Kevin's Watch

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Maybe Americans are obsessed with conspiracy theories because our nation itself was forged in one. In the turbulent run-up to and aftermath of the Declaration of Independence, the word on the streets -- and in the pamphlets -- of the colonies was not that the Crown had instituted bad or unfair policies, but rather that everything was part of a master plan to enslave the States, full stop.

"Historians have uncovered nearly one hundred resolutions urging independence issued throughout 1776 by states and counties and towns, artisan and militia associations, and the provincial congresses of nine colonies," write Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum in A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, a new book from Princeton University Press. "The tone, language, and form are consistent. In each, a narrative of self-defense against enslavement is built from fragmentary evidence. Each lists 'abuses and usurpations' adding up to a tyrannical plot."

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What these "traditional" conspiracy theories have in common, whether true or false, is that they portray what are actual internally consistent theories involving rational(ish) actors. These are not, however, the focus of Muirhead and Rosenbloom's book, which homes in on a more recent and more dangerous phenomenon. The "new conspiracism," as they call it, seeks not to lay out fully (or even half-) baked theories about who has engaged in what evil act, and why, but rather to spread a more knee-jerk and emotion-driven type of angry fear: Above all, it seeks to undermine both individuals and sources of authority by simply repeating endlessly, via the megaphone of social media, unhinged claims laminated in the thinnest patina of evidence. "Conspiracy theory is not new, of course," Muirhead and Rosenblum write early on, "but conspiracism today introduces something new -- conspiracy without the theory."

As they explain:

There is no punctilious demand for proofs, no exhausting amassing of evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of the operators plotting in the shadows. The new conspiracism dispenses with the burden of explanation. Instead, we have innuendo and verbal gesture: "A lot of people are saying ..." Or we have bare assertion: "Rigged!" -- a one-word exclamation that evokes fantastic schemes, sinister motives, and the awesome capacity to mobilize three million illegal voters to support Hillary Clinton for president. This is conspiracy theory without the theory.

The instances above point to one obvious catalyst, Donald Trump, along with the forces that made him president. If you look around, you won't find, or won't find much, actual theorizing about (for example) why one should believe a child-sex trafficking operation was being run with the help of Hillary Clinton's campaign manager out of a Northwest D.C. pizza shop, let alone for even more convoluted and nonsensical theories like the Storm (aka QAnon). "What validates the new conspiracism is not evidence but repetition," argue Muirhead and Rosenblum. "When Trump tweeted the accusation that President Barack Obama had ordered the FBI to tap his phones in October before the 2016 election, no evidence of the charge was forthcoming. What mattered was not evidence but the number of retweets the president's post would enjoy: the more retweets, the more credible the charge."

Why do people spread this stuff? "Part of the appeal is performative aggression," the authors write. "The new conspiracism delivers dark claims, though the fabrications are erratic, vague, and undeveloped -- more angry assertion than revelatory narrative. For angry minds it offers the immediate gratification of lashing out, of throwing verbal stones." Not a spotlight on a hidden truth, but rather a million algorithm-multiplied middle fingers. And at a time when America's problems -- inequality, polarization, political and wage stagnation -- feel intractable, it makes perfect sense that people would be drawn to this sort of outlet for their frustration.



Photo: Princeton University Press


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Avatar wrote:Hahaha, I have a couple of very similar ones, but not, I think, exactly the same.

--A

Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock


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An in-depth report on QAnon in The Atlantic's June issue closes with the suggestion that QAnon could become the latest in a series of "thriving religious movements indigenous to America." But research from a Concordia University doctoral student, Marc-André Argentino, shows the church of QAnon already exists and seems poised to spread. Argentino attended an online QAnon church where, he reports, two-hour Sunday services with several hundred attendees consist of prayer, communion, and interpretation of the Bible in light of Q drops and vice versa. The leaders' goal, Argentino says, "is to train congregants to form their own home congregations in the future and grow the movement."

It's not inconceivable that they'll succeed, especially after pandemic restrictions ease and in-person gatherings resume. (The pandemic, of course, fits neatly into the QAnon narrative as a plot to oust Trump before the mass arrests and executions of cabal members can begin.) Many QAnon members express a desire for community, describing how they try to convert loved ones to their cause and browse QAnon hashtags to make like-minded friends. QAnon church would fill that need, as religious gatherings long have done.

That's what makes me think the church of QAnon may be a portent of things to come: Traditional religiosity is declining in America, but humanity will not cease to be religious. It will merely diversify its sources of increasingly customized religiosity. From lapsed evangelicals, as many QAnon adherents seem to be, to religiously unaffiliated "nones," people crave the community, meaning, and purpose church provides, even if they abandon or reject its teachings.

Satisfying that craving with politics and conspiracy theories isn't new, but the QAnon church's self-description as a church stands out. It's one thing for outside observers to characterize a political movement as religious in its enthusiasm or expectations of loyalty; it's another for participants to explicitly brand their own community as religious and start holding services.

Whether other groups, especially of dramatically different political persuasions, will make the same leap is difficult to say. Could we see something comparable on the left?

On the one hand, there is some unique resonance with this style of religiosity and the political right. QAnon builds on apocalyptic thinking common in parts of evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity in America. Q drops frequently include Bible passages, and the style of study of scripture and Q texts employed -- the careful search for hidden prophetic meaning and correspondence to history and current events -- is very much a creature of the religious right, an heir aberrant of Left Behind and The Late, Great Planet Earth.

On the other hand, one of the strangest things about QAnon is it's a conspiracy theory born of victory, not defeat. Trump is president, after all. But typically, "conspiracy theories are for losers," University of Miami political scientist Joseph Uscinski told The Daily Beast. "Normally you don't expect the winning party to use them." And perhaps this is why QAnon is taking a religious form: Having Trump in power allows for hope where most conspiracy theories offer only an account of evil. QAnon adherents believe their work decoding Q drops contributes to an achievable final triumph. Forming communities, then, has a purpose beyond commiseration.

If the victory-born nature of QAnon is thus significant, we might look for similar "churches" to pop up elsewhere as the national balance of power shifts. A Democratic president in the Trumpian mold -- a populist demagogue prone to attributing every failure to sabotage -- could inspire something similar. I wouldn't expect the same Christian syncretism, but neopaganism (remember the story of the Brooklyn witches hexing Brett Kavanaugh?) or broadly new-age spiritualism might do the trick, producing a service with, say, meditation and a spell instead of prayer and communion.

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