When Edgar Maddison Welch entered Comet Ping Pong with an assault rifle in 2016, he believed the Washington D.C. pizzeria might be the site of a child- sex trafficking ring. He shot up the place, but no one was injured. Welch says he was investigating the Pizzagate conspiracy, an online narrative that promoted the idea that Hillary Clinton and her campaign advisor, John Podesta, were the masterminds of the ring and operated out of the pizzeria (Sebastian, 2016). The conspiracy began as a tweet, moved onto sites like 4Chan and Reddit, and then onto known “fake news” and conspiracy theory sites like Alex Jones’ InfoWars — whose slogan is “There is a war on for your mind” — and then became viral on social media (Silverman, 2016). Welch had obviously been exposed to the pervasive theory and believed it to be true because he went to the pizzeria ready for gunfire.
Seth Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer. In 2017 Fox News and its popular host, Sean Hannity, reported extensively on his death. Rich had been murdered in 2016, shot on the street. Police believed it was a robbery. Hannity claimed Rich had leaked the Democratic National Committee emails to Wikileaks before the 2016 election. A conspiracy theory garnered a following on right-wing blogs and social media that Hillary Clinton had Rich murdered in retaliation for the leak. Fox News eventually retracted the conspiracy angle of the story, but Hannity continued to talk about it on his show well into 2017. In July of 2019 Yahoo News broke the story that Russian intelligence had started the conspiracy theory as part of a disinformation campaign (Darby, 2019).
Defense attorneys for Cesar Sayok, the admitted mail bomber of media outlets and Democrats in 2018, argue that Sayok developed a mental illness following several life difficulties, and then became obsessed with Fox News and President Donald Trump. They say Sayok watched Fox News “religiously,” which inspired him to attack Trump’s enemies (Date, 2019).
These three instances of recent “conspiracy theories” were primarily created by right-wing media. In Sayok’s case the reportage of Fox News apparently induced him to act violently. The definition of conspiracy theory can vary, depending on whom one asks, but for this essay it will be defined as a made-up story intending to deceive, a hoax, disinformation used for political gain. To that extent conspiracy theory can be used to muddy the waters in a sea of information, to use a clumsy yet apt metaphor. Not knowing what the truth is can be disadvantageous to an individual and a nation.
This type of conspiracy theory does not exist independently of anything else. It cannot be isolated from all the events occurring at the time this essay is being written. It exists in what will be explained as a network. Using Latour’s social constructivist lens, particularly Actor-Network Theory (Latour & Woolgar, 1979), conspiracy theory will be shown to be part of a much larger “conspiracy” of global manipulation. This essay, using sources from the media, takes a macro view of ostensibly separate entities and phenomena, in order to cast a light on potential ramifications if the definition of conspiracy theory is expanded to include motivations. Following a rhetorical analysis of the conspiracy theories listed above, there is an extended discussion of the implications of the analysis. The analysis is concerned with offering an answer to the question: how does the right-wing media, using conspiracy theory, forward the Trump agenda?
In 1979 Bruno Latour and Stephen Woolgar’s Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts was published. It was one thing for sociologists of science to claim reality is socially constructed, but quite another to claim lab science and scientific discovery is itself constructed— in the way scientists build narratives of how the work was done. Scientists tend to focus on the discovery moment, rather than expanding the narrative to include the context around it — the “network” — all the material things and people and conditions that have to be in place for the discovery to have been made at that time. They referred to the process as the Actor-Network Theory. As such, in terms of the relevance of this essay, conspiracy theory does not exist independently of anything. It is part of a much larger relationship of forces that can shift, depending on the focus and context of a phenomenon. As Latour says, “explanation does not follow from description; it is description taken that much further" (Latour, 1991).
The disparate parts identified as those who have benefitted from the conspiracy theory disinformation, are separate in themselves, and are identified as such, like bricks, yet are held together with mortar. The mortar is the media. The mortar is a narrative that allows a meaning to be communicated. This essay could not exist without the narratives being communicated through the technology we use to form our individual meaning. To extend the metaphor in the sense of expanding the conspiracy theory network, we are inside a house —the structure of our bricks and mortar. The mortar is made of all the media that is available for us to consume. It is not made of information outside of our media. However, the longer we stay in the house, the more convinced we become the interior truly reflects all that we can potentially know. Heidegger would say we are in a framework. “Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological (Heidegger, 1977) (20).
