Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in the Age of Trump, 1st ed. 2019

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1  Introduction: Conspiracy Theory versus Theorizing Conspiracy

                Return of the Paranoid Style in American Politics

                What We Know from Survey Research

                Conspiracy and Conspiracy Theory Defined

                The Paranoid Style and Populism

                Trumpian Conspiracy Theories

Chapter 2Paranoia, Conspiracy Panic, and the Regime of Truth

                I’m Not a Conspiracy Theorist, but…       

                The Shadow of Hofstadter

The Regime of Truth

Fake News

Historians, Social Scientists and “Proving” Conspiracy Theory

A Typology of Conspiracy Theories

JFK, 9/11 and the Regime of Truth

Consequences and Summing Up

Chapter 3 Trumpism, Fake News and the “New Normal”

                Populism, Paranoia and Celebrity

                Fake News

Mueller’s Conspiracy Theory and the Media

                Conspiracism and Threats to Democracy

Chapter 4Suspicious Minds, the 2016 Election and Its Aftermath

Reading Voters’ Entrails

Populism and Election 2016

                Fake News and Russian Intervention in Election 2016

The Year of Voting Dangerously

Partisan Conspiracy Beliefs

Social Immobility and Unresponsive Elites

Globalization, Economic Distress and the Vote

Suspicion and the Vote

Chapter 5 Globalization, Populism, Conspiracism

                Suspicious Minds in the New World Order           

                Immigrants, Nativism, and Trump

                Wall Street and Monassen PA

                Transnational Capitalism and the Nation State

                Nationalism, Economic Discontent, Geographical Stress in Election 2016

                Populism versus Transnational Capitalism

                Conclusion: The Great Disrupter

Chapter 6 Dark Money and Trumpism

                Money, Politics and Trump

                Dark Money and Billionaire Cabals

                Show us the Dark Money Trail

                Conspiracy Panic and Muckraking

                Corruption in a Republic of Money

                Dark Money as a Sphere of Conspiracism

                Conspiracy or Just Plain Old Interest Group Politics?

Chapter 7 The Deep State, Hegemony, and Democracy

                What is the Deep State? What is it Not?

                Parapolitics

                Donald Trump and the Deep State

                Conspiracy Fiction, Conspiracy Reality

                Parapolitics and Blowback

                Parapolitics, the Deep State and Russiagate

Chapter 8 Conclusion: Conspiracy Theories and Political Decay

                Needed a New Regime of Truth

                What We Can Learn from Conspiracism Abroad

                A Research Agenda

                Last Words: No Time to Panic

Daniel C. Hellinger is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Webster University, USA. He has previously published: “Paranoia, Conspiracy, Hegemony in American Politics” in Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order (2003) and “Conspiracy Theory and the Paranoid Style” in American Political Culture: An Encyclopedia (2015), and co-authored The Democratic Façade (2^nd edition, 1991). His most recent books are Comparative Politics of Latin America: Democracy at Last? (2014), Global Security Watch: Venezuela (2012), and, as co-editor and contributor, Bolivarian Democracy in Venezuela: Participation, Politics and Culture (2011).

Makes the case that Trump’s presidency demands that conspiracies and conspiracy theories be taken more seriously by political scientists and academics, not simply discarded as social paranoia

Argues that conspiracies are connected in important ways to fake news, political corruption, surveillance of citizens, and other threats to democracy in the age of Trump

Finds paranoid conspiracy theories are as likely to be peddled by elites as by populist movements