Conspiracy theories originating on the extreme right have invaded American political life. And that's not good for democracy.

“There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.” FRANCIS BACON, Of Suspicion, 1625

America, as the historian Richard Hofstadter famously noted in 1964, is a place peculiarly given to “the paranoid style” of politics — the idea that history is no accident, but rather the outcome of a series of conspiracies. The surface of events is never what it appears, but instead hides deep, dark and destructive forces.

What Hofstadter called “movements of suspicious discontent” have targeted imaginary threats ranging from the Illuminati, Freemasons and Jesuits of long ago all the way to the Communist infiltration alleged by Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society in the mid-20th century. And since Hofstadter’s seminal essay, the list of alleged evildoers has kept on growing, especially on the far right, where global elites are today seen as secretly laboring to build a totalitarian “New World Order.”

More SPLC BS here: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/ma...