Yeah, this is the distinctive feature of conspiracy theories in our age, that they make adherents feel like they are heroes in a MCU style cosmic sci-fi epic.https://twitter.com/BrentSirota/status/1513914579734175745 …
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To hypothesize this a bit: the older John Birch conspiracy theories were also media-ized. To join in, you felt like you were in a John Buchan novel and/or Hitchcock film.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
yea i dont think this is "of this age" per se, Tim Melley makes a persuasive case it starts in the late 50s and hasn't really stopped (its just that the distribution of accumulated wealth has stagnated/regressed so its appeal as a form of agency has increased)
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Replying to @RhetoricPJ @HeerJeet
don't these myths (conspiracies that are narrative and produce significance) have predecessors all the way back to colonial times? counter-subversion narratives have animated US politics since the beginning no?
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Yeah, they all go back to 18th century (some a bit earlier). But the way they're experienced is different. There's an sci-fi element to all this that is newish
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