Thus, we see the existential condition of Edgar Welch who arrived at the Washington, D.C. pizzeria with his weapon, apparently with the aim of shutting down a child sex-trafficking ring. He lived in a small world of specific media exposure, apparently only right-wing websites like Breitbart, and others that have threads trading in such conversation, such as 4Chan, 8Chan and Reddit. The bizarre tale combined a series of sexually charged stories. A lawyer received a tweet from a white supremacy twitter account that suggested the police, investigating child porn charges against Representative Anthony Weiner, had found emails on his laptop implicating Hillary Clinton in a child sex-trafficking operation. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, had been on Clinton’s campaign. That piece of information began circulating through the conspiracy threads and blogs. Clinton’s 2016 Campaign Advisor, John Podesta, had his emails hacked and the conspiracy theorists began to connect what they deemed further evidence that Clinton and Podesta were among many Democrats who spoke in code in their emails about the pedophile operation that would meet in certain restaurants, such as the pizzeria. It was supposedly a part of the Clinton Foundation (Silverman, 2016).
All these connections that would strain the credulity of mainstream media consumers, were communicated extensively on the right-wing sites until Welch, from conservative, Republican-controlled North Carolina, traveled to the nation’s capital to take things into his own hands. It never occurred to him that if the information were true, authorities would have stepped in. Of course, he believed the Clintons had a grip on the Washington establishment. Apparently, he was also obsessed by the sexual elements of the story.
Sex is a large part of the Clinton persona. Bill Clinton had been impeached in connection with the fact he had sex with Monika Lewinsky in the Oval Office. Conservatives, being more traditional, tended to loath Clinton for his sexual appetite. Conservatives even suggested Hillary Clinton was a lesbian because Bill chased women. Conservatives were also uncomfortable with the fact she was strong, suggesting her decision to “stand by her man,” during that episode was politically driven because she wanted to run for office. That was the sexual backdrop when Anthony Weiner was discovered to have sexted several women and ultimately had pleaded guilty for sexting a 15-year-old.
Welch got four years in jail. After the trial he explained he had originally heard about the story from friends because he didn’t have internet. When he did get internet, he looked up the story. He said he didn’t trust mainstream news but that he was an avid fan of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. He had found religion recently and had bible verse tattoos. He had an AR-15 with him in case he found children he could save. He has two daughters (Kelsey, 2016). He had made a video on his way to Washington, explaining to his daughters why he was going, “to save the children” (Sands, 2017). His hometown paper says his criminal record dates to 2007, including drug charges, dui’s, and significantly, being involved in a driving accident that injured a 13-year-old boy earlier in 2016 (Bergeron, 2016).
Welch, then, was ripe for persuasion. He had injured a child. He had a record. He was apparently unemployed. He has parents, but there is never a mention of a wife or girlfriend even though he has two daughters. He needed a way to redeem himself in his eyes. He wanted to save the children. Along comes news from his friends that Hillary Clinton was operating a pedophile ring. He had recently become a religious person and suddenly he had an idea.
The idea that Hillary Clinton would be involved in a pedophile ring was apparently believable to many conservatives like Welch. Welch claimed to be apolitical, but Clinton had been profoundly disliked by some conservatives, perhaps more than Barack Obama. Both figures brought out the misogyny and racism in their haters. That subtext to the election was pervasive in some conservative circles.
Welch has two daughters. Pedophilia is a particularly vile crime to most people — the destruction of innocence, the violation of the sanctity of female chastity, the disregard for basic human morality exhibited by the lawless Democrats. It was too much to bear. He was 28 at that time, living in Salisbury, North Carolina among a population of about 33,000, a relatively small town. He was probably financially unstable considering he had not had internet access for a while. Much of his information, apparently, had come from his friends who were obviously like-minded conservatives. In that sense he was isolated in terms of information. He was religious, sporting religious tattoos, indicating a desire to pronounce his faith overtly to everyone — a sign of a certain insecurity about that faith, that he would need to prove to others, and to himself, that he was serious about it. Beyond the tattoos, he had a religious zeal, believing he knew right from wrong, and believing what he’d been told about the mythic pedophile ring.
