Conspiracy legends grow more detailed and threatening with each retelling over years

Evidence

By this time, responsibility for such facilities had passed to FEMA, “an agency that stands ready to assume control of the U.S. government.” By 1995, the FEMA concentration-camp legend had expanded still further to encompass a network of “43 internment camps already built and operational,” each able to house between thirty-fi ve thousand and forty-fi ve thousand prisoners, plus “hundreds of secondary facilities.” This astonishing claim, suggesting the capacity to incarcerate secretly more than 1.5 million Americans, seemed plausible enough to those who traffi cked in such stories, because it had by then circulated for more than fi fteen years, becoming more threatening and detailed with each retelling. — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 382

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Conspiracy lore outlives the real group and keeps expanding its targets — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 268; Conspiracy literature repurposes the same core text across centuries and targets; Refuted conspiracy theories persist for decades after being debunked — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 240 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Conspiracy literature repurposes the same core text across centuries and targets #corroborates (0.80)
• Brief texts can expand into sprawling conspiracy structures. #corroborates (0.72) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 449
• Refuted conspiracy theories persist for decades after being debunked #corroborates (0.70) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 240