The Politics of Fear: The Peculiar Persistence of American Paranoia

The omnipresence of conspiracy theories in American politics is excavated in this savvy study. Journalist Goldwag (The New Hate) surveys centuries of conspiratorial thinking, from anti-Catholic stories featuring papal plots and convent sex dungeons to rants against Freemasonry (too impious and communistic) and antisemitic conspiracies of Jewish economic dominion popularized by Henry Ford. Goldwag presents these delusions as precursors to present-day Trump supporters’ obsessions with theories of 2020 election fraud, the supposed machinations of progressive plutocrat George Soros, and the billowing QAnon conspiracy theory that alleges Trump is battling a cabal of Democrats who rape and murder children. Goldwag analyzes all this through a social psychology lens, seeing conspiracy theories as expressions of populist bafflement at the opaque workings of government and finance, the status anxieties of dominant demographic groups, and the cognitive dissonance that arises when cherished worldviews collide with facts. His exploration of the ideology, emotionalism, and sheer craziness of conspiracy theorizing is colorful and perceptive, though his take on the underlying causes doesn’t offer much that’s new until a penetrating later chapter in which he attends a Trump rally that he describes as “more about community than ideas,” getting at a cultish interpretation of the movement wherein the outlandish beliefs serve more as a shibboleth than a coherent politics. It’s a sharp-eyed assessment of Trumpism’s deep roots and toxic potential. (Mar.)