right-wing aversion to reality
Alexander (Common Nonsense) Zaitchik's AlterNet piece on "Top 10 Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories" notes that "[s]cholars continue to debate the psychological and sociological origins of conspiracy theories, but there is no arguing that these theories have seen a revival on the extreme right in recent years:"
Here is a compilation of 10 of the most popular conspiracy theories currently circulating on the radical right and, increasingly, on points of the political spectrum much too close to the center for comfort.1. Chemtrails
2. Martial Law
3. FEMA Concentration Camps
4. Foreign Troops on U.S. Soil
5. 'Door-to-Door' Gun Confiscations
6. 9/11 as Government Plot
7. Population Control
8. HAARP
9. The Federal Reserve Conspiracy
10. The North American Union
The Rashomon Republicans are bringing the craziness, calling Park51 "Obama's mosque" and generally cranking up their alternate-reality rhetoric to 11 as they prepare for the midterm elections. In "The Bare Minimum for Public Discourse," Steve Benen takes aim at a recent Newsweek cover, captioned "A Mosque at Ground Zero?"
Of those five words, four are wrong -- it's not a mosque, and it's not "at" Ground Zero. American news consumers who only casually keep up on current events very likely walked by Newsweek at the check-out aisle and started to form an opinion, unaware that the only accurate word in the headline was "a."It's a reminder of one of the most painful aspects of our discourse: we're constantly having debates over issues that exist only in the imagination of deceptive conservative hacks, who happen to excel at propaganda. There are, for example, no "death panels." "Terror babies" don't exist. There's no such thing as a "death tax."
Benen points out of the "Ground Zero Mosque" that "it's not at Ground Zero, it's not a mosque, and even characterizing it as two blocks away is generous:"
The community won't be "in the shadow" of Ground Zero; it won't even be visible from Ground Zero. [...] Everything about this debate is largely a sham, cooked up by conservatives who hope to pit Americans against each other in advance of an election cycle.The bare minimum of a sensible, constructive public discourse is a base of reality to build upon. At this point, we're not even close.
Today's example of this problem is http://people-press.org/report/645/ the Pew study "Growing Numbers of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim" (PDF) which notes, depressingly, that "nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009:"
The view that Obama is a Muslim is more widespread among his political opponents than among his backers. Roughly a third of conservative Republicans (34%) say Obama is a Muslim, as do 30% of those who disapprove of Obama's job performance. [...] The belief that Obama is a Muslim has increased most sharply among Republicans (up 14 points since 2009), especially conservative Republicans (up 16 points).
Brendan Nyhan examines this problem at HuffPo, adding a note that:
Time conducted a survey this week (August 16-17) which found similarly disturbing results. Using different question wording and response options, they found that 24% of Americans believe Obama is Muslim...
update:
In his piece "'The Other' in the White House," Will Bunch asks:
Just as happened several years ago with the bogus conflation of Iraq and the 9/11 attacks, we are seeing misinformation grow in a nation with the most pervasive if not the most sophisticated news media in the world. So how does this happen?
Perhaps his memory is short, because he answered that question in his previous post "America's war on 'the other':"
Let's face it: This country has long had its Know-Nothings and its Birchers and its McCarthyites, but it never had gizmos like Fox News or Sarah Palin's Twitter feed to fuel toxic ideas so far so fast. It's time we admit these seemingly disconnected battles over "anchor babies, mosques, and a black man in the Oval Office are all part of the same war against "the Other," and that we are in the fight of a lifetime.