He needed a change of identity. The religion inspired him to become a new man, a good, God-fearing man, a man of integrity, of courage, a man who could bring down the rotten Clinton conspiracy, and be hailed a hero. He was not unlike the character Travis Bickle, the man who tries to assassinate a politician but, in the end, decides to save the young prostitute from the mob, climaxing in a bloody shootout in Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver (Phillips, 1976). Thus, an archetypal American myth: the good guy saves the girl from danger, a 19th century melodramatic trope wherein the girl is tied to the track and the hero must save her before the train arrives.
For Welch it was a drastic action, a desperate action for redemption. The saving grace, however, is that no one was hurt. The point is that his consciousness was changed by a conspiracy theory, by a big lie that he and all his friends believed.
The pedophilia belief did not end there. QAnon is a conspiracy theory that began on the website 4Chan. Among the organization’s claims is that Democrats and liberal actors are involved in a child-sex ring. It is gaining so much credibility with some “believers” that they are attending Donald Trump rallies (Stanley-Baker, 2018). They are also scaring people because the FBI has listed them as domestic terrorists, worried that some of the more unhinged members might turn to violence (Dickson, 2019). No doubt it is due to the fact recent murders have QAnon connections. Some of the alleged murderers are obsessed with Fox News (Sommers, 2019). The Russian government has achieved the creation of a pro-Trump organization that ostensibly fights child abuse— by creating fake child abuse. Now, Trump is using the QAnon symbol on a campaign ad (Sonam, 2019). Essentially, Trump has recognized a domestic terror organization that was founded on a lie. QAnon members have also been interviewed on Fox News, giving the organization greater visibility and credibility (Sommer, 2019). Using the Actor/Network Theory defining these events, conspiracy theory as disinformation would expand to include Welch, Pizzagate, Russia, Trump, QAnon, violence, and right-wing media.
Sean Hannity is the host of “The Sean Hannity Show” on Fox News. On air, Hannity implored Seth Rich’s family to talk to him. Rich was a Democratic National Committee staffer who had been murdered on the street in 2016 in connection with what Washington police said was a robbery. In a video published on March 23, 2017, Hannity was setting the stage for a conspiracy theory he would cover longer than anyone and subsequently face boycott pressures (Hannity, 2017). By the time this monologue had aired, right-wing media had promoted the conspiracy angle that Rich had stolen the Podesta emails and had given them to Wikileaks. Rich’s family had condemned the conspiracy theorists and had filed a lawsuit against Fox News, which was ultimately dismissed.
Hannity is a highly successful pundit, well-respected by his viewers, many of whom believe in his authority. He begins by expressing the importance of the story. “The unsolved murder of former DNC staffer Seth Rich continues to get a huge amount of attention.” This was five months after Rich was killed. Although police say it was a robbery, right-wing media outlets continued to run the narrative that Hillary Clinton had him murdered. Hannity is saying, essentially, that it is not an ordinary murder. If that were so, would we still be covering it? He proceeds to sympathy, reassuring his viewers and the Rich family how he understands how hard it has been for them because of the coverage. He says he has been in communication with them, claims he got a “heartfelt” note from them and says he got one back and then says he reached out personally to Seth’s brother, Aaron and says he expressed his condolences. Hannity is suggesting to his audience that he has developed an emotional bond with the family. His “heartfelt” notes exchange is more than sympathy. It borders on love, a bond between the grieving parents and his own heart. He says he told Aaron, “my heart, my soul and my prayers go out to them in this difficult time.” Hannity has moved into faith, into religion. He is creating an understanding with his viewers that he is a Christian with conservative values who understands the gravity of what the family is enduring as all the media coverage swirls around them, in light of the murder that happened the previous winter. Hannity reminds his viewers that he is a father and says he does not think he could ever recover from losing a child. He says when he saw a video online of the family saying they want answers, “it truly pained me, however, in respect for the family’s wishes FOR NOW [emphasis added], I am not discussing this matter at this time.” He goes on to explain that there are many issues at stake, including the “Democratic push of their Russia, narrative, collusion, Trump, Russia, narrative, Trump, collusion…” He goes on to refer to it as a “Russia tin foil hat conspiracy theory” and shows several videos of officials and politicians saying there is no evidence of collusion. Of course, this is well before the Mueller Report came out. He doesn’t mention the murder after that in this segment.
