Interesting story from Democracy Digest

Gone are the days when conspiracy-mongers had to find shards of evidence and contort it to convince people. Now, [under the new conspiracism,] just their malevolence is needed. If a concocted scenario can’t be proved, then perhaps it can’t be disproved either. That is toxic for a stable society and politics. So how did we get here, and how do we get out? The Economist asks:

Nancy L. Rosenblum of Harvard University and Russell Muirhead of Dartmouth College are the authors of “A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy” (Princeton, 2019). Though conspiracy theories have always existed, they note that today something is different and dangerous: “Conspiracy without the theory.”

“Its proponents dispense with evidence and explanation. Their charges take the form of bare assertion,” they explain in an interview. “It is a powerful force, with the capacity to animate popular fury, to delegitimise political opposition, and to hijack government institutions.”

Full story found here.