Anna Merlan
Author of Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power
Works by Anna Merlan
Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power (2019) 217 copies, 20 reviews
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I never do this, but here is the first sentence of Republic of Lies: “In January 2015, I spent the longest, queasiest week of my life on a cruise ship filled with conspiracy theorists.”
SOLD! Anna Merlan has put herself through a brain-exploding experience to tell us about the astounding variety of lies Americans tell about themselves and their country. It’s a whirlwind tour of conspiracies, hate, ideology, religion, UFOs, and politics. They are all urgent matters. The nation is at show more risk. Time is running out.
To Merlan’s point (and book title), Americans have very good reason to suspect conspiracy. American governments and government agencies have a horrific history of conspiring against citizens and lying about it. The FBI under J.E. Hoover sent a blackmail letter to Martin Luther King Jr, instructing him to commit suicide lest his sexual history be exposed. The Freedom of Information Act has led to whole volumes of FBI files being made public, showing it had files and actively interfered in the lives of innocuous groups and individuals. The FBI admits its COINTELPRO program was designed to insert disinformation into various organizations in the hope they would spin out of control. Similarly, agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration are known to have given informants kilos of cocaine as payment or incentive. There was warrantless wiretapping exposed by Edward Snowden. The CIA experimented on the unknowing with LSD, plutonium and syphilis. So Americans come by the conspiracies legitimately. What you sow, so shall ye reap, someone once said. Americans are highly trained conspiracists.
The government sterilized the feeble-minded (ie. blacks), incarcerated the homeless after Louisiana floods, and routinely classifies everything Top Secret. Most recently, government agencies have taken to seeding protest marches and demonstrations with thugs who start fights and riot in the streets to discredit the efforts. So yes, there is reason to suspect conspiracy.
Into this atmosphere comes social media, the ideal incubator for conspiracy theories. The result is a huge overreaction of conspiracies like false flag accusations. In false flag, absolutely anything that happens can be construed as a government act to scare people, or prepare them for military occupation, a coup, or some loss of rights. So massacres at schools, night clubs and churches never actually happened. No one actually died. They’re all false flag scare tactics. Like astronauts landing on the moon, it was all staged for somebody’s advantage. On social media, this appeals to millions to disbelieve their own eyes, in preference for a conspiracy theory.
Americans have a decided preference for child molestation and slavery conspiracies. They see it everywhere. They suspect it of the “elite” and lowly pizzerias. I remember the Wenatchee child molestation trials, where the complete lack of physical evidence was successfully submitted at trial as proof of guilt, because nothing could be that free of evidence. Merlan devotes a chapter to the epidemic, focused on Pizzagate, which nearly turned into a genuine tragedy when someone took it all as real.
Possibly the most revolting part of the book is these followers’ harassment of the victims of massacres. They have attacked surviving students of the Parkland School and gone after the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook. They demand proof the murdered ever existed. They doxx the survivors. They find and circulate drivers’ licenses, social security numbers and other personal data so more followers can harass and attack them with demands and death threats. Sending threatening e-mails to one parent’s lawyer causes a bill to be generated: a quarter hour for each one received. An interesting way to bankrupt someone. It puts survivors in a double jeopardy having to deal with grief and then also being attacked for good measure. Not responding is no solution either, as the attackers assume that is proof they are hiding something. It is ruining the lives of many undeserving victims. The perpetrators remain largely anonymous and shielded.
What all the causes, cults and movements seem to have in common is they are operated for and by white male Christians. Merlan is Jewish (not to mention a woman) and has reported on highly charged racist gatherings where white male Christians gather to promote the removal and/or death of Jews. She routinely reveals her religion to her interlocutors, which results in backpedaling and diversions like “Well, it’s complicated” or “You’re a very beautiful woman.”
The most valuable service performed by Republic of Lies is the sheer variety of nonsense underway. There is a conspiracy for every topic and every event. There are followers for all of them. It is a much bigger sickness than a simple day of Fox News would demonstrate. There is also far more of it than I realized. Merlan describes a number of political conspiracies I had not known of, but which have thousands of adherents.
And newly minted celebrities. The quickest path to celebrity in America seems to be by conspiracy theory. Whoever makes it up becomes the greatest authority on it, and is legitimized by the media interviewing them and profiling them. Very often, they seem to be losers, with criminal pasts and no future. Their conspiracy theories boost them into fame and a new direction in their failing lives. She profiles a number of them, and they tend to come off as rather pathetic.
They eat their own too, constantly infighting, breaking apart and creating new groups. As one participant memorably described them: “We have a circular firing squad of everyone telling everyone else they are the opposition.”
It has made the USA a paranoid laugh riot.
