Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power by Anna Merlan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It Must Be Something in the Water

Conspiracy is a form of American poetry. It is incredibly imaginative, inspiring for many, and captures the essence of the civilisation from which it emerges, namely it’s ill-educated resentment of the world, especially of itself. From before the foundation of the country, Americans have considered themselves victims of some ‘higher power’ which oppresses them and seeks to destroy something essential about them. In the colonial era the oppressor was the native inhabitants, the English Crown, the French,... and witches. In the 19th century it was immigrant Catholics. In the 20th century it was Jews and socialists. In the 21st century the oppressor is the Deep State in all its complex manifestations from Satan worship by the elite to poisonous contrails to the government itself.

In this sense among others, the election as President of an arch-conspiracy theorist is perfectly representative of the population. Trump’s only notable skill is his ability to tap into the pervasive victimhood of Americans. But this is apparently enough to maintain him in power. He knows his audience. They live in a vague fear which they attribute to Central American immigrants, or disruptive black activists, or dishonest drug companies, or militant atheists, or the perfidious Chinese. But this is obvious projection. What they really fear is themselves. What actually oppresses them is their own continuing failure to confront their failure as a political entity. Trump helps them celebrate this evasion and they love him for it.

Not that there aren’t real conspiracies underway in America. But these are not hidden - the commercial process by which political campaigns are financed, the blatant gerrymandering by politicians, the influence-peddling within the military/industrial complex, the overt attempts to racially restrict voting, and the overthrow of foreign governments, often democratically elected ones. These all severely damage democracy and require active participation by large numbers of people. Yet there are no national radio shows, cable television programmes, militant interest groups, or privately funded news syndicates for these as there are for the investigation of alien invasion, the JFK assassination, the exposure of mass shootings as fake, and the conspiracy against conspiracies being carried out by the mainstream news media.

There is a clear link between American ‘conspiracism’ and Evangelical apocalypticism. Both are Gnostic in origin, which as Harold Bloom has noted, is the real national religion of America. Gnosticism is spiritualised paranoia, the belief that the world is out to get you, particularly by those in charge of the world, who have probably achieved their status through demonic influence. Gnosticism holds that we are all victims, but that only those of us who know we are victims are worthy of consideration. There is very little psychic distance between being convinced that there is a pedophile ring of top government employees and that the signs of the final trump (no pun intended) are obvious. The logic of conspiricism sits comfortably with that of American Fundamentalism in both its secular and religious versions.

Pizzagate, bitherism, antivaxxers, Twin Towers as CIA plot, and the dozens of other conspiracies publicised every day on the InfoWars and Alex Jones media are not odd beliefs held by marginal people in the USA. These are now legitimate, respectable opinions endorsed by celebrities, politicians, and academics. There are interest groups who apparently sincerely believe that the US is in danger of invasion by the United Nations, that the Las Vegas mass shooting of 2015 was orchestrated by the Obama administration (or ISIS or Mexicans depending on which senior politician you listen to), that the Sandy Hook massacre of school children was faked by ‘crisis actors,’ that Fox News and Breitbart accurately promote Conspiracy as an explanation for any murder or scandal.

So, as Anna Merlan says, “... people who peddle lies and half-truths have come to prominence, fame, and power as never before.” No longer can the crazy views prevalent in America be considered as idiosyncratic expressions of freedom of speech. The inmates do have control of the asylum. These are symptoms of mass psychosis. The political system in America may have contributed to this condition, but what contributed to the design of that system as well as the increasing irrationality of American society is something culturally more fundamental. An inherent feeling of victimhood is one way to express it. And it seems to have turned the country into a madhouse.

Postscript: The recognition of American victimhood is not news. See: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

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