A Government Driven by Conspiracy Theories
QAnon was one thing. But the Trump Administration is motivated by dangerous conspiracies.
On September 22, U.S. President Donald Trump and his top officials asserted without evidence that pregnant women who take acetaminophen (A.k.a. Tylenol) was a cause of autism. He and top officials also repeated debunked claims about childhood vaccines and autism. On the same day, Trump designated antifa (short for anti-fascist) as a "domestic terrorist organization," and threatened “investigatory and prosecutorial action” against its supporters. Antifa has no headquarters or listed membership; autonomous groups of left-wing activists describe themselves as antifa.
Collectively, these announcements illustrate how the second term of Donald Trump is driven by conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories spread in a climate of intense fear, worry, and paranoia; they deny mainstream opinion and allege a sinister plot by shadowy groups. Trump continues to claim that he didn't lose the 2020 election. The consequences of this conspiracy theory are dire: his administration is attempting to undermine future free and fair elections based on these lies.
Trump has had an interest in anti-vaccine theories since at least December 2007, when at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he asserted a link between autism and childhood vaccines, adding that he and his wife, Melania, had slowed the immunization schedule for their son Barron, then around 2. In the announcement this week, Trump said that research about vaccines and autism had been suppressed, adding that drug companies and possibly doctors had not "given out [information] freely over the years." Flying in the face of the medical consensus which has yet to substantiate a link between acetaminophen and autism, he told pregnant women in most cases to "tough it out" when they have a fever: "Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it. Fight like hell not to take it.” (Fevers can be dangerous in early pregnancy; acetaminophen is considered to be safe for pregnant women, unlike ibuprofen and aspirin.)
Trump blamed left-wing groups immediately following the September 10 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. In his first remarks -- before a suspect was even in custody -- he said, "For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans, like Charlie, to Nazis and the world's worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we're seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now." After Kirk's widow said at the September 21 memorial that she forgave his alleged killer, Trump said he disagreed and added, "I hate my opponent."
The September 22 proclamation -- which doesn't have the force of law as the U.S. doesn't have a domestic terrorism statute -- alleges that antifa "recruits, trains, and radicalizes young Americans to engage in this violence and suppression of political activity, then employs elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives, conceal its funding sources and operations in an effort to frustrate law enforcement, and recruit additional members." There's no public information linking the alleged gunman with any left-wing groups, let alone self-described antifa activists.
Governments driven by conspiracy theories are dangerous. Stalin's Great Purges of 1936-8, where hundreds of thousands were sent to prison camps and executed, was driven by an unfounded theory that the Soviet leader was surrounded by enemies in the aftermath of the December 1934 assassination of the Communist Party official Sergei Kirov, who, somewhat like Kirk, was a younger, more effective advocate for the cause than the leader himself. (To this day, it's not known what motivated the individual who killed Kirov.) Other tyrannical regimes in Germany and China have used conspiracy theories to crack down on perceived enemies.
Trump's government driven by conspiracy theories is also dangerous. The Centers for Disease Control, under the leadership of anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is expanding research on the debunked link between vaccines and autism. Meanwhile, he halted $500 million of funding on mRNA vaccines that prevent illnesses like COVID, widely considered to be the frontier of medical science. Over the weekend, Trump implored his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to move faster in prosecuting his perceived enemies like New York Attorney General Letitia James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and former FBI Director James Comey. On social media, Trump said: "JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!" Meanwhile, MSNBC reported that the Justice Department halted an investigation into Tom Homan, now the White House Border Czar, for accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help undercover FBI agents posing as business executives win government contracts in a second Trump administration.
After his first term in office, it's tempting to dismiss Trump's conspiracy theories as just talk: while he suggested drinking bleach could cure COVID in 2020, he also funded Operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccines. However, in his second term, Trump has hired ideologues like Kennedy and loyalists in the Justice Department. Independent officials at the CDC and Justice have been fired. Whttile there has been a lot of attention on movements based on conspiracy theories, it is orders of magnitude more dangerous when the full force of government is exerted in the service of lies.
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