Conspiracy theories in politics nothing new | Street Smarts | newspressnow.com

The Jan. 6 attack on the nation’s capitol was simply the result of a conspiracy theory. The conspiracy being that the election was rigged.

As strange as it sounds, the conspiracy theory is totally American, according to many scholars.

Greg Miller of the Nieman Journalism Lab wrote in an online essay on conspiracies that the United States itself was founded on a conspiracy theory.

In the lead up to the War of Independence in 1776, revolutionaries believed that a tax on tea or stamps wasn’t just a tax. They believed it was part of a sinister plot of oppression by the king of Great Britain.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were totally convinced, based on past history, that the king was conspiring to establish a tyranny over the colonies.

“The document itself is a written conspiracy theory,” said Nancy Rosenblum, a Harvard university political theorist emerita.

She said it suggests that’s there’s more going on than meets the eye, that someone with bad intentions is working behind the scenes.

Rosenblum and other scholars see evidence that belief in conspiracy theories is increasing and taking dangerous new forms.

Scholars agree that conspiracy theories have always existed and always will.

Sander van der Linden, a University of Cambridge social psychologist, said in an essay that once someone has fully bought into a conspiracy theory, “there’s very little research that actually shows you can come back from that. When it comes to conspiracy theories, prevention is better than cure.”

A group of research assistants recently analyzed more than 100,000 letters to the editors of the New York Times printed between 1890 and 2010.

They identified 875 letters that dealt in conspiracy talk. The universal belief being that some group or someone was acting in secret to steal power or bury the truth or reap some other benefit at the expense of the common good.

In 1890, the belief among these conspiracy believers was that England and Canada were conspiring to take back territory from the United States.

In 1906, the belief was that Japan was sending soldiers in disguise to seize Hawaii.

In the 1950s, president Harry Truman supposedly covered up Communist infiltration of the government.

In 1973, one letter claimed that lesbianism is a CIA-inspired plot.

The 9/11 attacks were supposedly coordinated by the United States to smear the Saudis.

Researcher Joseph Uscinski said conspiracy thinking is more or less evenly distributed across the political spectrum.

Democrats become more vocal about conspiracy theories when Republican are in power and vice versa.

Democrats tend to be more suspicious of corporations and conservatives. Republicans are more likely to be suspicious of Communists and liberals, Uscinski’s research found.

Most studies claim that conspiracy theories meet some psychological needs and can be impossible to eradicate. The solution? Keep them from taking root in the first place.

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