These MAGA loons

Along with relatively new conspiracy theories such as election denialism, birtherism and the sundry crackpot ideas emerging from the MAGA claque and its corners such as Q-Anon, we are also experiencing a resurgence in old oddball beliefs like flat-earthism and a newly-minted crop of anti-vaxxers. Where do these oddball ideas come from? And, more significantly, why all of a sudden are there so many now?

This may not be a coincidence. A study from many months back from the Post Carbon Institute (PCI), an Oregon thinktank, states that climate change and continued political upheaval will lead to more cultism and belief in conspiracy theories. The study grimly concludes that, as the news worsens, and supply chains for various necessities that we now take for granted become brittle and broken, social division and disorder will inspire an even greater recourse to magical thinking, a necessary ingredient for the breeding of conspiracy theories.

The groundwork for these emerging sociological phenomena has already been laid by the radical right’s various propaganda organs. Fake news organisations like Fox “News,” Newsmax and OAN, promote “alternative facts” and conspiracy theories. Because these companies deal in lies, and verisimilitude is essential to their apparent legitimacy, they promote ideas that soften their viewers’ reliance on critical thinking. The less reliant on critical thinking the viewer is, the easier it becomes for those organisations to continue to lie and get away with it, and the more money they make. Money is finally the whole point, of course.

With politicians of the radical right the point is money, power and religious control. So they are even more vested in the promotion of conspiracy theories. Again, the more Republican constituents believe in farout conspiracy theories the easier it is to explain away apparent problems with the theories themselves. And the more blatantly false those theories become.

For example, the radical right teaches their followers that Donald Trump isn’t a criminal, he’s a victim. His various prosecutions, they claim, aren’t real, they’re nothing more than politically motivated conspiracies created by the so-called “Deep State” to discredit Trump and ruin his chances for re-election.

Back in 2016, the full-throated Republican condemnation of Hillary Clinton was an actual conspiracy by the alt-right to destroy her, and was wholly based on claims that were unsupported by evidence. And it worked. For example, despite the fact that the subsequent eleven committee hearings created to crucify her for the Benghazi attack completely exonerated her, “Benghazi” nevertheless became a one-word anti-Hillary battle cry.

The radical right was always going to find such a trope for Joe Biden. It didn’t matter what it was, it didn’t matter if it was legitimate or not, they were going to fInd it and use it against him, whatever it was.

Of late they’ve largely abandoned their cruel and relentless attacks on the President’s son and have mounted in its place a full-scale attack on Biden’s age. And it’s working even better than the Hunter Biden rubbish. It’s working so well, in fact, that it’s being picked up by the mainstream media.

In the end it doesn’t matter how good Biden is or how solid his record. If Biden were young they’d focus exclusively on the border. If the border were suddenly made incontestably secure they’d focus on his vacations. If he never took a vacation they’d find something else.

The idea of reliance on something like actual evidence has become almost demolished in the MAGA community. Indeed, “evidence,” as most reasonable people used to think of it, has itself become eroded as an object of suspicion. When Trump is quoted as saying something inculpatory it means nothing to MAGA. If there are videos of him instructing his underlings to conceal boxes of classified documents the videos are “faked.” Trump’s phone call to Brad Raffensperger, where he demands that the Georgia Secretary of State find 11,780 votes, becomes a “perfect phone call” where Trump did “nothing wrong,” because Trump says so. All this despite the fact that any reasonable person can see clearly that the phone call was far from perfect and Trump did plenty that was wrong.

Repeating lies in the form of slogans is also a resource Republicans use. Slogans are employed as a shortcut intended to remove actual thought from the process of political discourse. Thinking is hard work for most simple people, they don’t want to do it, so slogans become a comfortable and welcome alternative. Donald Trump wants to “Make America Great Again” because it’s printed on fifty million hats, and that’s all the “proof” they need. And no amount of evidence to the contrary can compete with a slogan so familiar, so comfortable and so easy to remember.

Interesting times are a breeding ground for conspiracy theories, so our best weapon against such ignorance is to continue to cultivate a solid reputation for supporting the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and that truth must be built on the solid bedrock of evidence, evidence that will stand up in a court of law.

Truth should be easy to recognise because it’s the thing that is nearly always accompanied by lots of evidence. We have an edge on MAGA because truth is on our side, and it’s the thing that will make Trump’s many prosecutions almost certainly end in criminal convictions. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.