‘American Carnage’: Conspiracy Theories, Social and Political Trust, and How Trumpism Could Live On…
The world witnessed the shocking events on Capitol Hill a few days ago that will live long in the memory many years after President Trump has vanished from the political landscape of the United State of America. Much has been made about the role and presence of conspiracy theories among the individuals and groups who took part in that insurrection, with a number of different groups coming together, including the QAnon movement, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and white nationalist groups all aligned around their support for Trump. While this represents a defining moment in American political history, there remain genuine concerns over what this means for the country and in other parts of the world where demagogues abound and how marginalised segments of the population seek solace in the words provided by them, and seemingly for them.
Of the many conspiracy theories that have prevailed in America include the idea that the CIA were responsible for the assassination of John F Kennedy, that Diana Princess of Wales was assassinated by the Royal Family, or that there is a secret cabal of Jewish bankers running the world. Some of these notions have much deeper historical antecedents which relate to notions of antisemitism, racism and nationalism. However, the current concerns fixate on the QAnon movement, which has no basis in historical or contemporary fact. Yet, a significant proportion of American Society not only believe in conspiracy theories but that there is indeed a secret organisation of paedophiles drinking the blood of their child victims while they control the world and that only President Trump can save humanity from their evils.
Rational-minded people across the world viewed the events in Washington DC on Saturday aghast with horror. How could a sitting President mobilise a violent movement against the government of his own country, one that led to the death of five people, including a Capitol Hill police officer? Trump not only enabled these events but also facilitated them through his wild utterances, which until recently were communicable to his 88 million + followers on Twitter until the private social media platform sought to silence him permanently.
Trump’s brief but uneventful political career, save for the carnage he promised and ultimately delivered, began with a conspiracy theory. Trump was the most prominent of the President Obama birther conspiracy theory supporters, strenuously arguing, in effect, that Obama’s ‘missing birth certificate’ indicated that he was not a legitimate American. As Trump was mocked by Obama at the 2011 Washington Correspondents Dinner, this issue was put to bed, but the humiliation engraved in Trump the need to become even more emboldened in his pursuit of electoral power. By 2016, it was clear that he was prepared to achieve his aims no matter what the cost.
Trump mobilised his political efforts around a conspiracy theory that was laced with racism. Accounts of Trump’s father’s pursuit of housing projects demonstrate that Trump Snr discriminated against New York’s African-American community. Trump’s grandfather's role as a member of the Ku Klux Klan suggests a deep-seated racist lineage. Trump’s eugenicism is also well-documented. He has repeatedly stated the benefits of selected breeding. By reproducing with eastern European women he believes he is likely to produce genetically stronger progeny. In many respects, a conspiracy theorist gave birth to a number of other conspiracy theories with the events on Capitol Hill the culmination of the Trump agenda. His very own American carnage.
It is true that people who are likely to believe in one conspiracy theory are likely to believe in others, such is the nature of the personality type implicated in such matters. In this regard, conspiracy theories glue together. It is possible that they can take cumulative forms such that one conspiracy theory can subsume another. This suggests that there is a grand narrative that fixates the minds of believers of conspiracy theories — or that a certain kind of uncritical mind is prone to believe them. Trump understood the value of conspiracy theories in mobilising a mass movement and instrumentalized this opportunity structure to maximum effect in attempts to seek political gain. But many of the wild assertions, certainly in relation to the idea that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, were also held by other senior Republicans, as they too were also prepared to take advantage of what seemed like a golden goose laying golden nuggets.
At the heart of the political dynamic here is the question of trust. Average white Americans in the middle of America have lost trust in the political process because they feel they have been ‘left behind’. A lack of formal education and declining opportunities for an already marginalised working class combined with the lack of critical thinking fanned by the flames of certain media content such as Fox News created a body of the population ripe and ready to be manipulated by a grand conspiracy theorist. Trump presented himself as the saviour of white middle America. His racist leanings, his distrust of the Democrats and in particular his angry disdain towards President Obama’s regime were motivations that could be reworked to draw the attention of a disaffected white America, culminating in the disturbing events on 6 January.
But America is changing and changing fast. The political demography of the country is increasingly diverse, as the experience in Atlanta and Georgia testifies. There is a growing body of middle-class black Americans that is wiser and more engaged than ever. The youth of America are far more open and comfortable with diversity than any generation in the past. However, the removal of Trump does not mean the end of conspiracy theories or the hate and disdain in an array of current movements towards democracy itself. There is every likelihood that these polarizations will ferment as the impact of the pandemic continues to be increasingly felt by the poor and the marginalized relative to those who have been able to shield themselves from its more deleterious consequences. Average white middle America is likely to seek out a Trump 2.0 unless President-elect Biden can reverse the current tide and bring America back from the precipice. While Biden is unlikely to reveal all of the solutions necessary, there is a genuine opportunity afoot, one that is necessary to heal America.
This is much of the rational, sane, critically-thinking, open-minded and intellectually-transparent body of humankind across the world that is more than happy to see the back of Trump and all that he brought to an already frail and divided society emerging from the austerity measures introduced in the wake of the global financial crises of 2007/2008. There remains much more to do, however. This includes paying attention to a post-Brexit Britain with its imperial ghosts ruling the roost. As the contagion of nativism spreads across Europe, the periphery of the EU is vulnerable to unleashed forces of prejudice, hate and a complete lack of trust in society and in politics, in particular among an adult white male population, one that has seen a dramatic reduction in the historical privileges associated with this band of society, now shattered as a result of the internationalisation of capital and labour — not by cosmopolitan elites, immigrants, minorities, and in the case of Brexit-land, the EU.
Conspiracy theories come and go but the relative impact of QAnon in America and across Europe along with its alliances to anti-semitic, white fascist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist and white nationalist movements and organisations will continue. The context for much of these divisions is economic, but even with the Democrats, it is likely to remain a considerable factor in what the next POTUS can ultimately achieve. The echo chamber effects that social media provides is also a significant factor. This genie is firmly out of the bottle.
Banning Trump from Twitter will have the effect of driving his followers underground. It also provides succour to those arguing that there is a freedom of speech dimension to consider, which arguably has some merit despite the enormous damage Trump managed to afflict in 280 characters at a time. For others, his banishment could not have come a moment sooner. Conspiracy theory movements will continue to grow and his followers, in particular among QAnon, anti-vaxxers, anti-5G devotees, will find new ways of duping themselves — but the risk is that theses forces could turn darker and uglier, with both terrorism experts and the FBI warning of the inevitability of further violence. We wait in dismay.
