American conspiracy thinking dates to the founding fathers themselves.

Evidence

And conspiracism has been inextricably woven into the American experience from the beginning. As Jesse Walker writes in his book The United States of Paranoia, even before the colonists were fretting about the plots of secret super-Indians, the founding fathers accused England of plotting against them, trying to force the colonies into servitude or outright enslavement, what George Washington called “a regular Systematick Plan” to turn them into “tame, & abject Slaves, as the Blacks we Rule over with such arbitrary Sway.” The Declaration of Independence lists the indignities and outrages England perpetrated against the colonies, but it doesn’t stop there: it argues that those acts total up to a plot, what it calls “a design,” to bring the colonies under “absolute Despotism.” — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 52

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s framing of Christian nationalism and the redeemer-nation myth as epistemic grounding for conspiracy politics. — connects to: The American Revolution conditioned citizens to equate resistance to conspiracy with national identity — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 59; Conspiracy theorizing against out-groups is as old as American colonization itself — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 27; The Declaration of Independence is a classic conspiracy narrative — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 53 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Nearly a hundred independent 1776 declarations built conspiracist narratives toward revolution #exemplifies (0.90) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 57
• The Declaration of Independence is a classic conspiracy narrative #exemplifies (0.88) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 53
• Conspiracy theorizing against out-groups is as old as American colonization itself #expands (0.85) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 27
• The American Revolution conditioned citizens to equate resistance to conspiracy with national identity #expands (0.82) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 59