Quote:10 right-wing conspiracy theories that have slowly invaded American politics
Paranoia is in our bloodstream. And with the emergence of social media, we're more misinformed than ever before
Comprehensive but not exhaustive, due to a 3 year 'date stamp'.
Two of the righty favorites, 'false flag and 'NWO', are missing, though NWO does appear in the preamble below.
• Mark Potok • Don Terry
November 13, 2015 3:15AM (UTC)
This article was originally published by The Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Southern Poverty Law Center “There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.” FRANCIS BACON, Of Suspicion, 1625
WOW, than you Frank. Everything old IS new again. Too bad that's not a cautionary posted directly underneath '2016 Presidential Debate'.
America, as the historian Richard Hofstadter famously noted in 1964, is a place peculiarly given to “the paranoid style” of politics — the idea that history is no accident, but rather the outcome of a series of conspiracies. The surface of events is never what it appears, but instead hides deep, dark and destructive forces.
What Hofstadter called “movements of suspicious discontent” have targeted imaginary threats ranging from the Illuminati, Freemasons and Jesuits of long ago all the way to the Communist infiltration alleged by Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society in the mid-20th century.
And since Hofstadter’s seminal essay, the list of alleged evildoers has kept on growing, especially on the far right, where global elites are today seen as secretly laboring to build a totalitarian “New World Order.”
Although it is difficult to make valid historical comparisons, it is hard to avoid feeling that our country is drowning in an even larger ocean of conspiracy theories now than in decades or centuries past:
President Obama is a Kenyan and a Marxist bent on seizing the weapons of all Americans; Common Core educational standards are part of a plot to impose communism on the U.S.; military exercises in Texas this summer are actually a first step toward martial law; and on and on and on.
One factor fertilizing such beliefs is the proliferation of alternative forms of media, from cable television and talk radio to social media and a seemingly endless number of websites. Almost any belief that a person has, no matter how far out or disconnected from the facts, has some kind of “news” source to back it up.
But what may be even more important in the highly polarized political environment of the United States in recent years has been the willingness of large numbers of politicians — either because they really believe or because they are willing to pander shamelessly to the extremists in their bases — to legitimize the fairy tales.
Whether or not Texas Gov. Greg Abbott truly believes that a military exercise this summer was a prelude to martial law, he acted as if he might.
These kinds of words have consequences. When Sarah Palin accused the president of organizing “death panels” as part of his health care plan, the debate veered from the serious to the ridiculous.
When hundreds of thousands of Americans swallowed the claim that Mexican, U.S. and Canadian elites were secretly planning to merge the three countries, it helped to derail any hope for enacting comprehensive immigration reform.
When politicians allege a global conspiracy behind a United Nations sustainability plan, preserving the planet becomes even harder.
Conspiracy theories, in other words, are destructive to democracy; they substitute ignorance and suspicion for knowledge and reason, and make it that much harder to deal with the many problems before us.
As Francis Bacon suggested almost four centuries ago, conspiracy theories are a way for weak minds to deal with a complex world — and to wreck any chance for finding real solutions.
Ooo, that stung.
What follows are 10 key conspiracy theories that have made their way from the margins of our society to often shocking levels of acceptance in the political mainstream.
In addition to describing the theories, their origins and the reality of the situation, we take on some of the chief enablers of these destructive tall tales.
https://www.salon.com/2015/11/12/10_right_win...s_partner/
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