In the hours and days after the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, there appeared to be a broad, bipartisan consensus that what had just occurred was a flagrant assault on democracy and the peaceful transition of power. Republicans who had been loyal to then-president Donald Trump acknowledged he was responsible for […]
The left-wing journalist, documentary-maker and crusading commentator John Pilger has died at the age of 84, eliciting a wave of mostly flattering obituaries. Among the many eulogies and effusive praise for his campaigning reporting style, fewer tributes have critiqued Pilger’s reflexive anti-American worldview and embrace of conspiracy theories – a visceral embrace that escalated over his lifetime. Nor has Pilger’s posthumous reputation been much diminished by his repeated denials or contextualization of the atrocities of dictators, mass murderers and terrorists, from Mao and Pol Pot to Slobodan Milosevic, Bashar al-Assad, Osama bin Laden, Vladimir Putin and more. As a young reporter in the early 1960s, Pilger moved from his […]
Conspiracy theories about powerful elites who rule through secrecy have long been a staple of fringe literature and paranoid fantasies. From the Freemasons and the Illuminati of the 18th century to the Rothschilds and other Jewish financiers referred to in works like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to today’s supposedly all-powerful “deep state,” […]
During his tenure at Fox News, Jesse Watters has risen from compiling blatantly racist on-the-street ambush interviews for disgraced former Fox host Bill O'Reilly to becoming one of the network’s highest-rated hosts. That rise has been fueled in part by Watters' embrace of the network's favored conspiracy theories, including questioning the integrity of the 2020 […]
In nearly three years since a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, far-right figures have made a claim that flies in the face of reality: That the Jan. 6 attack was actually driven by far-left antifa activists dressed up like Trump supporters, or by […]
As pundits and politicos spar over whether Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign will factor into the outcome of the 2024 election, one thing is clear: Kennedy’s political following is built on a movement that seeks to legitimize conspiracy theories. His claims decrying vaccines have roiled scientists and medical experts and stoked anger over whether […]
During an interview with Blaze personality Alex Stein, Tucker Carlson was asked about his thoughts on an ice wall and flat Earth theory. Tucker responded by stated he is "open to anything". Stein: "What do you think of flat Earth theory, Tucker?" Carlson: "Well, I'm open to anything, but I just know from shooting—" Stein: […]
The account of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was restored on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday after owner Elon Musk conducted a poll among followers on Saturday and pronounced: “The People have spoken and so it shall be.” “This will be bad for X financially, but principles matter more than money,” he added. It […]
When notorious pedophile and wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein died in a jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors, he left conspiracy theorists with a tangled web of lurid mysteries that would keep them busy for years to come. Suspicions that Epstein hadn’t really hanged himself soon gave way to […]
In the CeMAS report titled “From the Crisis to the Reich”, significant trends within the conspiracy-ideological sovereignist milieu of “Reichsbürger” and other groups in Germany since the COVID-19 pandemic are analyzed. The report characterizes conspiracy-ideological sovereignism as a component of the German far right with a longstanding antisemitic tradition. The sovereignist milieu promotes a political […]
