What makes the spread of conspiracy theories so troubling is that unlike in the past, today they are being promoted by supposedly respected and reliable media outlets and public figures.
As JNS editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin notes, rather than being confined to the fever swamps of the far right and far left, now some of the most pernicious myths about public life are being treated as legitimate. Most of it is the fault of liberals and Democrats rather than the conservatives that legacy media repeatedly labels as purveyors of “disinformation.”
This point is made by the new book BlueAnon: How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists, whose author, is Washington Examiner columnist David Harsanyi.
According to Harsanyi, “conspiracy theories are packaged and then laundered through media, which calibrates it for maximum plausibility, uses so-called experts and it becomes more credible to a lot of people.” And unlike the shadowy and marginalized QAnon on the right, the left’s BlueAnon conspiracies—whether about Republican candidates, climate change, capitalism or Israel—are mainstreamed.
The left’s embrace of conspiracy theories such as those publicized in filmmaker Michael Moore’s documentaries is well-documented. But the most conspicuous example of this came with the Russia collusion hoax based on the debunked claim that Donald Trump colluded with Moscow to steal the 2016 election.
While the idea was hatched by the Hillary Clinton campaign, it was embraced by elements of the federal security establishment and then relentlessly promoted by the mainstream media, which has largely abandoned journalism in favor of liberal activism.
Integral to this is how so-called “progressives” have mainstreamed antisemitic conspiracy theories whose purpose is to delegitimize Israel and Jews. Democrats have tolerated the rise of their intersectional left-wing base and its willingness to spread myths about the Jewish state that are merely modern versions of traditional tropes of Jew-hatred.
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