A recent conspiracy panic campaign, #Russiagate, presented a mythic (and facially laughable) explanation for how the Democrats managed to lose the unloseable 2016 election. It appears to have been intended to weaken or to knock Trump out of office. If so, it backfired completely, presenting a fictional distraction from the far-worse realities of the regime’s violent policies and incipient fascism. Every time that the ludicrous and byzantine accusations fell apart (predictably, in every case), Trump’s position was strengthened, and that of real opposition to Trump’s barbarities was weakened.
Conspiracy panic is a propaganda weapon that props up an overall portrayal of the mass of the people (and especially critics of the ideological hegemony, of whatever stripe, good or bad) as ipso-facto stupid, preemptively discredited, crazy, irrational, unworthy of participation in discourse, and potentially dangerous. Conspiracy panic nowadays is a go-to for liberals to deny and distract and divert potentially radical struggles into incremental bullshit. That way they need think less about systemic irrationality, falsehood, evils, and failures, and how most of the unfolding disasters — including Trump himself — are not aberrations or surprises but predictable products of the “American way” and the global capitalist system. It’s easier and more comforting to affect being appalled at the stupidity of QAnon (or the supposed millions who were moved to vote for Trump only because they saw a “Russian” post online), and to virtue-signal that you are different from the dumb right-wing patsies who eat that shit up, than to spend too much time being aware that the billionaire and corporate and ensconced policy-making ruling class as a whole — their names are known and plastered in the headlines — is by definition a predator class, professionally incapable of mercy, with overwhelming power over the rest of us, acting in ways that guarantee capitalism and its “ways of life” will continue burning the planet, literally, until the ecosystem’s capacity to sustain the present human civilization and population collapses. Which, speaking in historical lengths, is imminent, and possibly no longer reversible. Fight this anyway.
To respond to this piece, complain about the omission of citations to Jack Bratich, Liz Franczak or Karl Marx, or to remind Nicholas Levis that he ought to follow his own advice, write to [email protected].
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/16/conspiracy-panic/