David Wineberg show less
SOLD! Anna Merlan has put herself through a brain-exploding experience to tell us about the astounding variety of lies Americans tell about themselves and their country. It’s a whirlwind tour of conspiracies, hate, ideology, religion, UFOs, and politics. They are all urgent matters. The nation is at show more risk. Time is running out.
To Merlan’s point (and book title), Americans have very good reason to suspect conspiracy. American governments and government agencies have a horrific history of conspiring against citizens and lying about it. The FBI under J.E. Hoover sent a blackmail letter to Martin Luther King Jr, instructing him to commit suicide lest his sexual history be exposed. The Freedom of Information Act has led to whole volumes of FBI files being made public, showing it had files and actively interfered in the lives of innocuous groups and individuals. The FBI admits its COINTELPRO program was designed to insert disinformation into various organizations in the hope they would spin out of control. Similarly, agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration are known to have given informants kilos of cocaine as payment or incentive. There was warrantless wiretapping exposed by Edward Snowden. The CIA experimented on the unknowing with LSD, plutonium and syphilis. So Americans come by the conspiracies legitimately. What you sow, so shall ye reap, someone once said. Americans are highly trained conspiracists.
The government sterilized the feeble-minded (ie. blacks), incarcerated the homeless after Louisiana floods, and routinely classifies everything Top Secret. Most recently, government agencies have taken to seeding protest marches and demonstrations with thugs who start fights and riot in the streets to discredit the efforts. So yes, there is reason to suspect conspiracy.
Into this atmosphere comes social media, the ideal incubator for conspiracy theories. The result is a huge overreaction of conspiracies like false flag accusations. In false flag, absolutely anything that happens can be construed as a government act to scare people, or prepare them for military occupation, a coup, or some loss of rights. So massacres at schools, night clubs and churches never actually happened. No one actually died. They’re all false flag scare tactics. Like astronauts landing on the moon, it was all staged for somebody’s advantage. On social media, this appeals to millions to disbelieve their own eyes, in preference for a conspiracy theory.
Americans have a decided preference for child molestation and slavery conspiracies. They see it everywhere. They suspect it of the “elite” and lowly pizzerias. I remember the Wenatchee child molestation trials, where the complete lack of physical evidence was successfully submitted at trial as proof of guilt, because nothing could be that free of evidence. Merlan devotes a chapter to the epidemic, focused on Pizzagate, which nearly turned into a genuine tragedy when someone took it all as real.
Possibly the most revolting part of the book is these followers’ harassment of the victims of massacres. They have attacked surviving students of the Parkland School and gone after the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook. They demand proof the murdered ever existed. They doxx the survivors. They find and circulate drivers’ licenses, social security numbers and other personal data so more followers can harass and attack them with demands and death threats. Sending threatening e-mails to one parent’s lawyer causes a bill to be generated: a quarter hour for each one received. An interesting way to bankrupt someone. It puts survivors in a double jeopardy having to deal with grief and then also being attacked for good measure. Not responding is no solution either, as the attackers assume that is proof they are hiding something. It is ruining the lives of many undeserving victims. The perpetrators remain largely anonymous and shielded.
What all the causes, cults and movements seem to have in common is they are operated for and by white male Christians. Merlan is Jewish (not to mention a woman) and has reported on highly charged racist gatherings where white male Christians gather to promote the removal and/or death of Jews. She routinely reveals her religion to her interlocutors, which results in backpedaling and diversions like “Well, it’s complicated” or “You’re a very beautiful woman.”
The most valuable service performed by Republic of Lies is the sheer variety of nonsense underway. There is a conspiracy for every topic and every event. There are followers for all of them. It is a much bigger sickness than a simple day of Fox News would demonstrate. There is also far more of it than I realized. Merlan describes a number of political conspiracies I had not known of, but which have thousands of adherents.
And newly minted celebrities. The quickest path to celebrity in America seems to be by conspiracy theory. Whoever makes it up becomes the greatest authority on it, and is legitimized by the media interviewing them and profiling them. Very often, they seem to be losers, with criminal pasts and no future. Their conspiracy theories boost them into fame and a new direction in their failing lives. She profiles a number of them, and they tend to come off as rather pathetic.
They eat their own too, constantly infighting, breaking apart and creating new groups. As one participant memorably described them: “We have a circular firing squad of everyone telling everyone else they are the opposition.”
It has made the USA a paranoid laugh riot.
