3 ms·

>Put another way: American culture is prone to conspiratorial beliefs, but isn't (yet) prone to Big Lies. Lost Cause mythology, pretty much everything related

>Put another way: American culture is prone to conspiratorial beliefs, but isn't (yet) prone to Big Lies. Lost Cause mythology, pretty much everything related to the popular conception of mid-century American society, "It's not a recession because hiring and consumer spending are strong," etc.

woodruffw 3y ago
I don’t think any of these things are conspiracy theories. Lost Cause mythology is definitely revisionist pseudohistory and not a conspiracy; I don’t know what the alleged recession conspiracy would be. (To my original point about breadth and depth: the adoption of non-conspiratorial but otherwise fringe views is a large part of what makes contemporary conspiracy both syncretic and naturally limiting — a “big tent” policy around conspiracies makes it hard to latch onto a single Big Lie.)
- underlipton 3y ago
  >In the years immediately following the Civil War, there was a systematic and concerted effort to reframe the war in order to reunite the nation, quell bitterness, and assuage the ego of the defeated Southerners. Known as the “Lost Cause” narrative, this version of the Civil War downplays the conflict over slaveholder rights, amplifies the notion of “states’ rights,” and embraces the honorable valor of soldiers on both sides. https://blogs.iu.edu/establishingshot/2021/02/15/the-myth-of-the-lost-cause-in-buster-keatons-the-general/ https://blogs.iu.edu/establishingshot/2021/02/15/the-myth-of... Government, industry, and academia conspired to disseminate a narrative regarding the Civil War that they knew not to be factual but that served their sociopolitical purposes. This is the textbook definition of a Big Lie, and it was the standard interpretation of events for more than one hundred years in large swathes of this country. >I don’t know what the alleged recession conspiracy would be. Because it was successful. You didn't address the mid-century, so I'll expound: the Big Lie of a stable and affluent 50s, where the standard American nuclear family lived in a modest home in a nice suburb and espoused traditional values that kept the country on the straight-and-narrow (adopted most infamously in the various incarnations of "Make America Great Again", which were absolutely centralized campaigns by an identifiable set of figures) is oft taken to be the truth - never mind that this was the era of McCarthyism, war in Asia, "urban renewal", racial strife, PTSD-addled fathers and drunk housewives inflicting Baby Boomers with trauma that warps the American social landscape to this day, etc. There is a non-trivial part of America that wants to go back to an era that never existed, because they bought the Big Lie of its utopianism.
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I think this conflates conspiracy and conspiracy theory: there was a concerted post-reconstruction effort to distort the facts of the civil war. You could even call that a conspiracy. But it lacks the “hidden” narrative of a conspiracy theory: both the Lost Cause and actual civil war history were taught in the open. I don’t think the 1950s American Dream is a Big Lie. A Big Lie is specifically a gross and intentional, top-down fabrication that displaces truth (because the lie is inconceivable). 1950s America is none of these things: it’s a collective fantasy based on distorted and politicized memories. It’s also not taught as a normative history (although that may unfortunately change). This is perhaps pedantic, but I think there’s value in splitting these things apart: the US is chock full of rosy lies about its past, actual conspiracies, and conspiracy theories. But the closest thing we’ve had in living memory to a Big Lie is the lie of a stolen 2020 election, which (as of yet) has not achieved the kind of astounding dominance needed to survive as a Big Lie. But we will see.
    - underlipton 3y ago
      >I think this conflates conspiracy and conspiracy theory: there was a concerted post-reconstruction effort to distort the facts of the civil war. You could even call that a conspiracy. But it lacks the “hidden” narrative of a conspiracy theory: both the Lost Cause and actual civil war history were taught in the open. This just exposes your perspective bias. Black families would tell you that it was an obvious lie that was hidden from white America, which was increasingly made up of people with no familial memory of the antebellum period (and even fewer with direct contact to either slavery or the Civil War). To characterize (perhaps liberally): you had white people of influence and a longer-lived ancestral presence in the country, colluding to distort facts about an event that the families of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation immigrants were not here to witness. It was not just a Big Lie, it was a Grand Lie, spanning decades and becoming so normalized that its influence on political sentiment remains even after the lie itself has been largely (though not completely) dispelled. You also see echoes, bolstered by the preceding lie, in the "race riots" (more correctly termed "massacres") of the early 1920s. >1950s America is none of these things: it’s a collective fantasy based on distorted and politicized memories. It’s also not taught as a normative history (although that may unfortunately change). I don't think this is correct. It was a view of America that was propagandized at the time. It was inconceivable (particularly to industrialists who were relying on a "return to normalcy" to shore up national morale after the nightmare of total war) that America could emerge from WWII, get the Good End, and yet still have all of these problems. So, as instructed by our elites, we pretended they didn't exist, slowly building the powderkeg that exploded in the 60s and 70s. It's a testament to its strength as a Big Lie that it still lives past its nominal reconciliation. I'll add climate change denial (energy companies) and public health concerns about smoking (cigarette companies) to the list. >But the closest thing we’ve had in living memory to a Big Lie is the lie of a stolen 2020 election. Iraq, as it turns out, does not have WMDs, though I imagine that the proportion of American flag kitsch-to-population remains higher than pre-2003. I'm a little concerned that you're so adamant that we've not experienced this seemingly common phenomenon. Perhaps we need to discuss "American Exceptionalism"?

