RIGHT SPEAK: Desperate Trump Trots Out Conspiracy Theories

With Donald Trump’s electoral chances in ashes, Trump’s goal has shifted from victory to spin: his future relies on the widespread perception that he’s a fighter, not a failure. In order to achieve such messaging magic in the face of a historic defeat, Trump must pump the myth that he’s running a close election that could be won if only there weren’t such nefarious forces lined up against him.

This conspiracism isn’t foreign to Trump. It’s his bread and butter. Trump personally believes that the world is rigged in a variety of ways, that shadowy and nefarious forces control events. There is hardly a major conspiracy theory he hasn’t granted air, from Rafael Cruz’s supposed involvement in the JFK assassination to Barack Obama’s birth “fake” certificate, from vaccination dangers to “Bush lied, people died” garbage, from 9/11 theories to Vince Foster murder theories. That conspiracism infuses his politics, too: America’s working class is being destroyed by an ethereal group of nasties out to victimize them for profit and personal satisfaction.

Such conspiracism also infuses his campaign. The left has its own conspiracy theories – white privilege, institutional racism, capitalist manipulation. These shadowy obstacles are all elements of a broader Marxist theory that suggests that individual human beings live at the mercy of their political environment, and that all suffering can be attributed to society at large. Trump provides a far-right mirror image of that viewpoint. He’s been claiming for months that “globalists” – never defined, of course – are destroying American workers through nostrums like free trade and globalization. He’s stated that immigration itself – not illegal immigration, not immigration from terrorist countries, but immigration itself – threatens our economy. He’s explained that Americans are victims of a giant conspiracy to harm them, and the perpetrators range from right to left, from high to low, from national to international.