Weaponizing Conspiracy Theories

Weaponizing Conspiracy Theories PDF Author: Eirikur Bergmann
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040100007
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
This book analyses the discursive weaponization of conspiracy theories. In an era where truth and fiction converge, nativist populist leaders wield conspiracy theories as political weapons. This text examines the interplay between populism and conspiracism, probing their impact on democratic processes and exploring their broader political implications. The work dissects three predominant conspiracy theories: The Eurabia theory in Europe, the Deep State in the United States, and anti-Western narratives in Russia. It shows their evolution from fringe ideas to mainstream political tools and reveals the leaders’ triple strategy: Constructing external threats, demonizing internal elites, and positioning themselves as protectors of the ‘true people.’ It also examines how digital media facilitates the spread of these narratives, undermining institutional trust and fuelling extremism. Weaponizing Conspiracy Theories serves as a guide to recognize and navigate the distorted realities reshaping our world. It offers essential insights into the complex dynamics of 21st-century global politics. The author argues that to properly understand the functions of contemporary politics, into which conspiracy theories and populism are now deeply integrated, we must both examine the impact that conspiracy theories have on people’s understandings of the world and how populist politicians can appeal to these beliefs. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of conspiracy theories, populism, and contemporary politics.

Weaponizing Conspiracy Theories

Weaponizing Conspiracy Theories PDF Author: Eirikur Bergmann
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040100007
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book analyses the discursive weaponization of conspiracy theories. In an era where truth and fiction converge, nativist populist leaders wield conspiracy theories as political weapons. This text examines the interplay between populism and conspiracism, probing their impact on democratic processes and exploring their broader political implications. The work dissects three predominant conspiracy theories: The Eurabia theory in Europe, the Deep State in the United States, and anti-Western narratives in Russia. It shows their evolution from fringe ideas to mainstream political tools and reveals the leaders’ triple strategy: Constructing external threats, demonizing internal elites, and positioning themselves as protectors of the ‘true people.’ It also examines how digital media facilitates the spread of these narratives, undermining institutional trust and fuelling extremism. Weaponizing Conspiracy Theories serves as a guide to recognize and navigate the distorted realities reshaping our world. It offers essential insights into the complex dynamics of 21st-century global politics. The author argues that to properly understand the functions of contemporary politics, into which conspiracy theories and populism are now deeply integrated, we must both examine the impact that conspiracy theories have on people’s understandings of the world and how populist politicians can appeal to these beliefs. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of conspiracy theories, populism, and contemporary politics.

Trump's Indictment and the Weaponization of Conspiracy Theories by the Far-Right

Trump's Indictment and the Weaponization of Conspiracy Theories by the Far-Right PDF Author: Liram Koblentz-Stenzler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Likewar

Likewar PDF Author: Peter Warren Singer
Publisher: Eamon Dolan Books
ISBN: 1328695743
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 421

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Book Description
Social media has been weaponized, as state hackers and rogue terrorists have seized upon Twitter and Facebook to create chaos and destruction. This urgent report is required reading, from defense experts P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History [2 volumes]

Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories in American History [2 volumes] PDF Author: Christopher R. Fee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
This up-to-date introduction to the complex world of conspiracies and conspiracy theories provides insight into why millions of people are so ready to believe the worst about our political, legal, religious, and financial institutions. Unsupported theories provide simple explanations for catastrophes that are otherwise difficult to understand, from the U.S. Civil War to the Stock Market Crash of 1929 to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. Ideas about shadowy networks that operate behind a cloak of secrecy, including real organizations like the CIA and the Mafia and imagined ones like the Illuminati, additionally provide a way for people to criticize prevailing political and economic arrangements, while for society's disadvantaged and forgotten groups, conspiracy theories make their suffering and alienation comprehensible and provide a focal point for their economic or political frustrations. These volumes detail the highly controversial and influential phenomena of conspiracies and conspiracy theories in American society. Through interpretive essays and factual accounts of various people, organizations, and ideas, the reader will gain a much greater appreciation for a set of beliefs about political scheming, covert intelligence gathering, and criminal rings that has held its grip on the minds of millions of American citizens and encouraged them to believe that the conspiracies may run deeper, and with a global reach.

COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories

COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories PDF Author: John Bodner
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476643210
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
As the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) spread around the world, so did theories, stories, and conspiracy beliefs about it. These theories infected communities from the halls of Congress to Facebook groups, spreading quickly in newspapers, on various social media and between friends. They spurred debate about the origins, treatment options and responses to the virus, creating distrust towards public health workers and suspicion of vaccines. This book examines the most popular Covid-19 theories, connecting current conspiracy beliefs to long-standing fears and urban legends. By examining the vehicles and mechanisms of Covid-19 conspiracy, readers can better understand how theories spread and how to respond to misinformation.

Jews and Muslims in the White Supremacist Conspiratorial Imagination

Jews and Muslims in the White Supremacist Conspiratorial Imagination PDF Author: Ron Hirschbein
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000860752
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description
Jews and Muslims in the White Supremacist Conspiratorial Imagination explores how Jews and Muslims are stigmatized and endangered by the same conspiratorial template. Supremacists imagine that Jews and Muslims secretly strive to replace white, European civilization with an unspeakable tyranny. The authors, a Jew and a Muslim, analyze the nature of the conspiracism that targets their communities. They historicize the supremacist conspiratorial imagination, narrating the paranoia on a continuum, from modernity to the postmodern. They begin with the texts of modernity, following them through to the dark areas of the Internet and examining their violent denouement in synagogues and mosques. The book investigates the classic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and neoclassic variations such as QAnon. It turns to Islamophobic responses to 9/11 such as paranoia regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and the doppelgänger of The Protocols, namely The Project. The authors conclude by questioning how "ordinary" people, prompted by paranoia and recognition hunger, resort to violence and murder. Admittedly, the authors are not certain—certainty is for conspiracists. But they may have a piece of the puzzle. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of conspiracy theories, antisemitism, Judeophobia, Islamophobia, political science, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and criminology.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories PDF Author: J. Byford
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230349218
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
Through a series of specific questions that cut to the core of conspiracism as a global social and cultural phenomenon this book deconstructs the logic and rhetoric of conspiracy theories and analyses the broader social and psychological factors that contribute to their persistence in modern society.

The Weaponizing of Language in the Classroom and Beyond

The Weaponizing of Language in the Classroom and Beyond PDF Author: Kisha C. Bryan
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110799529
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In this edited volume, language weaponization — or the weaponization of language — is used to describe the process in which words, discourse, and language in any form can be used to inflict harm on others. The term harm is of vital importance because it refers to how specific groups of people are affected by ideologies and practices that normalize inequity and injustice in their environments. The contributions in this book explore how language ideologies, practices, and policies can physically, emotionally, socially, and/or economically disadvantage or harm minoritized individuals, as well as their cultures and languages.

Axiom's End

Axiom's End PDF Author: Lindsay Ellis
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250256747
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 397

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Book Description
THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The alternate history first contact adventure Axiom's End is an extraordinary debut from Hugo finalist and video essayist Lindsay Ellis. Truth is a human right. It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Even though Cora hasn’t spoken to him in years, his celebrity has caught the attention of the press, the Internet, the paparazzi, and the government—and with him in hiding, that attention is on her. She neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him—until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades. Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary. The alien presence has been completely uncommunicative until she convinces one of them that she can act as their interpreter, becoming the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.

Conspiracy & Populism

Conspiracy & Populism PDF Author: Eirikur Bergmann
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319903594
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Europeans are being replaced by foreign invaders, aided by cultural Marxists who are plotting an Islamist subversion of the continent. The Bilderberg group – and/or the Illuminati – are instating a totalitarian New World Order. Angela Merkel is the secret daughter of Adolf Hitler, Barack Obama was illegitimate, and George W. Bush was in on the 9/11 attacks. Also, the Holocaust is a hoax, members of Pussy Riot are agents of the West, and the European Union is resurrecting the Roman Empire, this time as a communist super-state. These are some of the tales that are told by populist political actors across Europe, were raised during the Brexit debate in the UK, and have been promoted by presidents of both the US and Russia. Rapid rise of populist political parties around Europe and across the Atlantic in the early new millennium coincided with the simultaneous increased spread of conspiracy theories. This book entangles the two tropes and maps how right-wing populists apply conspiracy theories to advance their politics and support for their parties.