A simple explanation for this shift is that misperceptions often focus on the president and are most commonly held by members of the other party. Just as Republicans disproportionately endorsed prominent misperceptions during the Obama years (like the birther and death panel myths), Democrats are now the opposition partisans especially likely to fall victim to dubious claims about the Trump administration.
In other words, losing the presidential election made Democrats more likely to blame secret conspiracies for the state of the world, while making Republicans less willing to indulge these sorts of claims. If you dont believe me, just compare your social media news feeds with what you saw during the campaignor ask yourself who you think is behind the news you are seeing.
Its true to an extent that, pure independents notwithstanding, partisanship drives conspiracy-mongering on both ends of the political spectrum. But its also the case that the two tribes are very different. There are no easy parallels between Democrats and Republicans propensity for believing conspiracy theories. The anti-Trump theories havent traveled nearly as far as anti-Obama and anti-Clinton ones have because the left and right are not symmetrical political tendencies in America.
Democrats are much more heterogeneous than Republicans, which makes it harder to spread conspiracy theories among their ranks. While the Republican Party is solidly a party of the right, with some variation between the Tea Party wing and conventional conservatives, but within a narrow spectrum. Democrats are divided into factions that run from Bernie Sanders leftists to Hillary Clinton liberals to Heidi Heitkamp centrists, and even have earned temporary support from a smattering of Never Trump conservatives like David Frum, who voted for Hillary Clinton.
The ideological mishmash of the Democratic Party helps explain an interesting fact about the Russia conspiracy theorists themselves: They often arent from the left at all.
Beauchamps article focuses on three major conspiracy theorists: Mensch, the Observers John Schindler, and photographer Claude Taylor, who tweets under the handle @TrueFactsStated. Of the three, only Taylor is anything close to a liberal Democrat. Mensch was a Conservative member of Parliament and until recently led Heat Street, Rupert Murdochs attempted Breitbart imitation. Schindler is a former National Security Agency analyst with hawkish foreign policy views. In 2015, National Review wrote, Schindler has amassed a loyal following, particularly among conservatives, for his blunt missives on cyber-security, foreign policy, and intelligence.... Conservative pundits and scholars alike have made Schindler their go-to authority on national-security matters. Hes featured regularly on conservative talker Hugh Hewitts popular radio show, and his blog posts are often cited in top Republican consultant Rick Wilsons commentary. Wilson, as it happens, is another member of the Russiasphere cited in Beauchamps article, along with the anonymous Twitter account @counterchekist, whose author identifies as Republican.
In other words, the Russiasphere is not particularly liberalnor are liberals especially fond of the Russiasphere. Debunkings of Mensch and company have become standard fare in left-wing, liberal, and centrist publications (Beauchamps own article is an example of the genre). Current Affairs describes Mensch as legitimately paranoid and deluded. BuzzFeed has counted 210 people and organizations that Mench has accused of being under Russian influence, dryly remarking that in many cases, she lacks strong, or any, evidence connecting her targets to Russias campaign to influence the 2016 election. Rolling Stones Matt Taibbi described Mensch as a noted loon. And the former Obama aides who host the podcast Pod Save America have warned their listeners to avoid these conspiracy theorists.
Luckily for the Democratic Party, Beauchamp correctly pointed out, there isnt really a pre-built media ecosystem for amplifying this like there was for Republicans. In the absence of left-wing Limbaughs and Breitbarts, media outlets totally unconcerned with factual rigor, its much harder for this stuff to become mainstream. But hard doesnt mean impossible. The most worrying sign, he added, is that some mainstream figures and publications are starting to validate Russiasphere claims. As evidence, he cited scattered cases of prominent liberals briefly giving credence to the conspiracy theorists. The New York Times published a Mensch op-ed column, one that was criticized by the Times own reporters. Donna Brazile, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted Menschs article and thanked her on Twitter for good journalism. And Markey, the Massachusetts senator, parroted the grand jury lie while on CNN.
But Markeys mistake illustrates the difference between Democrats and Republicans: He apologized. There still exists a feedback loop on the left, so when a prominent person falls for a conspiracy theory, they are challenged by the media and willing to correct themselves. Conversely, conservatives tend to adhere to a no apologies ethos that makes admitting error verboten.
The few scattered cases of liberals echoing the Russiasphere are minuscule compared to the vast infrastructure thats spreading conspiracy theories on the right. First and foremost there is Trump, the erstwhile birther who has continued to promote conspiracy theories from the White House, like his claim in March that he was wiretapped by Obama. That lie, which originated from right-wing radio hosts Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh, gained currency thanks to Trumps pulpit and the power of partisanship: A CBS poll in late March found that 74 percent of Republicans believed it was very or somewhat likely that Trumps campaign was wiretapped or otherwise surveilled by the government.
Beyond Trump, major conservative figures like Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, and Fox News Sean Hannity are spreading the most dishonest smears imaginable. Gingrich and Hannity have both recently pushed the lie that Seth Rich, the slain Democratic National Committee staffer, was murdered because he provided Hillary Clinton emails to Wikileaks.
We have this very strange story now of this young man who worked for the Democratic National Committee, who apparently was assassinated at 4 in the morning, having given WikiLeaks something like 53,000 emails and 17,000 attachments, Gingrich said Sunday on Fox and Friends. Nobodys investigating that, and what does that tell you about whats going on? Because it turns out, it wasnt the Russians. It was this young guy who, I suspect, was disgusted by the corruption of the Democratic National Committee. Hes been killed, and apparently nothing serious has been done to investigative his murder. Neither Gingrich nor Hannity have apologized.
Whereas left-of-center publications have criticized Mensch, most conservative outlets have been silent about the Rich conspiracy theory (National Review, The Weekly Standard) or have given voice to it (The Federalist); The Daily Caller, in a rare exception, refers to the Rich conspiracy theory as debunked. Conservative media tends to be strongly tribalist and self-pitying, adhering to the idea that liberal bias is the biggest problem in news coverage. Such ideological tunnel vision disinclines these outlets right to counter conspiratorial thinking in their own ranks. It doesnt suit their narrative about the lamestream media, and its bad for business.
Figures like Mensch are pests, but they will almost certainly not gain the same audience on the left that Alex Jones and Hannity command on the right. The key members of the Russiasphere have Twitter followings in the hundreds of thousands, at most. Hannity hosts a primetime show on what was, until recently, the most watched cable news network in the country; he has millions of viewers. The real lesson to learn from Mensch and company is not that the left is suddenly falling for conspiracy theories with the same fervor as the right has for decades. Its that these theories can be largely smothered if you have a vibrant and diverse political party that is open to debate and beholden to a fact-based press. The tragedy of modern American politics is that only one of the two major parties fits that bill.
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No, Liberals Are Not Falling for Conspiracy Theories Just Like ... - New Republic