Politicians deploy conspiracy theories cynically as organizing tools and focal points.

Evidence

More relevant to our own age is yet another phenomenon: politicians who willingly fan the flames of conspiracy either out of genuine belief or because it suits their political ends or some mixture of the two. Hillary Clinton blamed, with a straight face, a “vast right-wing conspiracy” for the women making sexual abuse claims against her husband, the president. The Bush administration infamously claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction to justify its invasion of the country. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz enthusiastically promoted the idea that Saddam Hussein, not Osama Bin Laden, was the hidden hand responsible for 9/11. And beginning around 2010, with the rise of the Tea Party, we saw dozens of state and local politicians claim that Muslims were taking over their towns with the canny use of Sharia law. Many of the same politicians, including Republican senator Ted Cruz and now–Texas governor Greg Abbott, also claimed repeatedly that the United Nations had developed plots called Agenda 21 and Jade Helm, designed to invade the United States and take our guns. Whether they believed such things to be true (they weren’t), the claims served as useful focal points for organizing their supporters. — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 84

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the vault’s claims about conspiracy politics operating as an epistemic style shared with authoritarian/identity politics; conspiracy claims as elite-driven mobilization tools rather than bottom-up belief. — connects to: Political actors can legitimize conspiracy theories by inspiring new investigation into them — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 432; Conspiracy movements depend on a symbiosis of believers and opportunists — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 905; Elected officials know better yet dignify debunked conspiracy claims — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 235 (+1 more)
• QUESTION: The passage begs the question of how elite-instrumental conspiracy claims interact with genuine grass-roots belief — which is the boundary the vault’s authoritarian-personality claims might illuminate.

Broader Connections

• Elected officials know better yet dignify debunked conspiracy claims #exemplifies (0.88) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 235
• Conspiracy movements depend on a symbiosis of believers and opportunists #expands (0.78) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 905
• Political actors can legitimize conspiracy theories by inspiring new investigation into them #complicates (0.75) — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 432
• Conspiracy theories held by a president can be enacted into reality #exemplifies (0.75) — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying, 177