Hannity is trying to accomplish several things with this segment. He hopes the family will see the video and finally speak to him, which is unlikely, considering they are already angry with Fox News. He hopes his viewers see him as a compassionate human being trying to do the right thing by the family. He is communicating that he is a family man who grieves over injustice. He wants to know the truth as much as the family. Then he says, no more of this, and pivots to the collusion narrative, linking the two issues — the murder with the Russia collusion narrative — as if the Democrats are both operating a conspiracy theory against Trump, and hiding one against Clinton. In fact, he is fighting the collusion narrative while he pursues the Rich narrative. He projects his own actions onto others and condemns them for it. He doesn’t precisely say that. He simply infers the issues are equivalent because that is why it is important to know who killed Seth Rich.
On July 30th, 2019, Yahoo News’ Chief Investigate Correspondent, Michael Isikoff, broke the story that the Seth Rich conspiracy had started with the Russians. The headline reads, “'It's blasted across America': How Fox and Sean Hannity amplified a Russia-fueled conspiracy” (Isikoff, 2019). Using the Actor/Network Theory defining these events, conspiracy theory as disinformation would expand to include Hannity, Fox News, Russia, Trump, violence, and right-wing media.
Hannity openly supports Trump, as does fellow Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Whether viewers know the difference between reporting and opinion, it hardly matters to them if they also support Trump and like watching certain personalities. If they do not understand how they might be manipulated, however, they may never know unless they are exposed to other media. If they are content in their framework, all is well until something shakes them out of it. In fact, a steady diet of the same media could make a man go insane.
Like Maddison Welch, Cesar Sayok was a man of diminished capacity. He had been hurt badly by the 2008 recession and had been living in his van for a couple of years on a steady diet of Trump and Fox News. That narrative is what his defense attorney claimed, although Sayok also found the time to build and mail bombs to targets that had criticized the President, such as Democrats, CNN, and Robert De Niro. No one had been killed but prosecutors say his targets had certainly been terrorized. Also, the prosecutors said there was no evidence to link his Fox News viewing as the cause of his actions, citing “correlation and causation are two very different things” (McNamara, 2019). Any good social scientist could have seen that one coming. However, correlation is perfectly fine for the creators of disinformation. The truth does not matter. The fact that it is pervasive and is influencing people (proven or not) is the aim. Sayoc was moved to take action against the people he saw were clearly not fans of his President. He sent bombs that did not explode, intending to scare rather than murder. Sayoc was not homicidal, yet. His motivation was loyalty. He is referred to as the MAGA man, Make America Great Again, and he clearly wanted to return to a time when his life was better. Nevertheless, despite his age, 52, one senses an immaturity about him, a middle-aged man who found himself living in a van, watching television all day, and dreaming of glory when authorities finally caught him. He wanted to get caught eventually, of course, because he did not kill anyone. He wanted Trump to know there was a man willing to fight for him. In his trial, however, in a statement he reconsidered his actions. “I should have listened to my mother” he said. (McNamara). Using the Actor/Network Theory defining these events, conspiracy theory as disinformation would expand to include Sayok, Trump, Fox News, violence, and right-wing media.
These three men were deeply affected by disinformation. The media has been infected by lies to the point that viewers do not trust a source if their limited world does not trust that source. Viewers ask how they can tell the difference, but many are being disingenuous. They are not wanting to know the truth necessarily. They want to know if their own views can be validated by a source that seems authoritative. Terms such as “fake news” and “conspiracy theory” are flung across the media by all political persuasions. Academics even speculate that we have moved into an era when truth just does not even matter anymore.
