Unhinged left-wing conspiracy theories have entered the mainstream<\/em><\/p>\nSomeone call the disinformation police! Left-wing conspiracy theories and attempts to manipulate the media are spiraling out of control ahead of the 2024 election. From tall tales about former president Donald Trump staging his own assassination attempt to the lower-stakes speculation that Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is wearing guyliner, \u201cBlueAnon\u201d has reemerged in a big way.<\/p>\n
BlueAnon is a blanket term coined by some conservatives to describe liberal and left-wing conspiracy theories. It intentionally rhymes with QAnon, the arguably better-known right-wing conspiracy, and mostly arose in response to what many regard as the Russian collusion hoax, the idea that Trump colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election. Several stories stemming from the Russian collusion hoax were outlandish and unverified yet embraced by prominent members of the media and people in high-level positions within the national security state and the Democratic Party. The claims were also the subject of a special counsel investigation into President Trump.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Chait, a political reporter for New York<\/em> magazine, has said that claims of Russia blackmailing Trump with a so-called \u201cpee tape\u201d are \u201cperfectly consistent with what we know about both parties.\u201d Propelled by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff\u2019s claim to have evidence of collusion, and consistently false reporting from the media about Trump campaign contacts with Russia, left-wing figures like Rosie O\u2019Donnell, Bette Midler, Spike Lee and the Krassenstein brothers pushed the hashtag #MuellerTime to insinuate that Special Counsel Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation into Trump would lead to his imminent indictment and arrest.<\/p>\nDisinformation experts and media outlets have routinely placed the bulk of the blame for \u201cmisinformation\u201d and \u201cdisinformation\u201d online on right-wing sources. But they have mostly failed to acknowledge the breadth and impact of the Russian collusion hoax, plus other popular BlueAnon fake stories: that Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was involved in a gang rape; that actor Jussie Smollett was attacked by two Trump supporters; that Trump failed to condemn white supremacists in Charlottesville in summer 2017; that Trump told people to inject bleach during the pandemic and other stories that were shared \u2014 or are still peddled to this day \u2014 at levels as high as the presidency. Most also ignore the stories and ideas that were deemed right-wing misinformation but ended up being correct: the Hunter Biden laptop story; that Covid-19 likely came from a laboratory leak; that there were undercover federal agents at the January 6 riot; or that President Joe Biden was suffering obvious cognitive decline. All were labeled conspiracy theories; all turned out to be true.<\/p>\n
Yers after the term \u201cBlueAnon\u201d first popped up on social media, it\u2019s clear that left-wing disinformation is as prolific as ever \u2014 and that it becomes more prominent whenever Trump or Republicans appear to be succeeding.<\/p>\n
David Harsanyi, a senior editor at the Federalist<\/em> and author of the forthcoming The Rise of Blue Anon: How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theorists<\/em>, argues that left-wing conspiracy theories often receive institutional backing, which makes the average American more likely to believe they are true. That makes them \u201cmore dangerous,\u201d he says.<\/p>\nBut some mainstream actors are still reluctant to admit that BlueAnon is a legitimate problem. \u201cThe primary parallel between \u2018BlueAnon\u2019 and QAnon is that they rhyme. Beyond that, it\u2019s a stretch,\u201d the Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s Philip Bump wrote in mid-July. The Google News results for \u201cBlueAnon\u201d are significantly shorter than results for \u201cQAnon\u201d \u2014 three pages com- pared to thirty.<\/p>\nHarsanyi, though, says BlueAnon has always been around. It just didn\u2019t have a neat nickname until 2021. \u201cThe left has been pushing wild conspiracies and paranoia for decades. I lay out that history,\u201d Harsanyi says. \u201cAre Democrats any more likely to accept the results of a presidential election? They haven\u2019t done it in decades. After Trump won in 2016, they simply gave into their worst conspiratorial instincts. It\u2019s a lot easier to convince people that their political opponents are crypto-Putin assets hell-bent on instituting The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> than it is to debate them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nIf I\u2019ve said it once, I\u2019ve said it a blue million times: if it wasn\u2019t for lies, the Goosesteppin\u2019 Left would have nothing whatsoever to say. That really is the long and the short of it.<\/p>\n