigged elections or
fake news or something absurd like Pizzagate. And the cast of
characters that are engaged in conspiracy charges now ranges from a
compulsively conspiracist president to public officials — elected
representatives who either endorse these conspiracist claims or
acquiesce to remain silent — to conspiracy entrepreneurs and their
followers.
So it’s a
not-insignificant part of our population, and it’s a common element
now in public life.
Sean Illing
And how do you
define a conspiracy theory?
Nancy Rosenblum
A conspiracy theory
is an explanation of an event — an event that seems otherwise
unintelligible or improbable. And the explanation is that underneath
what seems unintelligible is actually some sort of conspiracy or
secret plot. Sometimes conspiracy theories are true, sometimes
they’re false. It’s often hard to tell the difference, but in all
cases, it’s an attempt at some reasoned explanation for a
complicated event.
Sean Illing
So a conspiracy
isn’t wrong by virtue of being a conspiracy theory, but it’s more
likely to be wrong because it’s an attempt to take a complicated
event and fit it into a broader narrative framework?
Nancy Rosenblum
That’s right, and
I’m so glad you said that, because Wikipedia actually defines a
conspiracy theory as a false threat of a conspiracy, and that’s not
true. There are both progressive conspiracy theories that are not
only true but have advanced American democracy, and there are total
fabulations that are pure inventions.
Sean Illing
Can you give me an
example of an accurate conspiracy theory and one that was totally
fabricated?
Nancy Rosenblum
Examples of sheer
fabulation would be the “faked moon landing” (Stanley Kubrick
actually filmed it in a studio) or that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
is dead (the Democrats found a body double to deny her death in order
to prevent President Trump from filling her seat on the Supreme
Court). Or, more to the point, perhaps, the recent Pizzagate
conspiracy.
As far as useful
progressive conspiracy theories go, a good example is the work by
academics like Naomi Oreskes documenting conspiracies by the tobacco
and fossil fuel industries to cast doubt on climate science, which
actually refutes the climate hoax conspiracy that says global
scientists are bribed to produce reports of catastrophic human-caused
global warming.
Or the Progressive
movement in the early 20th century that cast corporate boardrooms and
smoke-filled rooms of political bosses as potential roadblocks to
democracy; the result of what they called “muckraking” reporting
on this corruption was democratic reforms that are still with us,
like direct democracy and referenda, etc.
Sean Illing
I think of
conspiracy theorists as people who have rejected a world they don’t
fit into, and the theories themselves offer a way to make sense of it
and invert the cause of the problem. In other words, if I’m unhappy
or alienated, it’s not my fault; it’s these shadowy forces that
are aligned against me. Plus, it gives the conspiracy theorist a
sense of power — they understand what’s really going on in a way
no one else does.
Nancy Rosenblum
That’s probably
the most common social psychological source of conspiracy thinking.
People don’t fit in, they feel dispossessed or alienated or put
upon by some elite or expert, and then they have a story that seems
to make sense of why that has happened to them. It’s a kind of
scapegoating.
It’s incredibly
empowering to believe you have the true picture of reality and that
everyone else is delusional. And if you look at conspiracists today,
even the wackiest, like those writing about QAnon, they see
themselves as the cognoscenti. They understand how the world really
works, and they understand that the rest of us are brainwashed.
Again, I’d just
add the caveat that some conspiracy theories are real and the people
who engage in them are making a good-faith effort to explain what’s
happening.
Sean Illing
The psychology of
conspiracism seems to appeal to a wide range of people, some smart
and some not. Why is that?
Nancy Rosenblum
Cognitive and
political psychologists will tell you the cognitive afflictions that
result in the worst and most zealous kind of conspiracy theory really
are common; we all share them. We like to think that agents are the
causes of things, rather than accidents or unintended consequences
being the cause. We like to think there’s a proportionality between
cause and effect, and that causes us to overreach for explanations.
But there’s a
difference between those people who earnestly want to know what’s
happening and those who have a conspiracist mindset; the latter tend
to see the world entirely that way. They tend to see the world in
terms of enemies, not just events that need an explanation.