Before we move on something must be clarified. Some observers who report on such conspiracy theory phenomena believe we are living in a “post-truth” era (Flood, 2016). However, Welch, Hannity, and Sayok have something else in common. They each believed they knew the truth and acted upon it. Hannity, being a part of the media, might have known he was lying when he was reporting on the Seth Rich murder, but there is no evidence of that. He might have just wanted to believe the story, nonetheless. Believing in the truthfulness of something and acting on it infers that truth remains a respected concept. The ready adaptation of a “post-truth” label to describe the current political conversation, or a new era of general disrespect for “truth” is unwarranted. The term “post-truth” is a misnomer. First, assuming anything was “truth” prior to the “post-truth” era is problematic. Certainly, there was agreement on the presumption of what established truth—which is most essential for a judicial system in a democracy— but from a philosophical perspective that determination has perpetually been in conflict (Plato, n.d.). From a historical point of view, power generally determined how truth is defined (Foucault, 1980). Practically and physically speaking, empiricism and pragmatism prevails unless proven otherwise (James, 1976). Second, those who label anything “post-truth” are presuming that they know “truth,”— a claim which has been the cause of countless religious wars. Third, by using the term “post-truth,” the media and academics and political scientists normalize the term, giving it much more credence than it deserves. Furthermore, it confers authority to the actions of the President to be the impetus of defining an entire era. Consequently, the term provides cover for any devious political attempt to circumvent the truth. Indeed, some researchers look for the origin of the phrase “post-truth” as if Machiavelli had never existed, avoiding the obvious observation that a strict adherence to the truth has never been a political given. Samuel Blackburn, author of On Truth (2018), says as much, noting the overreaction of the media to its realization that the current administration was claiming the existence of alternative facts. “I think there were important changes in the political atmosphere of politics in 2016, but I do not think they had much to do with a declining concept of truth itself” (7).
No matter how one defines truth, the assumption that we have moved beyond it with the prefix “post”— as if the matter can be defined so authoritatively in three years— resembles nothing more than a marketing ploy, a “post-truth” truth. Furthermore, philosophers who have been credited with arguing against contemporary assumptions of “truth,” such as Nietszche, Foucault and social constructivists like Latour, are really arguing about authority – the authority to define truth.
In our day the ultimate source for determining truth has been the authority of “objective” science. Latour has questioned the absolutism of such a view.
Objectivity is supposed to be … not made by human hand. If you show the hand at work in the human fabric of science, you are accused of sullying the sanctity of objectivity, of ruining its transcendence, of forbidding any claim to truth. The only way to defend science against the accusation of fabrication, to avoid the label of ‘socially constructed’ is apparently to insist that no human hand has ever touched the image it has produced (Latour, 2010) (71).
In fact, the human hand has completely fashioned this essay. Since science gained ascendency in our measure of “truth,” enjoying virtually universal acceptance of its authority until only recently in the vaccine and climate change controversies, the definition of “truth” seemed to rely on the apparently objective measurements required in any given study. However, in terms of conspiracy theory, it is not the purpose of this essay to define “truth,” or to denigrate science but to point out that “truth” has been socially constructed since humans have seen and worshipped gods. Copernicus and Galileo challenged the Church’s authority, and now some heretics are challenging the authority of the Church of Science. That movement, though, has nothing to do with being in a “post-truth” age.
In fact, none of the aforementioned factors have changed now that we are basking (or baking) in a “post-truth” era, because we are not in such an era. How truth is defined, and how facts are determined have always been questioned in a democracy as interest groups attempt to redraw definitional boundaries. Nothing fundamentally changed regarding “truth” since President Donald Trump was elected in 2016.
What has changed is that voters in the United States of America, with help from the Electoral College, have elected a President who blatantly lies and misrepresents the truth (Wehner, 2019). Lying is hardly a new phenomenon, especially for politicians (Mearscheimer, 2011). However, few, if any, politicians in American history have insisted upon the veracity of so many things that are so obviously and recognizably untrue (Politifact, 2019). Strictly in Biblical terms, Proverbs 17:7 says “Eloquent lips are unsuited to a godless fool—how much worse lying lips to a ruler.” Yet rather than acknowledging the morality and ethics of a large part of his base, Trump has even posed as his own public relations representative (Jackson, 2016). Framing is certainly a tool in the public relations bag of tricks, as well as spin, but neither practice equates to an obvious lie. An obvious lie, repeated constantly, would be relegated to the dark realm of propaganda.
