Only new conspiracism causes both delegitimation and disorientation simultaneously

Evidence

Delegitimation hollows out democratic institutions little by little, day by day. It incapacitates and enervates democracy. It works slowly on democracy’s foundations by eroding not just trust in institutions but their meaning, value, and authority. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 42 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Critics like to celebrate these generic undoings as aesthetically and politically radical, a liberatory flailing in the crisis ordinary, and writers for the small screen surely share the conceit of contemporary literary production as a whole we studied in “Writing”—namely, that boundary-pushing is freedom. But there’s no guarantee that blurry indistinction aids cognitive mapping; far from crisis critique, flow is crisis continuous. What cultural theorist Lauren Berlant commends as the denormalizing function of “the waning of genre” might also be understood as a disorienting promotion of spectatorial immersion. If genre manages expectations, immediacy as the dissolution of genre leaves us without expectations, other than the expectation that our expectations will be thwarted; that we will be caught gasping at the sudden turns from tragedy to comedy and back again; that we will be, paradoxically, attentionally inundated in the aesthetic stream. Immediacy is this engrossing disorienting flow, in the middle of things without mooring. — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 236 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

The feat of exploiting and corrupting critical institutions and the officials who run them is repeated over and over. The president accuses key government agencies of engaging in conspiracy and at the same time commissions them to affirm his charges and to expose and punish the alleged conspirators. … “Then why doesn’t the secretary of homeland security know them and why doesn’t the president share them? And … why are you on television … saying the President has reasons but not saying what they are? That’s how a morally bankrupt president soils everyone around him, even such a good man.” — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 172 (#builds-on, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Conspiracism in power simultaneously denigrates institutions and enlists them to validate claims. — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 172; Conspiracism exerts independent political force once it takes hold.; Genre dissolution produces disorientation rather than political critique — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 236 (+3 more)

Related

• New conspiracism uniquely harms democracy through both delegitimation and disorientation (similarity 0.81)
• Political delegitimation needs no alternative ideology, only angry conspiracism (similarity 0.79)
• Delegitimation strips institutions of standing to persuade or govern (similarity 0.78)
• New conspiracism lacks ideology and political theory, producing only disorientation (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Delegitimation erodes democracy slowly rather than through crisis or coup #qualifies (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 42
• Genre dissolution produces disorientation rather than political critique #qualifies (0.72) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 236