America’s love affair with conspiracy theories, and why it was born from ‘English nutters’
Journalist and author Kurt Anderson argues America's vulnerability to misinformation is embedded in its DNA - from colonial-era "English nutters" seeking utopia to Trump's outrage politics, the nation has always blurred reality and spectacle.
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In brief:
- Author Kurt Anderson traces America's susceptibility to misinformation back to its founding, arguing the nation was built on fantasy through an "advertising campaign" that attracted "English nutters" seeking utopia.
- He says the people flocking to America were “self selected suckers” - those willing to believe in extraordinary promises, which laid the groundwork for conspiracy theories to flourish.
- America's tendency to turn everything into "show business" is evident in Trump-era politics, where outrage overshadows reality.
We are living in the internet age - where algorithms and echo chambers make decisions about what ‘truth’ is served to everyday people, and influences their beliefs.
It’s a worldwide phenomenon, but the susceptibility to conspiracy theories and misinformation is particularly prevalent in America, a place where the President of the United States can convince a large part of the country’s population that democratic results of an election were untrue, and a vaccine-skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, can be confirmed by the Senate as Health Secretary.
How did America get here?
That’s the question journalist and author Kurt Anderson tries to answer in his book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. The book is a 500-year history that argues America’s gullible nature is “not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character”.
To understand America's relationship with fantasy, or misinformation, Anderson says you need to go back to the creation of America and its “first global media advertising campaign” to attract settlers to the New World."How do we get people here? We need to get people in here.
So we advertise it as this utopian paradise," Anderson explains.
This campaign appealed to people he calls “English nutters,” who flocked to America either because they thought they would create a new Zion or because they thought they would get rich finding gold and silver in Virginia.
“So those are the initial people. These are the kind of cult extremists who couldn't get along with other Puritans in England. So they came into this empty place.”
This campaign, he says, “self selected for suckers” - those willing to believe in extraordinary promises.“
But isn’t that exactly what the American dream is?” Emily Maitlis argues.
Weren’t the people Anderson calls “suckers”, simply flocking to America for hope of a new, better life, holding onto “optimism” and a “dream”?
Those who did achieve the American dream - the Steve Jobs of the country - represent the “good side” of this, he says.
When “all these grand city on a hill dreams came true,” there was "an establishment and gatekeepers who kept the nuts and the destructive extremes of these inclinations to believe in the impossible in check."
This system "worked pretty well for 100, 300 years - until it didn't."
Anderson looks at key moments in America’s evolution that lead to where we are today.
He cites the 60s and 70s where it became the cultural norm for people to believe “my truth is my truth” and people were accepting of others being able to “believe whatever you want, and this crazy thing can be true.”
“Then the internet, a double edged sword which provides wonderful access to all information to everyone freely, so on and so forth, and provides an infrastructure for untruths and lies and fakery and charlestonism that looks as real as the real.”
These significant developments, combined with growing economic inequality and decreased social mobility, produced a population that was "upset and confused and angry and despairing" - perfect conditions for conspiracy theories to flourish.
In the present day, Donald Trump’s America has left people “being taken in, again, by a lot of stuff that is patently untrue,” Emily points out.
“America has always turned everything it can into a kind of show business,” Anderson says.
This is evident by the recent AI-generated video the President shared on social media which shows war-torn Gaza being turned into ‘Trump’s Gaza’ - a land of Dubai style sky-scrapers, gold statues of Donald Trump and money literally falling from the sky.
“It's one more case in which reality outruns satire… the idea this is going to happen to Gaza is a fantasy beyond fantasy.”
Anderson concludes that modern America is ‘the Trump show’ - and the premise for that show is; “‘What outrage can I cause today?’”