“Liberal
democracy requires a minimum amount of mutual trust among citizens,
and conspiracism destroys it”
Sean Illing
In the book, you
argue that conspiracy theorizing is different today, that we have the
conspiracism without the theory. What does that mean?
Nancy Rosenblum
I mean that
conspiracy theorizing today dispenses with the burden of explanation.
In fact, sometimes, as in Pizzagate, there’s absolutely nothing
that needs to be explained, and there’s no real demand for truth or
facts. There are no actual dots that need to be connected to form a
pattern.
Instead, we have
conspiracy charges that take a new form: bare assertion. Instead of
trying to explain something that happened in the world, it’s about
creating a narrative that itself becomes the reason for the
conspiracism. And it even spreads in a much different way.
For instance, much
of the conspiracism today spreads through innuendo. You’ll hear
people say, “I just want to know more, I’m just asking
questions.” Or, as President Trump likes to say, “A lot of people
are saying...” This is conspiracy without any theory. It’s about
validating preexisting beliefs by constantly repeating false claims
that reinforce what you already believe.
So it’s not merely
that someone thinks Hillary Clinton is an unworthy candidate; we have
to make up a story about her sex trafficking in children. And by
repeating these things and assenting to them, you’re signaling a
kind of group affinity. Conspiracy without the theory has become a
form of political participation.
Sean Illing
You also emphasize
that the point of conspiracism today isn’t to explain but rather to
delegitimize. Why is this a significant distinction?
Nancy Rosenblum
It’s a way to
delegitimize what it means to know something at all. So you often
find today that people don’t really care if something is totally
true. They’re just looking for something they can hang their hat
on, to create enough doubt to justify their core beliefs and sow
cynicism at the same time.
We think of this
sort of conspiracism as an attempt to own reality. Trump is exhibit
A: He has a compromised sense of reality that he imposes on the
nation, for instance, when he lied about the crowd size at his
inauguration.
The conspiracists
who traffic in this sort of dishonesty aren’t interested in
arguments or evidence. It’s about confirming their picture of the
world and undermining the institutions charged with reporting the
truth in the first place. And it’s a declaration that only their
way of knowing is credible and everyone else is brainwashed.
We call this
“epistemic polarization”: There is no ground for argument or
persuasion or even disagreement. And we think it is more profound and
unbridgeable even than partisan polarization.
Sean Illing
Why does it seem
like the conspiracism today is mostly a right-wing phenomenon?
Nancy Rosenblum
It goes back to what
we were just saying about delegitimization: The right wing wants to
delegitimize the government and, really, all of our
knowledge-producing institutions. So it’s naturally beneficial for
them to spread conspiratorial thinking. The Democrats, on the other
hand, generally like government and want to improve it, so they have
less reason to embrace conspiracism.
But I want to be
clear: There’s plenty of conspiracy theory on the left. Jane
Mayer’s book Dark Money, for example, or Elizabeth Warren’s claim
that the business model of Wall Street is rigged — these are
technically conspiracy theories, and I think they’re true. The
difference, though, is that these are attempts to explain what’s
going on; it’s not the sort of conspiracism I’m talking about
here.
Sean Illing
The examples of
conspiracy theories on the left you pointed to so far appear to be
good-faith attempts to find the truth, while the examples on the
right seem to be outlandish theories meant to destroy faith in
institutions. But did you find any conspiracy theories on the left
that were straightforwardly delusional, or at least not serious
attempts to find the truth? And conversely, were there any on the
right that turned out to be true, that uncovered real conspiracy?
Nancy Rosenblum
I can think of
several left conspiracy theories that I’d assess as outlandish: the
left 9/11 Truthers who argue that the government knew about the
attack in advance and let it happen, or even organized it, in order
to justify war against Iraq — and to advance the attack on civil
liberties and the Patriot Act. There’s also an element of the left
that believes Bush and Cheney went to war in Iraq purely to get the
oil; unwarranted on my view, but still held by friends and
colleagues.