David Wineberg show less
Conspiracy theories used to seem like such fun diversions; UFO's, the assassination of JFK, the CIA's involvement in the drug trade, fun little rabbit holes to fall down and while away some time. "The X-Files" used to satisfy that little itch I had for wild postulations so well. That was before the 21st Century when conspiracy theories grew up and ate the world as we once knew it. Now these much more common beliefs have brought back xenophobia, lying for profit, even the Nazis are back. This show more book explores some of the more dangerous conspiracy theory variants that are so pervasive today and those individuals most responsible for their dissemination. The distrust a lot of folks have in the present power structure coupled with feelings of uncertainty for the future and an overall intellectual decline provide most of the fertile ground for some of the more outlandish ideas to take root. And the folks who profit from spreading these things, Fox News, Alex Jones, a whole host of wackos on You Tube, seem to find a bigger audience than any hard science or intellectual sources can muster. I'm ashamed I ever got any enjoyment in the darned things! show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.I admire anonymously the monumental efforts like those of people at Media Matters, who endure hours upon hours of the likes of Fox News so that the sane of us don't have to watch to see what nonsense is being spewed at any given instance. And then there is Ms. Merlan, who takes such to extremes, diving into the belly of so many beasts to write this she has to have brain bleach on autorefill. Hat's off and bravo. There have always been conspiracists and their theories - whacky, out there, show more unreal. I semi-argued in frustration with someone some years ago who thought the feed from the International Space Station was faked, as was the moon landing (it was faked, of course, by Stanley Kubrick, but he always liked to shoot on location ;) ). Sadly, she wasn't the only person I've known who believed that mind-boggling gem, and I know anti-vaxxers, some who think fluoride is poison brainwashing, and a few Deep Staters and birthers just for starters. The fallout from 2016 is alarming enough that when I saw this, I requested and was sent an Advance Reader's Edition from the publisher through LibraryThing.
Ms. Merlan calls this "a surreal time", where the subcultures she writes about are "achieving a hallucinatory new level of fame." In the western hemisphere, conspiracies have been around since the Euro-occupants (my term) got here. She says
She's got a lot here, from the usual Pizzagate & UFOs to Agenda 21 and the kingpin, Alex Jones, medical conspiracies, mind control, Deep State, white nationalists, to the heinous false flaggers (the abuse and harassment the parents of the victims of the so, so many mass school shootings is heart-rending) who think that anything is a government action and government cover up. She's attended conventions, rallies, interviewed the more famous of the various conspiracy adherents...she even spent a week on a "cruise ship filled with conspiracy theorists."!! Yes, there is a Conspira-Sea Cruise!
I love her discard of restraint when she calls out the perpetrators: on a manufactured conspiracy around a tragic unsolved murder, rumors and BS were "spurred by the biggest conspiracy megaphone there is: Fox News, specifically Sean Hannity, the network's biggest Trump defender." On the real conspiracy of Russians trying to draw the T campaign into its meddling, she says, "we know this because we had the deeply idiotic emails between Trump son-in-chief Donald Trump, Jr. and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin..." When Ted Cruz, on his first senatorial run, said on Glenn Beck's (another serial offender) radio show to cry about Agenda 21 he warned that it would end single-family homes, ranching, private cars, ... She says, "that's not a flase flag; it's just very, very stupid. (So stupid that the national Republican Party put an anti-Agenda 21 plank in their national platform...) Double slam in one paragraph. And in response to the too little too late semi/pseudo controls of the Facebbok, iTunes, Pinterests, etc. and the really too little and way too late Twit-ter,
Sometimes the paranoia is too comical: some of the false flaggers even accuse the grand poobah Alex Jones of being a false flag! A government plant spreading hoaxes as real (but their hoaxes are not hoaxes, if you will.)
She calls to task Joesph Uscinski, coauthor of American Conspiracy Theories who said
In her epilogue, she has a sobering observation that there "are no brakes available. There is no mechanism to prevent another Edgar Welch storming into a pizza parlor or another James Field getting behind the wheel, speeding toward Heather Heyer."
Too much to summarize, read the book. Or don't. The best way to arm oneself against stupidity is too learn about. Read Ms. Jones's point again.
[On the overall book, one problem I had was the sourcing, or lack, of a lot quoted material. There was a ten page list of sources in my copy, and no index, but no citations. And the list seemed incomplete. I noticed because I was trying to figure out where one part of a thread came from and didn't see anything in the end list of sources.]
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Ms. Merlan calls this "a surreal time", where the subcultures she writes about are "achieving a hallucinatory new level of fame." In the western hemisphere, conspiracies have been around since the Euro-occupants (my term) got here. She says
Conspiracy theories tend to flourish especially at times of rapid social change, when we're reevaluating ourselves and, perhaps, facing uncomfortable questions in the process. In 1980, the civil liberties lawyer and author Frank Donner wrote that conspiracism reveals a fundamental insecurity about who Americans want to be versus who we are.Well, one need only look to religions to see the same thing.
