Conspiracy belief inside power drives state actions, not just civilian politics

Evidence

We have found ourselves at a point in history where both real government conspiracies and their shadows loom large in our collective imagination. Those two things, working in tandem, destabilize the public perception of what’s true, what’s possible, and what we’re ready to pin on those running the country. But the problem goes beyond how civilians feel about the government; it also works, more alarmingly, in reverse. There are dozens of examples of feverish conspiracy thinking driving state action, where imaginary enemies and nonexistent plots have led to some extremely dark decisions. President Richard Nixon is our best worst example of this: he was, for one thing, a genuinely paranoid person who kept a long and well-organized enemies list and, in a double whammy of conspiracism, believed Communist-backed plots against him were orchestrated by Jews. That allowed him to justify his own conspiracies: tapping the phones at the DNC headquarters, the Watergate break-in, and bribing the burglary team themselves to stay quiet about their work. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 82

Categorization

• XREF: Directly extends vault claim about authoritarianism and prejudice psychology: Nixon’s paranoid antisemitic framing of enemies justifies his own authoritarian conspiracies, echoing how out-group threat framing licenses repression. — connects to: Conspiracy theorists gained direct access to US federal power in 2016. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 21; Conspiracy theory is a global phenomenon that state elites themselves deploy — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 60; Conspiracism functions as a political explanation of hidden power — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 1077 (+4 more)
• SEED: Possible angle: ‘the authoritarian leader as conspiracy theorist’ — how holders of state power deploy the same cognitive machinery of imagined out-group plots that vault sources map among ordinary believers.

Broader Connections

• Political conspiracism acts independently once entrenched, not as an epiphenomenon #corroborates (0.90) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 369
• Totalitarianism emerges when a conspiracy sector escapes party control #corroborates (0.82) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 874
• Conspiracism functions as a political explanation of hidden power #corroborates (0.80) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 1077
• Political actors can legitimize conspiracy theories by inspiring new investigation into them #corroborates (0.75) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 432
• Conspiracy beliefs stay stable while conspiracy talk shifts with power #corroborates (0.72) — Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, American Conspiracy Theories, 749