Conspiracy Theories on the Left and Right

#1

Josh's recent post "My Infamy Revealed" calls up a very interesting if not widely discussed point: There are plenty of conspiracy theories on the left as well as on the right. However, on the right, the conspiracies tend to become mainstream in a way that simply doesn't occur for the left. I'm interested in why people think that is, and have posted a list of my own theories in no particular order.

1) Republicans are out of power, and are suffering from a lack of leadership.
2) Nobody is standing up to the crazies, a la William F. Buckley v. John Birch Society.
3) Something about the correlation between Democrats and universities.
4) The decision to caricature Obama as an evil marxist forces willful distortions.
5) Fox News is just really, really good at political propaganda.

Please append your lists below. Or, y'know, narrative form. I'm actually going to be less restrictive and demanding from now. Is that okay?

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#2

The right wing noise machine presents the message that if you are a reasonably thinking individual, you can't help but consider even the craziest theories. The left wing noise machine presents the message that if you are a reasonably thinking individual, you shouldn't entertain any crazy theories, even if they're not necessarily crazy.

So Josh can say, well it was a good exercise to question these machines so we could make them more secure but heavens, there can't possibly have been any foul play even though there was ample evidence of incompetence or problematic processes, but there was no proof that it was intentional. But reasonably thinking people were encouraged not to think too hard about the possibility that there was foul play, so proof was not going to be found.

On that particular issue, don't you think that instead of trusting republican donors to be the gateway between us casting our votes and those votes being counted, there's a simpler way to get to democracy that would leave less doubt? But reasonably thinking people aren't supposed to go down that path, at least not according to the left.

And frankly after 30+ years of policy that has only widened the gap between the rich and the poor, gutted the middle class, and so on, I find it hard to keep thinking that democrats or republicans in power are doing the best they can and keeping our best interests in mind. But I suppose I should just sit over here with my tinfoil hat on.

#3

I think that's a great insight. I only have a half baked thought: That the fringe on the right tends to obsess over individual thought - meaning outlier positions are tolerated. Whereas the fringe on the left tends to favor more collective, or group action - enforcement of group think.

Just a thought.

#4

This is a very good point. On the right there's a much more porous membrane between the fringe and the mainstream. And I'm using those terms just in descriptive sense. Sometimes the 'fringe' is right. Curious to hear what other think the reasons are.

#5

Conspiracies about President Obama can eventually be reduced to the fact that he is working in the Oval Office and sleeping in the White House while black. I suspect average southern conservative is sub-consciously, at best, and overtly, at worst, racist and perhaps bigoted. Birthers, Tenthers, Haters and Racists just feed the fire. The constant reinforcement by the media tends to lend credence to what they want to believe, anyway. They vote in big numbers, too. And, the politicians, who actually know better, that get elected by this element do little to nothing to contradict this reality and, I think, consciously support it.

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#6

Running a voting system without an auditable paper trail is like running a car with out a seat belt. It doesn't imply that voting fraud or a crash is currently occurring merely that having a system in place to stop it if does occur is a good idea.

Too often situations are analyzed in terms of how a good person would act in a particular role. No priest would steal, so there need be no precautions against embezzlement taken at the church. No good American would steal votes, so there need be no precautions taken at the polls. We now from history that vote stealing has occurred in the past there is no point in putting a system in place that would make it both easy and virtually undectable.

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#7

On the one hand, you have the notion of "patternicity" -- the propensity of human beings to find connections -- cause and effect in particular -- in random events. It's arguably an evolutionary adaptation.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=patternicity-finding-meaningful-patterns

Then you have the inclination of certain people toward faith rather than empiricism -- the power of pre-existing belief systems to be the filter through which new data is interpreted.

The latter propensity these days is clustered on the right of the political spectrum. If you begin with the a priori belief that Obama is a menace, then it's a simple step to interpret all the random noise of a complex political system as the nefarious machinations of Obama. Contrary evidence has to be incredibly strong to create enough cognitive dissonance for these folks to return to the moorings of reality.

OTOH, those on the left tend to be more empirically-minded, so when a new conspiracy is suggested, wherever its origin, it's natural for them to be open-minded enough to examine it and consider it. This might account for while conspiracies emerging from the right may become more prominent more quickly than those on the left.

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#8

Sorry, but the axiom that people who object to voting technology are crazed conspiracy theorists is base bigotry and smug indifference to the truth.

Fact and reason smothered by stigma ...

Nobody in my state knows how the machine on which I vote works. At best, a few understand how a group of modules -- chips, boards, code -- are employed to produce a result. But none know the totality of processing underway, let alone the dormant capabilities.

It is easy to smirk at the truth when All the Right People tell you not to worry.

But somewhere in China or Russia or Saudi Arabia or Britain there is a former intelligence researcher fired for not doing enough to exploit this complacency.

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#9

I hate to say this, but how can one say that not a single person in a state knows how a particular voting machine works? It seems like a huge exaggeration. Only a person who could read the minds of millions could make a statement of that sort.

#10

Well, I think he's saying that no one person knows in detail how the process works from end to end; at best, people know only portions of the process. Which is probably still an exaggeration, but probably not such a huge one.

