United States | Conspiracy theories
The attack on Donald Trump unleashes a flood of misinformation
The left thinks the shooting was just a performance; the right sees an inside job. Will the truth matter?
|New york
“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” the political scientist Richard Hofstadter wrote 60 years ago in his classic essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Yet across many eras, this discourse of “heated exaggeration, suspicion and conspiratorial fantasy” festered largely on the fringe. Then the internet made the fringe accessible to everyone, amplifying dissonance and disinformation.
Explore more
More from United States
Kamala Harris makes Donald Trump look out of his depth
The presidential debate was a success for the vice-president
Astrologers are predicting the result of America’s election
Spreading their forecasts through social media can be lucrative—and divisive
How Boston became the safest big city in America
Murder is declining across the country, but Boston has led the way
Checks and Balance newsletter: The enduring game of political ads in America
Lessons from Pennsylvania
Why Kamala Harris has the advantage in debating Donald Trump
She’s better at it
Where is Kamala Harris’s convention bounce?
And what its absence means for election forecasting