Why does the US fall for conspiracy theories?

America was founded on the imagination of its settlers but many citizens now believe reality is whatever they want it to be … even if it’s only a loose version of the truth.

QAnon demonstrators protest in San Diego, California. Picture: AFP

If only Philip Roth had lived to see last week’s invasion of the US Capitol. The great novelist would have seen it as the logical conclusion of the work of fiction that the American people have been crafting for 60 years.

In 1961 Roth wrote an essay entitled “Writing American Fiction” about the first televised presidential debate, the encounter between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

“The actuality is continually outdoing our talents and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist,” he wrote. “All the machinations over make-up, rebuttal time, all the business over whether Mr Nixon should look at Mr Kennedy when he replied, or should look away — all of it was so beside the point, so fantastic, so weird and astonishing, that I found myself beginning to wish I had invented it.”

Protesters storm US Capitol

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Roth was observing something new that came with the rise of television but also something old, something that dates from the founding of America. The creation of the United States was an act of imagination. It was a country founded by people who thought they were creating a new story, a new world. And within it, boundless opportunities for each individual to create a narrative for their own lives.

Whether that is a reasonable description of history (the treatment of native Americans and, of course, slavery suggests not entirely) it is how Americans — certainly white Americans — have always seen themselves. Each of them is the author of their own American dream.

The greatest American contribution to modern culture has been Hollywood. The movie industry was founded by immigrant Jews moving west to create their own empires based on selling fantasies that they, as impresarios, would control through the studio system. The great stars became the American ideal: from Gary Cooper to Bette Davis.

In his recent book History Has Begun, Bruno Macaes argues that with television, this addiction to stories began to eat politics. Gradually the news became another form of entertainment and the skill of political figures lay in their ability to tell compelling stories to voters and to cast themselves as the hero.

History Has Begun. Watch the book trailer
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— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) September 9, 2020

Macaes notes that Kennedy was the first politician in this mould, an observation also made by Norman Mailer, who remarked on Kennedy’s arrival at the 1960 Democratic convention: “America’s politics would now be also America’s favourite movie, America’s first soap opera, America’s bestseller.” But it was with Nixon’s downfall that politics as entertainment truly arrived.

Nixon was, as Macaes notes, “the sort of presidential character a novelist would create”, brilliant but flawed, outwardly ambitious yet inwardly psychologically tortured. Watergate was a crime caper, high farce and human tragedy rolled into one, and all played out on TV with a smoking gun — the infamous Nixon tapes — bringing the drama to a climax. When the Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan set his sights on the White House, the studio boss Jack Warner is said to have quipped: “No, no, Jimmy Stewart for president, Ronald Reagan to play his best friend.”

But many others thought Reagan perfect casting after Watergate — handsome, a little bit cowboy but not too much, genial and uncomplicated. Reagan himself used to say that he couldn’t understand how anyone could be president without having been an actor.

Democrats who want to work for a Democratic president now see themselves as characters in the TV drama The West Wing, which depicted an idealised liberal administration. Meanwhile, the Trump White House resembles the Apprentice boardroom, with participants fighting each other until Donald Trump interrupts to tell them that they are fired.

It is fascinating that in his 1998 book Life (The Movie) the film historian Neal Gabler identifies Trump as a pioneer, the first businessman to understand that “in order to compete with entertainment, one had to turn oneself into entertainment”. This observation was made not just 18 years before his presidency but six years before he even became a reality TV star.

If the observations of Macaes and others point to something important in the American psyche, how do they help when considering last week’s events? I believe they provide insight, a warning, and a guide.

QAnon demonstrators are seen on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, California. Picture: AFP

First, insight. If Gabler is right in Life (The Movie), entertainment has taken over to such an extent that many Americans see themselves as being in movies of their own lives. In the era of social media, it is not surprising that they seize the power to write their own script.

QAnon, the online conspiracy theory to which many Trump supporters subscribe, is like fan fiction, with endless riffs on Trump and increasingly bizarre plots about the skulduggery of his enemies. The contributors to this script have the pleasure of being the heroes of it, setting out to cleanse the nation. Like Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity, they have woken and are gradually peeling away layers of deception. The deep state behaves as it does in every film but will prove no match for the hero.

This is why the Capitol rioters seemed so unbothered about being filmed, stealing the speaker’s podium while smiling for the camera, complaining about being “maced” while carrying out a revolution. There was actually merchandise for this show, T-shirts with “Civil War 6 January 2021” printed on them. In some way it wasn’t real to them, just the season finale of America.

The second thing this analysis provides is a warning. Next week Granta will publish a book called The Fatherland and the Jews. It consists of two pamphlets published in Germany by my grandfather Alfred Wiener in 1919 and 1924. He alerts his readers to the danger posed by conspiracy theories, giving as an example the falsehood that the Kaiser had been a Jew because a (non-existent) affair between Queen Victoria and a doctor called Wolf allowed Jewish blood to enter the royal family. One day, he believed, such theories would lead to violence.

Supporters of President Donald Trump fly a US flag with a symbol from the group QAnon outside the US Capitol building. Picture: Getty Images

In the same way, the blurring between fiction and reality is a terrible danger to Americans. As the Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder puts it, “post-truth is pre-fascism”. For years the mob shared conspiracy stories with each other and then, no longer able to distinguish between fantasy and reality, they used guns and violent incursion to provide their own denouement to the plot.

And finally, this is a guide for Joe Biden. He might be tempted to believe that what happened last week must not be allowed to divert him from his big challenges and that he should seek instead to heal and move on. That somehow, with Trump gone, the danger has passed. He should not yield to this temptation.

For this isn’t a diversion from his big challenges; it is his big challenge. He must confront the opponents of democracy with the consequences of their actions and bring some sort of reality back to people who seem to have lost touch with it.

THE TIMES