I work in information processing for a savings bank. We recently installed a new teller system, a package provided by our banking software vendor. And time after time, we ran into problems where one piece of the system connected with another piece. There were experts in part A who could tell you in detail how A worked, and experts in part B who could tell you in detail how B worked, but trying to find out how a particular change in part A would affect what happened in B would get us mostly shrugs on both sides of the divide. There were people there who knew that, but they were few and far between.

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#11

Except that's not what Josh was saying at all. He was only saying that despite the possibility that the system allowed for vote stealing, there was never any evidence that it actually happened. And he specifically denied that he was saying that it wasn't still a good thing to tighten the security on those system.

The key difference, it seems to me, is that you can tighten the security on the voting machine system without adversely affecting anyone's access to the voting process. The same is not true for instituting purges of the voter rolls and stricter requirements for presenting and obtaining photo IDs.

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#12

I think Macdust was taking some literary license to make a point to further his theory. But, he does expose his little foil cap when he locates the canned researchers.

#13

I don't know that it is all based on race. Remember the Whitewater conspiracy and the death of the Vince Foster, and the fact that Clinton was involved in a drug running operation in Arkansas?

I think it has more to do with the fact that the GOP does not want to govern - they want that tiny little drownable govt - and the Democrats do such a good job of governance that all of the scandals are needed to slow them down.

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#14

Except I think there is a real reluctance on the left to examine and consider new conspiracy theories. To consider the possibility that there has been evil behavior is itself considered a leap of faith.

#15

It is not an exaggeration.

For instance:

The distribution of knowledge about the architecture of computer chips is tightly restricted, and none of the chip producers operates foundries on the east Coast.

#16

If he is saying that, he has to say that. The larger point I'm making is that nearly inevitably, the claims made by conspiracy theorists often are filled with hyperbole. Part of it is the need for an easily understood, monocausal framework. The other part is being so convinced of a story that these sweeping statements are easily true.

#17

I think you are on to a very important point about why conspiracy theories take hold with individuals on the right with more ease, but it leaves the question of why conspiracy theories coming from the right tend to receive more lasting and credulous coverage in the mainstream media outlets.
We now know as fact that the Nixon administration told the South Vietnamese to walk away from the Paris Peace conference in order to gain electoral advantage. Previously it was a left wing conspiracy theory.
The Economist covered arms shipments from Israel to Iran and tied them to tacit US approval over a year before Iran Contra broke (they didn't know the Contra half, but still...) yet no US outlets followed up on the story. It was just a left wing conspiracy theory that Reagan was paying them back for sabotaging Carter.
Diebold machine tampering is still unexplored (and probably untrue) in an objective way, so it is a true left wing conspiracy, but most of the other "left wing" conspiracies are just leads the mainstream media doesn't bother to follow up on. Most of the right wing conspiracies I have encountered tend to be complete fantasies that the media outlets continually follow up on even though there is never anything there (Whitewater, anyone? Birth Certificates?) The new round of Obama scandals are three stories that are all of a piece with this. They are either the government working as it ought, but making the inevitable mistakes (Benghazi, IRS) or the government aggressively following up leaks in a way that the right would otherwise be proud of. So why does the MEDIA treat them differently? That to me is a more interesting question. Why, from what we know to be true, is the IRS story an OBAMA scandal? Why is it even a scandal at all?

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#18

You have not spoken to any persons. You would have to interview thousands of persons to make such a claim.

You cannot make broad generalizations like you are making and expect to be taken seriously. You must have actual evidence to make such incredibly broad statements. You are missing the assumptions you are making.

#19

About why there are more conspiracy theories on the right: I think it can't be (just) Obama, because there were a similar number of insane conspiracy theories about Clinton. He was smuggling drugs into Arkansas. Hillary had Vince Foster killed. They hung crack pipes on the White House Christmas tree. And all this at a time when it seemed unlikely that there would be an African-American President in the foreseeable future.

I really don't know why it is. But I do know that I have heard things on reasonably mainstream right-wing media sources that I cannot imagine hearing analogs of on the left (if there were left-wing analogs, which there aren't.) The one that always leaps to mind is: back in 2011, I had to take my cat to the animal hospital in the middle of the night, and they had Fox on in the waiting room. And there was Tim Pawlenty, then (iirc) not yet declared but plainly running for the GOP nomination as Mr. Moderate, and he said, a propos of what I can no longer remember: Well, of course, Obama is planning to institute wage controls for everyone.

Now: that is a crazy thing to think. Batshit insane. And yet his interviewer just nodded in agreement. This wasn't the point of the interview, it wasn't something Pawlenty made a point of, or had to say for some reason; it was just a casually tossed out piece of lunacy. And it went entirely unchallenged.

That ability to say completely nutty things without being challenged does terrible things to a party, I think.

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#20

Or possibly that what are called "conspiracy theorists" are people speculating about information that has been held in secret or has been block from view.

That designation is routinely used to wrongly discredit those who point out that some official statement is either patently false no more more credible than a thousand other less convenient explanations for an assassination, missing funds, a dead official, a false alarm leading to war.

It is easy to prod someone into making a hypothetical explanation that does a better job of explaining facts. Every reporter and investigator forms and tests hypotheses.

When enough is at stake, or when large numbers of people have misplaced their confidence, the scapegoating begins. Either something is really really wrong, or that person is mad. Choose.

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