Maine professor explains how conspiracy theories pose a threat to democracy [WMTW]
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In the aftermath of the siege of the U.S. Capitol building, many are blaming President Trump for giving credence to conspiracy theories like Q-Anon, or even his false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election.
Government and Polity professor Jamie Mcknown weighs in on how conspiracy theories can undermine democracy.
“We often talk about conspiracy theories like an ecosystem of stories that people are inhabiting a world of and so I wouldn’t say that necessarily the people who were engaged in the violence yesterday were all part of one conspiracy theory. I think we could see multiple threads of them running together,” said Jamie McKown, a professor of political science at the College of the Atlantic.
“If you’re assuming from the get-go that whatever I say I’m saying because I am part of the conspiracy, that makes it really hard to even start the conversation, right?” McKown said, adding that that same principle is also what makes the theories so dangerous for democracy.
*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from College of the Atlantic can be found here ***
