Why is America so obsessed with conspiracy theories?
The United States is a nation obsessed with conspiracy theories. Among rich democracies, we’re an outlier — a country where millions of people are convinced that something is lurking in the shadows and nothing is as it seems.
In recent years, that conspiracism has infiltrated the political mainstream, transforming one kooky wing of the Republican Party into its political core. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a crackpot who has peddled lies about Jewish space lasers and QAnon, is far more representative of the Trumpian MAGA base than, say, Mitt Romney or Mitch McConnell, who are derided as RINOs partly because they won’t indulge the extreme lunacy that has taken over their party…
Brian Klaas (Project Lead, Neo-Populism) for Public Notice.