Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in the Age of Trump

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in the Age of Trump stands out in the burgeoning literature on conspiracism with its call for political scientists to analyze not only “conspiracy theory” as political pathology but conspiracies themselves as political behavior symbiotically related to moral hazards and other forces unleashed by dark money, disinformation, changing technologies, and globalization. This new updated edition extends this analysis to the belief by many Americans that the 2020 election was stolen, resistance to social measures to counter the Covid epidemic, attempts by Trump and his allies to “stop the steal,” and the resulting mob insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. We likely will see both conspiracism and actual conspiracies play a greater role due to institutional decay in American politics. For this reason, political scientists need to analyse and theorize the role of conspiracies in politics―why they prosper and fail, how conspiracies may inflect political outcomes, what relationship they bear to social forces unleashed by great economic and social change. Preface Praise for the Second Edition of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in the Age of Trump Praise for the First Edition Contents List of Figures List of Tables 1 Introduction: Theorizing Conspiracy, Conspiracy Theories The Big Steal: A Conspiracy in Search of a Theory Political Conspiracies Conspiracy in Political Science Conspiracism Over the Decades Beyond Symptomology Chapters in This Book 2 Paranoia, Conspiracy Panic, and the Regime of Truth I’m Not a Conspiracy Theorist, But... Normal Believers, Malevolence, and the Paranoid Style Toward a More Democratic Regime of Truth Level or Scope of a Conspiracy Plausibility Based on Logic and Evidence JFK, 9/11, and The Regime of Truth From the Regime of Truth to Post-truth 3 New Conspiracism, Fake News, and QAnon New Conspiracism Misinformation and Conspiracism from Reagan to Trump From Cable News to Unsocial Media Fake News—Propaganda by Another Name QAnon, From Fringe to Mainstream Trump, the MAGAnificent 4 Conspiracies in the Voting Booth Reading Voters’ Entrails Populism and the 2016 Election Fake News, Dark Money, Russiagate Years of Voting Dangerously Social Immobility and Unresponsive Elites Globalization, Economic Distress, and the Vote Election Fraud and Institutional Decay 5 Globalization, Populism, Conspiracism Suspicious Minds in the New World Order Immigration, Nativism, and Trump Wall Street and Monessen, PA Transnational Capitalism and the Nation-State Transnational Populism Trump, the Disrupter 6 Dark Money and Trumpism Dark Money and Operational Conspiracies Billionaire Cabals Democrats, Moral Hazard, Dark Money Political Science Meets Stealth Funding Show Us The Dark Money Trail Conspiracy Panic and Muckraking Dark Money as a Sphere of Conspiracism Dark Money and January 6 7 The Deep State, Hegemony, Democracy What Is the Deep State? What Is It Not? Parapolitics and Paramilitaries Conspiratorial Roots of National Security Ideology and Institutions Neither Monolithic Nor Unchanging Privatization of Surveillance and War Conspiracy Fiction, Conspiracy Reality Epic Scandals and the Deep State 8 American Conspiracism Before and After January 6, 2021 Stop the Steal and January 6 Needed: A Regime of Truthfulness What We Can Learn From Comparative Conspiracy Studies An Agenda for Research on Conspiracy No Time for Conspiracy Panic References Index