SocProf reviewed Conspiracy Theories by Joseph E. Uscinski
Both Side-ism under the Guide of Academic Objectivity
1 star
That book irritated me and I could not wait to be done with it. It's mercifully short. The premise is that we all believe in some conspiracy theories and most are believed by few people (according to opinion polls) so what's the big deal. We all need to calm down. After all, Trump accused Hillary of a lot of conspiratorial stuff but she did too. And a lot of Democrats believed that Trump conspired with Putin to win the 2016 election and it was totally a conspiracy theory and Bill Barr and Matt Taibbi showed it was nonsense. I mean, wtf. I don't have to explain how using opinion polls showing only 5% of respondents believing in Q shows it's nothing is misguided. What the authors completely miss is structural power. Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. There is no Democratic equivalent of Q and while there might be …
That book irritated me and I could not wait to be done with it. It's mercifully short. The premise is that we all believe in some conspiracy theories and most are believed by few people (according to opinion polls) so what's the big deal. We all need to calm down. After all, Trump accused Hillary of a lot of conspiratorial stuff but she did too. And a lot of Democrats believed that Trump conspired with Putin to win the 2016 election and it was totally a conspiracy theory and Bill Barr and Matt Taibbi showed it was nonsense. I mean, wtf. I don't have to explain how using opinion polls showing only 5% of respondents believing in Q shows it's nothing is misguided. What the authors completely miss is structural power. Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. There is no Democratic equivalent of Q and while there might be some conspiracy theories on the left, they have nowhere near the level of influence that conspiracy theorists have on the right, nor the media structure to amplify those conspiracy theories, not the actual elected officials to propagate them. I have read much better work on this from either other scholars (Meme Wars by Joan Donovan and others) or journalists who have done this work for a long time (David Neiwert), or even Cultish on the type of thinking that is pervasive in cult-like environments. Don't waste your time with this book.