Edward Bernays (2005) said “the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people” (109). Bernays believed propaganda to be a positive thing, a way to keep the post-WWI masses in check. Nevertheless, after considering the Nazi experience of WWII, he believed “public relations” to be a better description of the practice wherein “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society” (37). Today, of course, the words “sincere” and “propaganda” would appear to be oxymorons, not to mention “manipulation” and “democratic,” but such is the reasoning of a philosophy that promoted rule by a few. If the world has, indeed, entered a “post-truth” era, surely the origin lies in the hoaxes of the 19th century, the promotions of “post-truth” Barnum, but most certainly the early PR and marketing gurus like Ivy Ledbetter Lee and Bernays — the men who encouraged the notion that the corporations evolving from the Gilded Age should rule the many by psychologically locking them into a consumer ethos (Held, 2009) whereby lying in the name of profit is a necessary evil to maintain the health of the economy (James, 2011).
Concentrating on the significance of a “post-truth” world distracts from the purpose of the present phenomenon of conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory has become political disinformation, a propaganda campaign, intended to weaken the authority of institutions that protect the American consensus of “truth”: the independent media, science, and education. Joseph Stalin coined the term “disinformation” to describe the lies he would tell the Soviet population and the campaign he would expand to the rest of the world. In the 80s the Soviet Union claimed the U.S. created the AIDS crisis and the U.S. claimed the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were running drugs. (Jowett & O’Donnell, 2005). This use of conspiracy theory is not related to such theories as the Kennedy assassination or the Anti-Masonic movement of the 19th century — which were publicly organic, growing out of real historical events by people noticing discrepancies in official explanations — a process best described by Bitzer’s (1968) situational rhetoric. The new use of conspiracy theory is truly indicative of Vatz’s (1973) version of the same rhetoric, which offers PR practitioners validation for making something of nothing, even if the nothing is a lie. Socrates criticized the sophists, so lying for personal gain is not a new professional phenomenon, but the PR and marketing industries in the United States have certainly primed the American consumer to accept the inconsistent reasoning that the First Amendment protects the right to say snake oil is a wonderful product — even if selling it is a crime (Wu, 2016). We have free minds, after all. We know Hillary Clinton is not a child-trafficker.
Yet the historical effect of the Kennedy and Freemasonic theories would certainly have inspired the weaponization of conspiracy theory as disinformation. The very name, “conspiracy theory,” implies a lack of unity. Anyone who would use such a conspiracy tactic is obviously encouraging division.
Knowing cui bono points the finger in a specific direction: those who wish to disrupt, or even destroy, the American social status quo. Because American Intelligence has concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 American election — not only by use of disinformation, but by theft of DNC data delivered to Wikileaks— Russia benefitted. (Ward, 2019). The Republican Party, hoping to gain power to alter the direction of the Obama-led effort to continue neoliberal policies (Rauchway, 2019), benefitted through propaganda distributed on social media that aggressively attacked the neoliberal Clinton legacy and promoted Donald Trump (much of it created by Russians). The Republican party also benefitted through the weaponization of data received by Facebook via Cambridge Analytica (Turan, 2019). Trump’s former Senior Counselor, Steve Bannon, helped found Cambridge Analytica and was also a co-founder of right-wing publication Breitbart, which sometimes traded in conspiracy theories and served as a mouthpiece for the Alternative-Right (Posner, 2016). Finally, there is the Alt-Right, a movement of largely patriarchal, disaffected, fascistic white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and formerly marginalized right-wing anarchists (Lyons, 2017). All these entities benefitted, as well as many other nationalistic organizations that, before the internet, would not have found connecting between themselves so easy. Of course, it is a propagandistic tactic to list several subjects in one paragraph, suggesting the various groups are actively working together, or are in some way colluding with each other. It infers guilt by association. This strategy would be one way a conspiracy theory could be constructed and subsequently developed on the internet.
