How To Create Conspiracy Theories (VDH)

All that is required is chronic government stonewalling of reasonable requests for transparency. Then add in high officials serially lying under oath, along with the blatantly unequal application of the law. Institutionalize arguments from authority of politicians and bureaucrats who refuse to adjudicate arguments empirically.

Include the weaponization of investigatory and intelligence bureaucracies. Finish with the transformation of an obsequious media into a mouthpiece of the state. And presto, you end up with a skeptical, cynical public that learns to believe the very opposite from what it is told by elites.

Curiously. some conservative politicians, media and politicos often remark of their surprise that so many of the Trump base insists that the January 6 riot at the Capitol was in part a federally driven conspiracy, or perhaps just a mere “demonstration” gone awry.

But whether true or not, why would some not believe that—given the efforts of the state to hide and warp facts?

Consider what drives rational people to embrace supposed “conspiracy” theories around the so-called “insurrection?”

One reason, of course, is that there was evidence of FBI informants present on January 6. Do not take the word of conservatives for such suppositions.

Instead, remember what award-winning New York Times’s reporter and keen follower of right-wing political activity, Matthew Rosenberg said of January 6, albeit in an ambush interview conducted by Operation Veritas:

The left’s overreaction — the left’s reaction to it in some places was so over the top. They were making it too big a deal … that gave the opening for lunatics in the right to be like, ‘Oh, well, nothing happened here. It was just a peaceful bunch of tourists,’ you know, and it’s like, but nobody wants to hear that.” .”

Ping! Out to the Victor Davis Hanson list

If all that was not enough to create suspicion about media and political narratives, then there was the asymmetrical media coverage and the reaction of the Justice Department to the 2020 summer riots.

Touch an officer on January 6, and one sat in jail for months. Club an officer in summer 2020, and the offender was likely to become certified as a member of the Antifa or BLM resistance, albeit acting up a bit during the “summer of love.”

Even more importantly, the investigatory January 6 committee also fed rather than quieted conspiracy theories. The Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives first denied nominated Republican representatives any seats on the select committee.

Instead, they cherry-picked just two Republicans—on the apparent requisite that both Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were a) die-hard Trump haters, and b) politically inert and headed for forced retirement.

There was no “Russian collusion” conspiracy. There was a Clinton conspiratorial effort.

Really, really good summation of the entire political process that is the modern conspiracy process - a left wing creation.

FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR

Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall

American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness

His website: Victor Davis Hanson

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