Apr 29, 2020
Conspiracy theories are as old as politics. But conspiracists today have introduced something new—conspiracy without theory. And the new conspiracism has moved from the fringes to the heart of government with the election of Donald Trump. In A Lot of People Are Saying, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum show how the new conspiracism differs from classic conspiracy theory, how it undermines democracy, and what needs to be done to resist it.
Russell Muirhead is the Robert Clements Professor of Democracy and Politics at Dartmouth College and the author of The Promise of Party in a Polarized Age, among other books. Nancy L. Rosenblum is the Senator Joseph Clark Research Professor of Ethics in Politics and Government at Harvard University. Her books include Good Neighbors: The Democracy of Everyday Life in America (Princeton).
"Muirhead and Rosenblum have pointed out something genuinely new and disturbing…. [T]his is a book worth reading."—Jesse Singal, New York Magazine's Intelligencer
"Timely and insightful."—Lee Drutman, Washington Monthly
"[Muirhead and Rosenblum] are convincing in their argument that there is something different afoot in the world of conspiracy and that danger lies ahead if we don't confront it with truth and action."—Kirkus Reviews
"If there is one industry that has increased its productivity in recent years, it is the manufacture and marketing of conspiracies. Muirhead and Rosenblum brilliantly analyze how this happened and why it is a problem for our democracy."—E. J. Dionne Jr., coauthor of One Nation After Trump