Candace Owens has a popular Internet show in which she brings up deranged conspiracies about, among other things, the demonic nature of Jews, the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk (probably at the hands of Jews and their pawns, in her opinion), and the accusation that French President Emmanuel Macron's wife is actually a man.
Owens is not alone. There is an entire ecosystem of right-wing “influencers” who peddle conspiracy theories full of racism, anti-Semitism, demonology, pseudoscience and general wackiness in regular installments. There is an even larger constellation of media and personal allusions who feed on controversy without ever fully condemning the abuses that cause it.
It is atrocious and reprehensible. But this isn't really a column about all that.
A fundamental conservative idea with a small c is: “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). In an age of relentless technological change, it is understandable to think that the usefulness of biblical wisdom has expired. But the point was not about new things. It's just that human nature doesn't change.
In 1909, the Philadelphia Inquirer helped launch regional panic with a series of “news” about the New Jersey Devil. The front-page headline on January 21 blared: “WHAT IS VISITING ALL OF SOUTH JERSEY” along with a photograph of “real impressions of the strange creature”. The Inquirer and competing newspapers relentlessly promoted the false story, with reports of sightings, animal mutilations, etc. Decades later, former journalist Norman Jeffries admitted masterminding the hoax.
In a sense, Tucker Carlson… demon attack survivor and journalistic detective cattle mutilations – is part of a long American tradition.
In 1910, newspapers published the theory that the tail of the then returning Halley's Comet could release a species of cyanide that, as the French astronomer and science fiction writer said Camille Flammarion he told the New York Timescould “permeate the atmosphere and possibly extinguish all life on the planet.”
The ensuing comet panic of 1910 sold many newspapers, snake oil “comet pills,” and even “comet insurance.”
The parallels with pandemic-era nostrums and chemtrail phobias, which can destroy the cloud seeding industry, and even the Y2K panic a quarter century ago should be pretty obvious.
In 1920, Henry Ford's newspaper (distributed nationally through his automobile dealerships), the Dearborn Independent, launched his series on “the international Jew.” Adapted Ford”The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,“forgeries first published in 1903 in a Russian newspaper. In 1936, Father Charles Coughlin launched his magazine Social Justice, picking up where Ford left off. He reprized “The Protocols” and other false propaganda. including the work of deranged hates jews august rohlingthe intellectual center of Julius Streicher, the first Nazi hanged in Nuremberg for inciting genocide.
Owens, like Streicher, consider Rohling a primary academic source.
This seems unprecedented thanks to a cocktail of historical ignorance, recency bias, and general distrust of the elite media. But it is also a function of technological change.
Monster sightings, unfounded gossip, silly or sinister speculation, and, of course, anti-Semitism never went away. More harmless versions of this fare could be found at supermarket checkouts for generations. The most unpleasant things were relegated to the dark. newslettersAM radio and hard to find magazines.
The Internet and social media changed all that.
In the 19th century, when newspapers and mass literacy converged, the “media” was an anything-goes Wild West, and even respectable publications fed readers pure nonsense and literally fake news. (The rest is history The podcast has a wonderful series dedicated in part to how the British press helped fuel the panic and the legend of “Jack the Ripper.”
It took decades for professional standards and consumer expectations to reach a consensus on what was respectable and legitimate and what was not. The new media landscape is a new Wild West.
A century ago, one of the main journalistic marketing techniques was to seduce readers by publishing information (and unfounded accusations) little by little, in installments. Come back tomorrow for the next shocking development.
this is the modern modus operandi of podcasters. Sometimes it's simple, episodic “true crime” style stuff. Other times it is deranged nonsense, promising the real The evidence (about Kirk, Jeffrey Epstein, Mrs. Macron, etc.) is coming, if the Deep State or the Jews don't get to it first.
They feed the audience just enough to get them hooked on the search for the big reveal that is never fully revealed. Mixed with relentless gossip about how other personalities are responding to the accusation. of law or each other. It is equal parts soap opera, conspiracy, gossip, violation of taboos and scaremongering.
The market for such titillations and tripe never went away. What disappeared were the post-World War II technological and institutional obstacles to providing it at scale. The will of enough people responsible to condemn him also vanished.
UNKNOWN: @JonahDispatch
