Conspiracy theories in politics: fun shared hobby to "blame the liberals and elites"

 

Conspiracy theories are filling up social media. Alex Jones is happy. He lives for conspiracies.

I was mainly interested in how the use of them is tightly joined to the right at this time. Jewish space lasers? Green had specific ideas with that. Wikipedia even dug up a Jewish business connection. See under Marjorie Taylor Greene.

It did not have the right impact without the "Jewish" part. The purpose is to at first grab attention and spread like wildfire. But there are parts that the person inventing the conspiracy wants to hang on to. She gets her people to share their ideas and make fun of elites. "Owning the libs."

Trump himself seems to grab onto a new one every time he can. If you can attach a country or ethnic group to it, even better. Trump has no use for facts. He needs these things like he needs rallies. Material for his stand up routine. He does not need to explain it well, like Hannibal Lecter. It is just there for a joke. He needs the crowds and social media for the stuff. He is going to be so depressed when he is nothing in a few years and TV has gone past him and his weird hobbies.

To sum up: My take is that there are only two goals: 1 distract and throw doubt on something, get political support of the regular folks in doubting the elites 2 togetherness, sharing.

With Trump there is a big factor that is maybe in all the wacko end of MAGA polticians: secret message to the faithful followers suggesting something rather disgusting about a group (Jews, foreigners, libs) without actually using the word. "They are eating our cats and dogs." It was too good not to use.

Something common among all MAGA voters is the reaction to everything the government (CDC, FDA) tells us: "who are they to tell me what to do?" It is this thought that preceded the details of most popular conspiracy theories. A few were also about individuals (Hillary).

There is a more serious part to conspiracies outside of politics. These people are just there to make a few dollars, so they cast doubt on Covid medications and vaccines and use their web site to peddle a few health supplements. The same junk you can get in a variety of forms at your local health supplement store. Dr Mercola was a pioneer way back from the Nutrasweet days.