WILL TODAY’S CONSPIRACY THEORIES SAVE TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY?
…Just an example of the hoax conspiracy theory
demonstrators
The conspiracy theory supporters have gotten way out of hand
You know, like the hair dresser from Kenosha, Wis. who is a strong supporter of Donald Trump. She says she did a “lot of research” and believes the, “Deep state has hidden deep dark things that have been hidden from the public about child sex trafficking, and those Satan-worshipping pedophiles.” And then you add her comment: “Democratic politicians and Hollywood celebrities who run a global sex trafficking ring and they harvest the blood of children for life-sustaining chemicals…..?”
Yeah, it’s that crazy.
And let’s not forget the QAnon conspiracy theory that is a pro-Trump viral delusion going back to 2017 that has spread widely over the last months. This is the one that is starting to infect ordinary voters in the suburbs. It believes President Trump is a hero safeguarding the world from a “deep state cabal of those same Satan-worshipping pedophiles.”
It is so hard to believe, what or why these people believe what they do. Some are just repeating false ideas from a conspiracy video called “Plan-demic.” This is a conspiracy video that went viral saying that the COVID-19 is a hoax. It went like lightening across social media. When people were asked where they found this information, all they would say is: “Go online and dig deep” These people have a deep distain for all real, mainstream media. “The truth wasn’t being reported,´ they said. The actual facts were meaningless to these so called, “believers.”
Now, it is true that American politics has always been prone to spasms of conspiracy.
In the 18th century, Americans were convinced that the Masons were an anti-American government conspiracy. The populists in the 1890’s, such as Trump supporters today, warned of the “secret cabals” were controlling the price of gold. And even in the early 20th century, McCarthyism and the John Birch Society fueled a wave of anti-Communist delusions that seriously animated the then, far-right factions of American society.
Do you remember, in the run-up to the 2016 election, Trump pushed the wild conspiracy that the Senator Ted Cruz’s father was linked to the assassination of President John Kennedy, and that the Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia was actually murdered. Yes, Trump didn’t dispute this little conspiracy.
At Trump’s 2016 campaign rallies, that was where his voters presented all manner of delusions: such as that the government was run by drug cartels; that Obama was a foreign-born Muslim, and he was pushing for a third term; and that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster killed. Just a few of what was going on at his rallies.
The paranoia since Donald Trump became president has gone well beyond the areas of regular society. Pew Research Center says that 25% of Americans say there is some truth to the theory that COVID-19 was intentionally planned and was human engineered. The Trump administration has been saying that they have not ruled out that COVID-19 was an accident in a lab in China.
In a recent poll of 1400 Americans, more than half of the Republicans respondents believed parts of the QAnon conspiracy; 33% said it was “mostly true”, while 26% said “some parts were true.”
In a Milwaukee suburb this week, a couple of Republicans who own a small, local business said the were going to vote for Trump again, because they were deeply alarmed by “the cabal”. They had heard “numerous reports” that the “COVID-19 tents set-up in New York and California were not for virus testing, but actually for children who had been rescued from sex-trafficking tunnels.”
No, I’m not kidding.
This same couple also said they are not followers of QAnon, but they often find this information on what happens to be the Russian-owned search engine Yan-dax. They said they believe that, “If Biden wins, our world is over, basically. We will probably try to leave this country. If that’s not an option, we may just take our children and sit in the car in the garage with the engine running and it would all be over.”
And again, I’m not kidding. This was from a reporter’s article in TIME magazine.
The
rise in conspiratorial thinking is apparently from the following 4 interrelated
trends:
- The declining
trust in US institutions
- The demise of
local news
- The social media
environment of today
- A president that
latches on and promotes anything that helps him
This make for the easy spread of this disinformation, rumors and conspiracies
What helps the situation is that the
algorithms on FaceBook and YouTube are designed to serve up any
content that supports any existing beliefs.
And
this makes Trump voters even more loyal to the president.
This protects him, and no matter what news emerges against the president, his supporters won’t believe it.
This is why it is so important for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to have a resounding and obvious win in the November election.
Copyright
G. Ater 2020
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