7/23/2023 0 Comments Conspire 2016 webcastIf you want to explain why you want to tear the accepted system down in favor of a new approach or if you want to enter the White House without ever being part of the political establishment, then it is fitting to use conspiracy theories to call that system into question.Īs for Clinton, the environment created by two outsiders-Sanders and Trump-has forced her to respond in kind. ![]() These “losers” have to use conspiracy theories to justify their outsider status, explain away losses and call accepted practices into question. There’s an obvious reason for this: Donald Trump has branded himself an “outsider.” In my research, I have found that conspiracy theories tend to work best when they are employed by outsiders, electoral losers and statistical minorities. Donald Trump, one of two people likely to be president next year, has been propagating, and now creating, conspiracy theories as a major theme of his campaign. ![]() A few politicians or news sources might allege a plot from time to time (think Sarah Palin and her Obamacare death panels), but these are usually a result of overheated partisan rhetoric and they tend to receive intense backlash. In 2012, when I asked a representative sample of Americans to agree or disagree with the following statement, “Big events like wars, the current recession, and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people who are working in secret against the rest of us,” only 30 percent disagreed.ĭespite this, the United States has not gone off the conspiracy theory cliff because our elite politicians and mainstream news sources generally eschew this type of heady theorizing. Kennedy’s assassination was due to a conspiracy rather than to a lone gunman. More than 50 years after the fact, a majority of Americans continue to believe that President John F. A similar number believed there was a conspiracy behind the terror attacks of 9/11. At the height of birtherism a few years ago, about a quarter of Americans believed that President Barack Obama was born outside the United States. Polls suggest that all Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory most believe in several. Whether it was witches colluding with Satan during colonial times, Freemasons nefariously controlling the government in the 1800s or communists coopting the State Department during the Red Scare, Americans have always been drawn to the idea that certain people or organizations are working in secret for their own benefit against the public good. Not so this year I’ve never seen a time when they so dominated the mainstream debate-and when they had the potential to do so much harm. Conspiracy theories, which I’ve studied for the past seven years, have always been part of American politics, but they’ve tended to pop up in the dark corners of our political discourse, serving mainly as sideshows to more important political disputes. The idea that Clinton is secretly wrestling with some unknown illness is just the latest conspiracy theory to go mainstream in an election season chock full of them. Search for ‘Hillary Clinton illness.’ Take a look at those videos for yourself.” ![]() The media, he said, “fails to point out several signs of illness by her. This weekend, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News Sunday viewers that Hillary Clinton was seriously ill. He is co-author of American Conspiracy Theories (Oxford University Press, 2014). ![]() Joseph Uscinski is Associate Professor of Political Science at University of Miami.
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