In 1996, the great Sam Francis wrote a long essay on conspiracy theories. After noting that not since the 1940s “has the American presidency been as engulfed in distrust and suspicion as it is today,” he wrote:
Whatever else conspiracy theories prove, their prevalence at certain periods of history invariably shows the impending collapse of public trust in the way things are, a readiness to ascribe to the occupants of a society’s most visible and respected positions of leadership the most villainous purposes and the most ruthless means of attaining them.
None of the Presidents who followed Bill Clinton managed to regain the majority of the public’s trust. During George W. Bush’s presidency, leftists spun tales about how both the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, and warned of a looming authoritarian evangelical theocracy. During Barack Obama’s tenure, many Republicans had theories about the President’s true place of birth and real religious beliefs. Some foretold that millions of Americans would soon be herded into FEMA concentration camps. In 2016, the pendulum swung back, with liberal claims that Russian hackers had elected Donald Trump, and that our President was controlled by foreign intelligence agencies.
Now, with the Democrats again in the White House, the Right has harvested another batch of doubts, suspicions, and recriminations. All the whispers of the last two years have reminded me of Sam Francis’s three reasons to doubt the theories of his day: “[their] absence of reliable evidence . . . distraction from issues of more substance . . . and the delusion of an invincible enemy that they spawn.” Drawing from Murray Rothbard, Francis expanded on the first point by saying that “simply showing that an event benefited a particular party (the cui bono argument) does not prove that that party was behind the event; y0u have to produce empirical evidence of the party’s causal role in bringing the event about.” This addresses the laziest conspiracy theories I see, such as:
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