The internet and the power of big data have changed the nature of conspiracy theory. Before the ubiquitous information-sharing process the internet has provided, a foreign government could only hope to spread disinformation within our borders by employing spies, or proxies, and hope to get “fake news” picked up by one of the established media organizations. In other words, exposing an individual American to disinformation required a cumbersome, time-inhibited process of questionable efficacy. Individual Americans were generally sheltered from malevolent foreign manipulation. Also, while information spread rapidly and in greater volume in cities, where individuals were exposed to many other people who could reinforce or dispute the information— and the more extreme opinions could be socially marginalized— such was not the case in rural areas, where fewer people and fewer information sources meant less diversity of opinion within an isolated community (McKelvey, 1973). In America, historically, that isolation allowed various Christian faiths to dominate any given town’s perception of “truth.” In such an environment, because of the relatively smaller population, the power of an individual was proportionally stronger. The pastor or mayor or the leader of a women’s organization, such as the Junior League, would determine what would be publicly acceptable in terms of voicing opinions about religion, politics, and social responsibility. Control of thought was perceived to be protection against the “destructive” opinions from the “outside.” The tension became identified as us vs. them (Grier, 2018). “Facts” were founded on conservative principles that had been preserved by the community’s ancestors — generally, 19th century observations; such as, you can be saved through the grace of God by the faith you have in Jesus Christ, the only good Indian is a dead Indian, and woman was made to submit to her husband. These “facts,” founded on faith, racism and patriarchy — and Doctrines and rationalizations supporting them — provided the intellectual and moral foundation for many communities. Cultural isolation preserved these “truths” well into the 20th century. They are partially held by populations today. Barack Obama echoed the urban perception of small towns at a 2008 fundraiser when he said, "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them” (Pilkington, 2008). Even if the holders of such views consider them “beliefs,” rather than “facts,” some people, nevertheless, believe they are absolute.
The expansion of media, which reduced isolation, and the advent of science, whose adherents appropriated the term “fact,” affected subsequent generations. The increasingly secular population gave authority to scientific “facts.” However, it was not long before people realized scientific studies can be bought to fit any agenda (Lionnidis, 2011) or simply made up (Mounk, 2018).
The internet has developed a virtual world in which rural areas, that are primarily politically conservative, and urban surfers, who can be as diverse as the world, now have direct access to world information and disinformation, without gatekeepers making decisions about how appropriate a message is for a community. Now, individuals who have been marginalized for extreme views, wherever they may live in the world, can have virtually instant communication and encouragement from like-minded people or organizations recruiting for violence. Guns can be found on the internet, along with all the other material that 30 years ago would have been deemed dangerous to conservative communities: pornography, prostitution, drugs, and bad associations. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports there are more than 1000 active hate groups currently in the United States, citing in their report a former neo-Nazi who claims a global terrorist network exists, connected through the internet, that is contributing to American white supremacist violence (Brennan, 2019). Yet on August 6, 2019, Fox News Host, Tucker Carlson said there is no white supremacy problem. It is a hoax (Stelter, 2019). For any American, rural or urban, seeing contradicting messages from media outlets to which they have given authority, it is confusing. The ultra-rapid dissemination of information, passing from smartphone to smartphone, between like-minded people creates its own authority. Fear is currently gripping American culture as mass shooting incidents have dramatically increased and politicians seem to have no answers or plans to address the carnage. The fear has translated into anti-immigrant sentiments and Republican condemnation of mental health issues, video games and Isis. The reluctance of conservative media, such as Fox News, and Republican politicians to explore the viability of gun control and the culpability of white nationalists involved in these violent acts, points toward political expediency (Wade, 2019). Trump avoided criticizing white nationalists after the Charlottesville violence in 2017, presumably because he believes his base will not disapprove of his inaction (McQuade,). He was slow to tweet condemnation after the violence in El Paso, August 3rd. The New York Times reports August 5th: President Trump forcefully denounced white supremacy in the wake of twin mass shootings over the weekend, citing the threat of “racist hate” while seeming unaware that his own anti-immigrant rhetoric has now become part of a raging national debate (Crowley & Haberman, 2019).
Trump would appear to be following a Foucauldian argument that biopower, associated with neoliberalism—and in opposition to sovereign power— must have the option of defining borders; that is, declaring what is the state and what is not in terms of population. Foucault admits this is racist (Foucault, 1976). In Discipline and Punish (1977) Foucault explains the authority of sovereign power, which claims a right to kill to maintain that authority. Sovereign power today is most noticeable in nations with autocratic rulers, such as North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia or Russia, countries with whom Trump has been quick to embrace. While state executions may be overt— the murder of a former Russian spy in England (Pasha-Robinson, 2018), another strategy would be to financially support a transnational political movement that advocates nationalism and white supremacy (Michael, 2016). Nevertheless, there is little evidence there is a specific connection of these various political parts that are benefitted by the disinformation mentioned above if each part is examined separately with the focus of a microscope. Researchers must find evidence of a cause and effect relationship between each part, evidence that must be examined objectively with a scientist’s precision. That process will reveal the truth. Unfortunately, when that micro-process is used in a macro-environment, the result will be the common adage, “you can’t see the forest for the trees.” However, the micro is useful.
