Conspiracy belief has long spanned the American political spectrum

Evidence

But beneath the new conspiracy furor—talking heads worrying about it on CNN, Clinton’s campaign sending out media blasts to decry Alex Jones—the reality is that we’ve been a nation gripped by conspiracy for a long time. The Kennedy assassination has been hotly debated for years. The feminist and antiwar movements of the 1960s were, for a time, believed by a not-inconsiderable number of Americans to be part of a communist plot to weaken the country. A majority of us have believed for decades that the government is hiding what it knows about extraterrestrials. Since the early 1990s, suspicions that the Clintons were running a drug cartel and/or having their enemies murdered were a persistent part of the discourse on the right. And the website WorldNetDaily was pushing birther theories and death panels (the idea, first articulated by Sarah Palin in 2009, that under Obamacare bureaucrats would decide whether the elderly deserved medical care) long before “fake news” became a talking point. Many black Americans have, for years, believed that the CIA flooded poor neighborhoods with drugs such as crack in order to destroy them. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 26

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the vault’s portrait of conspiracy politics as entrenched and bipartisan, relevant to authoritarianism-prejudice psychology material on how established groups rationalize threats. — connects to: Conspiracy theory has long filtered how Americans view rival political forces. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 48; Conspiracy belief is universal across demographics while specific theories split along party lines — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 93; Conspiracy theories themselves are old but their peddlers’ political power is new — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 30 (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Conspiracy theory has long filtered how Americans view rival political forces. #corroborates (0.95) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 48
• Conspiracy beliefs stay stable while conspiracy talk shifts with power #expands (0.80) — Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, American Conspiracy Theories, 749
• Conspiracy belief is universal across demographics while specific theories split along party lines #corroborates (0.75) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 93
• Global erosion of institutional trust sustains conspiracy belief beyond any single political era #corroborates (0.72) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 112
• Conspiracy theories themselves are old but their peddlers’ political power is new #qualifies (0.70) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 30
• Conspiracy beliefs mark subcultures rooted in fringe religion and politics #qualifies (0.70)
• Stress and institutional distrust drive Americans toward conspiracy explanations of unwelcome reality. #expands (0.70) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 54