Will Reality Bite Back: Conspiratorial Fictions and the Assault on Democracy

Two years ago, we put the final revisions on our book about conspiratorial thinking in American politics: A Lot of People are Saying: the New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy. As we were about to click “send” and transmit the manuscript to our editor, we paused: “what if Rigged, QAnon, Pizzagate and the like go away by the time the book comes out?” That was two years ago. Since then, none of our fears have been put to rest. Democratic institutions have been degraded by the conspiracist forces we identified, and these forces have been escalated by a conspiracy-minded president who has the capacity to impose his compromised sense of reality on the nation. Two intertwined events have amplified the force and consequences of conspiracism. One is the way the 2020 presidential election has been threatened by conspiracy claims and rogue violence; the other is a deadly pandemic in which the counsel of specialists in public health has been eclipsed by conspiracy claims advanced by the president and submissive members of his party. We examine these up-to-the-moment charges below. Can reality bite back? Can, for instance, the fact that the virus is, after all, real and deadly – as the President’s own infection and hospitalization testify – displace the conspiratorial fictions that say the virus is not a threat to everyone? Can the actual outcome of the 2020 election cut through the fog of suspicion that the president has created by charging at every turn that the process is rigged?