conspiracy theories — Bunk History

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Crowd pointing to UFO over Chrysler Building

How Washington Got Hooked on Flying Saucers

A collection of well-funded UFO obsessives are using their Capitol Hill connections to launder some outré, and potentially dangerous, ideas.

by Jason Colavito via The New Republic on May 21, 2021

Four mysterious objects spotted in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1952.

How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously

For decades, flying saucers were a punch line. Then the U.S. government got over the taboo.

by Gideon Lewis-Kraus via The New Yorker on April 30, 2021

A man standing at a crossroads holding an American flag.

The Wasting of the Evangelical Mind

The peculiarities of how American Christianity took shape help explain believers’ vulnerability to conspiratorial thinking and misinformation.

by Michael Luo via The New Yorker on March 4, 2021

QAnon and the Satanic Panics of Yesteryear

What they can teach us about what to expect.

by Daniel N. Gullotta via The Bulwark on February 25, 2021

Mitch McConnell wearing a mask

McConnell’s Task: Purging the Crackpots and Bigots

The impeachment exposed the need for Republican leaders to banish the extremists and bigots from their movement.

by Kevin M. Schultz via Made By History on February 15, 2021

Marjorie Taylor Greene

Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Just the Latest Radical White Woman Poisoning Politics

Such women have long pushed American politics to the right, and their ideas have become mainstream.

by Elizabeth Gillespie McRae via Made By History on February 6, 2021

Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican National Convention

How the GOP Surrendered to Extremism

Sixty years ago, many GOP leaders resisted radicals in their ranks. Now they’re not even trying.

by Ronald Brownstein via The Atlantic on February 4, 2021

This 1856 political cartoon depicts the responses of the three candidates to the results of the election. Winning Democrat James Buchanan sits reading the returns of the election while newspaper editors approach from the left. Behind them the defeated Republican candidate John C. Fremont rides off into the West. To the right the second defeated candidate, Millard Fillmore, laments his fall into the “caverns of Know-Nothingism.”

Here’s What Happens to a Conspiracy-Driven Party

The modern GOP isn't the first party to embrace huge conspiracies. But the lessons should be sobering.

by Zachary Karabell via Politico Magazine on January 30, 2021

Ronald Reagan

The Fairness Doctrine Sounds A Lot Better Than It Actually Was

A return to the fairness doctrine wouldn't curb the damage caused by the far-right media ecosystem fueling much of America's conspiracy-driven politics.

by Nicole Hemmer via CNN on January 27, 2021

Ronald Reagan at a news conference in Los Angeles on Jan. 4, 1965, after announcing that he would run for governor of California.

Long Before QAnon, Ronald Reagan and The GOP Purged John Birch Extremists From The Party

Six decades ago, leaders in the GOP backed away from the conspiracy theories peddled by the leader of the increasingly influential John Birch Society.

by Erick Trickey via Retropolis on January 15, 2021

A TV Documentary Shows the Deep Roots of Right-Wing Conspiracy

In 1964, the John Birch Society was the most active far-right group in the United States—unless you count the Republican Party.

by Richard Brody via The New Yorker on January 14, 2021

Flags flying at the Capitol Siege, including one that says "Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president."

The Capitol Riot Revealed the Darkest Nightmares of White Evangelical America

How 150 years of apocalyptic agitation culminated in an insurrection.

by Matthew Avery Sutton via The New Republic on January 14, 2021

Trump supporters standing outside of the U.S. Capitol building.

What Pro-Trump Insurrectionists Share — and Don’t — With the American Revolution

Some supporters of the violent mob scene at the Capitol proclaimed it was the beginning of a “Second American Revolution.”

by Jordan E. Taylor via Made By History on January 7, 2021

a stadium full of people

McCarthyism Was Never Defeated. Trumpism Won’t Be Either.

Censure brought down a crusading anti-communist senator but fired up his followers.

by Beverly Gage via Washington Post on December 4, 2020

circulatory system diagram

A Brief History of "The System"

Tracing the twisting path of a resistance slogan, from the Nazis to the hippies to Trump.

by Jackson Arn via 3 Quarks Daily on October 19, 2020

The Trump family at a public event

Why is the Nationalist Right Hallucinating a ‘Communist Enemy’?

Reactionary leaders are invoking communism as a way of attacking the left, says author and activist Richard Seymour.

by Richard Seymour via The Guardian on September 26, 2020

circa 1795: Reverend Timothy Dwight IV (1752 - 1817)

What We Can Learn From Early American Conspiracy Theories

How an Illuminati conspiracy theory captured American imaginations in the nation’s earliest days.

by John Fea via TIME on September 24, 2020

A motel that burned down in the Pacific Northwest wildfires, with a melted sign seen through orange smoke.

Scapegoating Antifa for Starting Wildfires Distracts from the Real Causes

Radicals have long been blamed for wildfires in the Pacific Northwest.

by Steven C. Beda via Made By History on September 18, 2020

QAnon Didn't Just Spring Forth From the Void

Calling QAnon a "cult" or "religion" hides how its practices are born of deeply American social and political traditions.

by Adam Willems, Megan Goodwin via Religion Dispatches on September 10, 2020

Stretching to Understand Renegade Urban Fireworks

As was the case in 200 years ago, this summer's relentless pyrotechnics may not be meaningless acts of an unthinking mob.

by Marika Plater via The Metropole on September 9, 2020

A Brief History of Dangerous Others

Wielding the outside agitator trope has always, at bottom, been a way of putting dissidents in their place.

by Richard Kreitner, Rick Perlstein via New York Review of Books on July 27, 2020

Joseph McCarthy and the Force of Political Falsehoods

McCarthy never sent a single “subversive” to jail, but, decades later, the spirit of his conspiracy-mongering endures.

by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on July 27, 2020

The Cure and the Disease

Social Darwinism from AIDS to Covid-19.

by Erik Baker via The Drift on June 19, 2020

Rumor Mill

Watching fake news spread in 1942.

by Tracy Campbell via Lapham’s Quarterly on May 20, 2020

Illustration of a mob of white men burning down a building.

What a White-Supremacist Coup Looks Like

In Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, the victory of racial prejudice over democratic principle and the rule of law was unnervingly complete.

by Caleb Crain via The New Yorker on April 20, 2020

Did an Illuminati Conspiracy Theory Help Elect Thomas Jefferson?

The 1800 election shows there is nothing new about conspiracy theories, and that they really take hold when we don’t trust each other.

by Colin Dickey via Politico Magazine on March 29, 2020

The Lavender Scare

In 1950, the U.S. State Department fired 91 employees because they were homosexual or suspected of being homosexual.

by Matthew Wills, Naoko Shibusawa via JSTOR Daily on November 18, 2019

A crowd at an Industrial Workers of the World rally in New York in 1914.

Why the Massacre at Centralia 100 Years Ago is Critically Important Today

Working-class radicalism once transcended nativist division — and can do so again.

by Steven C. Beda via Made By History on November 9, 2019

The Difference Between Nixon and Trump is Fox News

Fox News shields President Trump, but his love for their conspiracies might bring him down.

by Nicole Hemmer via Vox on October 7, 2019

Map of 1796 presidential election electoral votes by state.

The Founders Knew That Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections was Dangerous

The origins of our efforts to keep foreign countries out of our elections.

by Jordan E. Taylor via Made By History on October 7, 2019

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