I can’t think of a
right-wing conspiracy claim that turned out to be warranted, however.
Today’s conspiracism seems to be uniquely right-leaning, and it’s
hard to find a scrap of it that’s true; after all, it is not trying
to explain the world, it is trying to recast reality. Or to see
regular processes, like investigations and oversight, as attempted
coups d’état.
In addition to other
reasons I’ve explored, it’s the right, not the left, today that
insists on its victimization and therefore is intent on identifying
the enemies responsible for their humiliation — even as they gain
office. The right that sees a liberal agenda to seize guns,
dramatized by Alex Jones’s claim that the Sandy Hook parents were
crisis actors paid to advance the gun control agenda.
That said, perhaps
there is a cost to insisting on placing classic conspiracy theory on
the right-left axis. For the most part, it’s a radical suspicion of
government and of official findings, and it comes at us episodically
from many quarters.
Sean Illing
Is there something
about the world today, about how we communicate and acquire
information, that has lowered the bar for conspiracy theories?
Nancy Rosenblum
You would know this
better than me, since you’re writing a book about new media
technologies. But I’ll say this: The decline of gatekeepers, the
decline of legacy media, and the rise of the internet and social
media have taken down all the barriers. Now information can spread so
fast and so cheaply that it’s nearly impossible to contain. And the
influence of algorithms and curated newsfeeds is certainly pushing
people deeper and deeper into self-confirming bubbles.
One difference
between the classic conspiracy theorists and the new conspiracism is
that the former would use the internet all the time, because there’s
an infinite amount of bits of signs and data and information that
they can get and plug into their theories. But the new conspiracists
are into social media, and what they’re doing is affirming one
another. They’re tweeting and retweeting, and sharing and liking,
and building out their tribe.
Sean Illing
You argue very
forcefully in the book that this new conspiracism is a direct threat
to the foundations of democratic society. Can you briefly explain
why?
Nancy Rosenblum
You can’t have a
functioning democracy without a plurality of knowledge-producing
institutions. You need universities and scientists and government
agencies, and so on. And to the extent that those institutions are
discredited in the public’s mind, to the extent that people think
they can make policy without relying on the knowledge those
institutions produce, the government will become dysfunctional. And
the more dysfunctional it becomes, the more illegitimate it will seem
to more and more people.
At the same time,
all this conspiracism erodes trust not just in public institutions
but in our fellow citizens. We’re obliterating trust in each other
and in the political competition, and that’s a direct attack on the
foundations of democracy. Liberal democracy requires a minimum amount
of mutual trust among citizens, and conspiracism destroys it.
Sean Illing
How do we reason
with conspiracy theorists? Or how do we check the influence of
conspiracism?
Nancy Rosenblum
I don’t think we
reason with conspiracy theorists. I think it’s a closed system. I
think they are incorrigible. I think we have to speak truth to
conspiracy, but not with the thought that we’re going to change the
minds of conspiracy theorists. And we have to be especially critical
of the institutions that help spread conspiracism.
But it’s my view
that the people who can counter this are elected political
representatives, people who have a partisan connection to their
constituents and people who should in many situations say, “That’s
not true. That’s not what’s happening. Here’s how it works.”
And the tragedy we’re seeing now is that for opportunistic reasons,
elected representatives are failing in their responsibilities to do
this.
If elected officials
cannot find the courage to do this, we’re in trouble. And the fact
that the president of the United States and the leader of one of our
two parties is one of the prime spreaders of conspiracism today is
obviously a very bad sign.
Can I just add one
more cautionary note before we end?
Sean Illing
Please.
Nancy Rosenblum
I’ve learned
something stunning while doing this work, which is that this
conspiracism is destructive all the way down. It’s destabilizing,
it’s degrading, and it’s destroying our democratic institutions
without any countervailing constructive impulse.
And what this tells
me is that in this perilous time for democracy, it doesn’t take an
alternative political ideology to degrade democracy — it doesn’t
take communism, or authoritarianism, or fascism, or anything else.
Conspiracism can demolish democracy on its own, and we ignore that at
our peril.