She's got a lot here, from the usual Pizzagate & UFOs to Agenda 21 and the kingpin, Alex Jones, medical conspiracies, mind control, Deep State, white nationalists, to the heinous false flaggers (the abuse and harassment the parents of the victims of the so, so many mass school shootings is heart-rending) who think that anything is a government action and government cover up. She's attended conventions, rallies, interviewed the more famous of the various conspiracy adherents...she even spent a week on a "cruise ship filled with conspiracy theorists."!! Yes, there is a Conspira-Sea Cruise!
I love her discard of restraint when she calls out the perpetrators: on a manufactured conspiracy around a tragic unsolved murder, rumors and BS were "spurred by the biggest conspiracy megaphone there is: Fox News, specifically Sean Hannity, the network's biggest Trump defender." On the real conspiracy of Russians trying to draw the T campaign into its meddling, she says, "we know this because we had the deeply idiotic emails between Trump son-in-chief Donald Trump, Jr. and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin..." When Ted Cruz, on his first senatorial run, said on Glenn Beck's (another serial offender) radio show to cry about Agenda 21 he warned that it would end single-family homes, ranching, private cars, ... She says, "that's not a flase flag; it's just very, very stupid. (So stupid that the national Republican Party put an anti-Agenda 21 plank in their national platform...) Double slam in one paragraph. And in response to the too little too late semi/pseudo controls of the Facebbok, iTunes, Pinterests, etc. and the really too little and way too late Twit-ter,
And surely, in part, some of these services are hamstrung by a grim, darkly funny logical endpoint: Trump is the best-known political figure on earth to use social media to spread conspiracy theories. Any banning policy would, in the end, have to cover him, too.Yep. Of course, the Twit-ter lets him violate their abuse policies incessantly, so don't hold any breaths.
Sometimes the paranoia is too comical: some of the false flaggers even accuse the grand poobah Alex Jones of being a false flag! A government plant spreading hoaxes as real (but their hoaxes are not hoaxes, if you will.)
She calls to task Joesph Uscinski, coauthor of American Conspiracy Theories who said
"I mean, they were burning women at the stake four hundred years ago, long before the Internet Facebook didn't tell them to do it." He points out, too, that the number of people who visit conspiracy sites is far lower than those who visit non-conspiratorial, traditional news sites. "There's tons of everything on the Internet," he said. "When I put in the words 'duck confit recipe,' I get half a million recipes. But nobody's racing home to cook duck confit. Just because it's there doesn't mean anyone cares. The things people look at are things they're predisposed to look."Nailed it. And she continued: "More important, Facebook and Twitter have a way of flattening information, making every source look the same or appear equally plausible." There lies a problem with our anti-social media...they feed, we can skip, but not unsee.
Uscinski's position doesn't take into account the role of social media, however. Through Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, more and more people who might not be predisposed to reading about the Clinton body count or pedophiles in the pizza parlor will nevertheless run across tha content.
In her epilogue, she has a sobering observation that there "are no brakes available. There is no mechanism to prevent another Edgar Welch storming into a pizza parlor or another James Field getting behind the wheel, speeding toward Heather Heyer."
Countering an idea that has taken root is incredibly hard. Studies suggest that trying to argue someone out of a conspiratorial belief does not work, likening conspiracy theories to religious faith, which helps us see how they can be similarly fixed in the mind.So true. She also observes that we cannot just label something as fake and turn away, because "millions of people across the country are not doing the same." Take one look at a certain "News" Channels ratings and you'll see what she means (my words.)She quotes reporter Sarah Jones, writing for the New RepublicThe alternative is to allow conservative propaganda to fester. An impenetrable bloc of voters will continue to blame Latinos for their woes, to ignore basic facts that are staring them in the face, to trumpet American exceptionalism while neo-Nazis roam the streets, and to look to a strongman in their image to save them. We will have an unfree country, ruled by fear, and if we do not act we will bear some of the responsibility."
Too much to summarize, read the book. Or don't. The best way to arm oneself against stupidity is too learn about. Read Ms. Jones's point again.
[On the overall book, one problem I had was the sourcing, or lack, of a lot quoted material. There was a ten page list of sources in my copy, and no index, but no citations. And the list seemed incomplete. I noticed because I was trying to figure out where one part of a thread came from and didn't see anything in the end list of sources.]
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This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.This is a really fascinating and at times alarming book. Fascinating: The author does a deep-dive into many popular conspiracy theories as well as some I hadn't heard of. Her work is well-researched and extensively documented. Alarming: She also discusses the science behind what makes conspiracy theories take off/become entrenched in people's minds and in cultures. The research we have so far indicates that arguing or presenting factual information to counter conspiracy theories/Fake News show more not only doesn't work, but serves to make people even more attached to their false beliefs. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.Lists
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