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| Via Sutori.com |
DANIEL PIPES - It's past time for conservatives to reject conspiracy theories (The Dispatch 4/22)
‘Trump won,’ the vaccines are unsafe, and Putin is a good guy saving the Ukrainian people from ‘Nazis’ and American bioweapon plants. A significant portion of #Murica now believes these things to be true, and good luck changing their minds. They believe these things because they are angry at all they see around them, they feel compelled to seek protection, and are already predisposed, by human nature, to be disdainful of diversity and the rights of those outside their given tribe. Daniel Pipes accurately defines what has gone wrong with the American right-wing, but his final paragraph would seem to imply, to me at least, that he remains devoted to restoring the ‘conservative’ movement and saving the GOP. Both are utterly lost causes, and the answer to our ills does not lie in any ideological movement. For zealous dedication to ideology is what got us here, and always leads to chaos, tyranny, and destruction. Every single time and in every single place, in all of human history. Mankind repeats the same mistakes over and over, and what the old-fashioned Reagan conservative lot (of which, perhaps, I could be said to be part of, or at least have some affinity for) is learning that America is an not exceptional, ‘shining city on a hill,’ no matter how badly Mr. Reagan and millions of others wanted to believe it so. Excerpt -
The U.S. bioweapons conspiracy theory is more unlikely and outlandish than those about the election and vaccines; those, at least, fit a yearning and a fear, respectively. How did so many conservatives come to believe Russian propaganda? Because Vladimir Putin’s “anti-woke” views on gender issues, his appeal to “Christian values,” and his aura of strength won him a Republican following that often overlooked his brutal, tyrannical, and bellicose 22-year rule. Pat Buchanan, for example, called him a “stalwart defender of traditional values.” While some of his admirers acknowledged their mistake after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, a significant minority made excuses for him by blaming Ukraine and the United States. Putin’s government and media, echoed by his Chinese counterparts, provided these conservatives with a favorite argument: that the U.S. government ran 26 secret (and illegal) bioweapon laboratories in Ukraine that threaten Russia’s security.
This conspiracy theory built on the careless wording in congressional testimony given by Victoria Nuland, a State Department representative, that Putinists then transformed into an American plot. In the words of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Nuland revealed “that the Russian disinformation [the Biden administration has] been telling us for days is a lie and a conspiracy theory and crazy and immoral to believe is, in fact, totally and completely true.” This argument then took off with the #USbiolabs hashtag; in a typical post, one tweeter said the Pentagon is filled with “the most evil and corrupt people.”
Some reflections: All three conspiracy theories share an alienation contrary to the “city on a hill” ethos of the modern American conservative movement. Reversing historic patterns, Democrats now call for obedience to authority, be it court rulings about election results or Anthony Fauci’s COVID-19 dicta, while mainstream Republicans itch to defy the government. In another reversal, liberals are more patriotic about America’s role in defending Ukraine.
In contrast to most conspiracy theories, the current ones do not focus (with some exceptions) on Jews or secret society members. Oddly, they blame election shenanigans not on prominent figures such as President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, but rather on obscure, mostly unnamed, election officials in far-flung locations. They attribute dangerous vaccines not to malign scientists, greedy corporations, or power-hungry politicians, but to a vague mentality of scientific hubris. They attribute bioweapons to an obscure entity within the Pentagon, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
The three conspiracy theories also differ from each other. A single individual, Donald Trump, conjured up the “stolen election” claim, but vaccine skepticism developed organically, while the bioweapons scheme derived from Russian media. Only Republicans believe the first; the latter two have adherents across the political spectrum. If election fraud is a narrowly American issue, vaccine skepticism has a global reach (think of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro), and bioweapons primarily concern Russia. (Read more)
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