woodruffw 3y ago

I don’t think any of these things are conspiracy theories. Lost Cause mythology is definitely revisionist pseudohistory and not a conspiracy; I don’t know what the alleged recession conspiracy would be. (To my original point about breadth and depth: the adoption of non-conspiratorial but otherwise fringe views is a large part of what makes contemporary conspiracy both syncretic and naturally limiting — a “big tent” policy around conspiracies makes it hard to latch onto a single Big Lie.)

underlipton 3y ago
>In the years immediately following the Civil War, there was a systematic and concerted effort to reframe the war in order to reunite the nation, quell bitterness, and assuage the ego of the defeated Southerners. Known as the “Lost Cause” narrative, this version of the Civil War downplays the conflict over slaveholder rights, amplifies the notion of “states’ rights,” and embraces the honorable valor of soldiers on both sides. https://blogs.iu.edu/establishingshot/2021/02/15/the-myth-of-the-lost-cause-in-buster-keatons-the-general/ https://blogs.iu.edu/establishingshot/2021/02/15/the-myth-of... Government, industry, and academia conspired to disseminate a narrative regarding the Civil War that they knew not to be factual but that served their sociopolitical purposes. This is the textbook definition of a Big Lie, and it was the standard interpretation of events for more than one hundred years in large swathes of this country. >I don’t know what the alleged recession conspiracy would be. Because it was successful. You didn't address the mid-century, so I'll expound: the Big Lie of a stable and affluent 50s, where the standard American nuclear family lived in a modest home in a nice suburb and espoused traditional values that kept the country on the straight-and-narrow (adopted most infamously in the various incarnations of "Make America Great Again", which were absolutely centralized campaigns by an identifiable set of figures) is oft taken to be the truth - never mind that this was the era of McCarthyism, war in Asia, "urban renewal", racial strife, PTSD-addled fathers and drunk housewives inflicting Baby Boomers with trauma that warps the American social landscape to this day, etc. There is a non-trivial part of America that wants to go back to an era that never existed, because they bought the Big Lie of its utopianism.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  I think this conflates conspiracy and conspiracy theory: there was a concerted post-reconstruction effort to distort the facts of the civil war. You could even call that a conspiracy. But it lacks the “hidden” narrative of a conspiracy theory: both the Lost Cause and actual civil war history were taught in the open. I don’t think the 1950s American Dream is a Big Lie. A Big Lie is specifically a gross and intentional, top-down fabrication that displaces truth (because the lie is inconceivable). 1950s America is none of these things: it’s a collective fantasy based on distorted and politicized memories. It’s also not taught as a normative history (although that may unfortunately change). This is perhaps pedantic, but I think there’s value in splitting these things apart: the US is chock full of rosy lies about its past, actual conspiracies, and conspiracy theories. But the closest thing we’ve had in living memory to a Big Lie is the lie of a stolen 2020 election, which (as of yet) has not achieved the kind of astounding dominance needed to survive as a Big Lie. But we will see.
  - underlipton 3y ago
    >I think this conflates conspiracy and conspiracy theory: there was a concerted post-reconstruction effort to distort the facts of the civil war. You could even call that a conspiracy. But it lacks the “hidden” narrative of a conspiracy theory: both the Lost Cause and actual civil war history were taught in the open. This just exposes your perspective bias. Black families would tell you that it was an obvious lie that was hidden from white America, which was increasingly made up of people with no familial memory of the antebellum period (and even fewer with direct contact to either slavery or the Civil War). To characterize (perhaps liberally): you had white people of influence and a longer-lived ancestral presence in the country, colluding to distort facts about an event that the families of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation immigrants were not here to witness. It was not just a Big Lie, it was a Grand Lie, spanning decades and becoming so normalized that its influence on political sentiment remains even after the lie itself has been largely (though not completely) dispelled. You also see echoes, bolstered by the preceding lie, in the "race riots" (more correctly termed "massacres") of the early 1920s. >1950s America is none of these things: it’s a collective fantasy based on distorted and politicized memories. It’s also not taught as a normative history (although that may unfortunately change). I don't think this is correct. It was a view of America that was propagandized at the time. It was inconceivable (particularly to industrialists who were relying on a "return to normalcy" to shore up national morale after the nightmare of total war) that America could emerge from WWII, get the Good End, and yet still have all of these problems. So, as instructed by our elites, we pretended they didn't exist, slowly building the powderkeg that exploded in the 60s and 70s. It's a testament to its strength as a Big Lie that it still lives past its nominal reconciliation. I'll add climate change denial (energy companies) and public health concerns about smoking (cigarette companies) to the list. >But the closest thing we’ve had in living memory to a Big Lie is the lie of a stolen 2020 election. Iraq, as it turns out, does not have WMDs, though I imagine that the proportion of American flag kitsch-to-population remains higher than pre-2003. I'm a little concerned that you're so adamant that we've not experienced this seemingly common phenomenon. Perhaps we need to discuss "American Exceptionalism"?