While a disinformation campaign ideally targets as many people as possible, in certain circumstances, some people are more susceptible than others, depending on the message. In the 2016 elections Russians targeted Sanders voters with anti-Clinton social media messages, black voters with Black Lives Matter messages and white conservative religious voters which appealed to their loves and prejudices. However, only the latter were likely to remain Trump voters. They make up a large part of his base (Glaser, 2017).
Returning to the metaphor of a house with bricks and mortar, within this house are many rooms but conservatives tend to enjoy the rooms that seldom change. As Michael Oakeshott expresses on his website:
"To be conservative, then is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss" (Oakeshott, 2011).
It would be very misleading to suggest all conservatives are the same. Many conservatives and Republicans do not support Trump or his brand of politics — but it could be inferred that they conform to tradition more easily than liberals (Baer, 2016). Part of the phenomenon can be explained by shared reality theory, wherein a common experience between individuals can make the subjective objective (Hardin & Higgins, 1996).
As explained in the documentary, The Great Hack (Amer, 2019), data from Facebook was used by Cambridge Analytica, who were working for the Trump Campaign, to target voters in swing states. Cambridge Analytica was also in contact with Julian Assange of Wikileaks, who had obtained the DNC leaks that were hacked by Russian intelligence (Cadwalladr & Kirchgaessner, 2018). American Intelligence chiefs met in 2017 to discuss what they confirmed about the Putin campaign to influence the 2016 election. They believed Russia was operating what they called a misinformation campaign, including “active measures,” that intended to disrupt the election, that Putin considered it a success, that sometimes Americans didn’t even know they were themselves part of it, and that Putin will continue doing it. The measures included “hacking private accounts of high-profile targets to utilizing social media to spread fake news promoting Russia’s interests” (Carroll, 2017). The Mueller Report, released April 18, 2019, concluded there was insufficient evidence to say the Trump Campaign colluded with Russia, but was inconclusive about obstruction of justice. Fox News reported Trump was right all along. Fox figures are arguing that the Mueller report vindicated their accusations that the mainstream media was reporting of the investigation, even though much of what mainstream media reported on was ultimately seen as corroborated by the final report. Various Fox figures demanded that media outlets apologize to Trump and others. White House counselor Kellyanne Conway echoed this narrative when she appeared on Fox, saying, “We’re accepting apologies today, too, for anybody who feels the grace in offering them (Hagle, 2019).
Knowing all this information now, from sources largely in the mainstream media it seems, on the one hand, unsurprising that much of the narrative is being denied or undermined or framed differently by right-wing media— but on the other hand, they seem prescient about some events, as though they’d been given the answers beforehand. Of course, Steve Bannon was originally influential in the White House. Considering the three conspiracy theories listed at the beginning of this essay, right-wing media seem determined to disrupt the social environment by encouraging disinformation campaigns that are becoming pervasive online. The politically conservative media users that limit their information sources are most likely to fall for disinformation because they are not looking at a wider selection of media. Becoming a discerning media consumer takes effort and time but it is not impossible. On the other hand, it is improbable so long as one is already certain of the truth
References
Amer, K. & Noujaim, J. (Dirs.) (2019). “The Great Hack”. Netflix.
Hardin, C. D. & Higgins, E. T. (1996). Shared reality: How social verification makes the subjective objective. In R. M. Sorrentino & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition. Handbook of motivation and cognition, Vol. 3. New York: The Guilford Press. (pp. 28-84).
Heidegger, M. (1977). The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. New York: Harper.
James, W. (1976). The Works of William James: Essays in Radical Empiricism. Burkhardt, F. & Bowers, F. (Eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-26717-6.
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Latour, B. (1991). Technology Is Society Made Durable. Sociology of Monsters: Essays on power, technology, and domination. Law, J. (ED.) Abingdon-On-Thames: Routledge.
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