{"id":2295314,"date":"2024-07-15T12:25:01","date_gmt":"2024-07-15T16:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/democrats-have-become-party-of-paranoia-conspiracy-theories\/"},"modified":"2024-07-15T12:28:47","modified_gmt":"2024-07-15T16:28:47","slug":"democrats-have-become-party-of-paranoia-conspiracy-theories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/democrats-have-become-party-of-paranoia-conspiracy-theories\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Have Become Party Of Paranoia, Conspiracy Theories"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdemocrats-have-become-party-of-paranoia-conspiracy-theories%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2295314&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The morning\u2064 after\u200c an assassination attempt on Donald Trump, \u2062the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/desantis-using-national-spotlight-to-raise-money-for-reelection\/\" title=\"DeSantis Using National Spotlight to Raise Money for Reelection\">top political adviser<\/a> to Democratic Party mega-donor Reid Hoffman sent\u200c an email\u2064 to journalists\u200c suggesting that the incident could have been staged by \u2063Trump and Putin. Social media exploded with\u2062 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/youtube-suspends-demonetizes-one-america-news-network\/\" title=\"YouTube Suspends, Demonetizes One America News Network\">conspiracy theories<\/a>\u200b about the\u2062 assassination attempt being &#8220;staged&#8221; \u200dand &#8220;false flag.&#8221; These theories gained \u200dtraction and\u2063 even academics and activists participated. The founder \u2062of LinkedIn, Hoffman, who \u200dhas \u200dpledged \u200cmillions to oppose Trump, was \u200bimplicated in these theories. The\u2062 left&#8217;s \u2063paranoia about Trump has normalized and spread. MSNBC \u200cdid not \u2064air its regular morning show, &#8220;Morning Joe,&#8221; due\u200d to nervousness about discussing the attempted assassination. The\u200c show&#8217;s host, Joe Scarborough, has made extreme \u200cclaims \u2063about Trump taking orders from Putin,\u2064 deploying border agents as SS guards, and potentially executing reporters. The \u2064political climate has become so hyperbolic\u2064 that\u200d even the left&#8217;s \u200cpolicy prescriptions are based on groundless anxieties and sensationalized fears.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The morning after Donald Trump was nearly murdered by an assassin\u2019s bullet in Pennsylvania, the top political adviser to Democratic Party mega-donor Reid Hoffman \u2014 who had himself recently joked about Trump becoming a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/americas\/us-politics\/linkedin-reid-hoffman-trump-martyr-b2579883.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">martyr<\/a>\u201d \u2014 sent an email to journalists wondering <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2024\/07\/14\/blueanon-conspiracy-theories-trump-rally-shooting\/\">why<\/a>, \u201cNOT ONE NEWSPAPER OR OPINION LEADER IN AMERICA IS WILLING TO OPENLY CONSIDER THE POSSIBILITY THAT TRUMP AND PUTIN STAGED THIS ON PURPOSE.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dmitri Mehlhorn <a href=\"https:\/\/www.semafor.com\/article\/07\/14\/2024\/top-democrat-pushed-reporters-to-consider-staged-shooting\">implored<\/a> reporters to consider the \u201cpossibility \u2014 which feels horrific and alien and absurd in America, but is quite common globally \u2014 \u2026 that this \u2018shooting\u2019 was encouraged and maybe even staged so Trump could get the photos and benefit from the backlash.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, it was horrific to see social media explode with claims that the assassination attempt was \u201cstaged\u201d and \u201cfalse flag.\u201d These theories garnered millions of likes, retweets, and views. And <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstatesman.com\/international-politics\/2024\/07\/donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-blueanon\">plenty of people<\/a> who should know better, academics and activists, participated.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, Mehlhorn\u2019s boss, the founder of LinkedIn, isn\u2019t some unhinged commenter on Reddit; he is worth $2.5 billion. He <a href=\"https:\/\/www.influencewatch.org\/person\/reid-hoffman-2\/#:~:text=In%20the%202020%20election%20cycle,Trump%20and%20the%20Republican%20Party.&#038;text=In%20the%202020%20presidential%20election,they%20both%20attended%20Stanford%20University.\">pledged<\/a> $100 million to fund efforts to oppose President Trump in 2020 and was on the same path in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps Mehlhorn felt comfortable posing conspiratorial questions to reporters because they have been quite receptive in the past. Mehlhorn, for example, padded his plea to journalists with conspiratorial mainstays of the contemporary left \u2014 theorizing that the assassination staging was a \u201cclassic Russian tactic\u201d and urging them to consider \u201chow often Putin and his allies run this play.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Russian collusion conspiracy theory \u2014 hatched by Democrats \u2014 is the most successful and consequential in American history, <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/03\/30\/election-watchdog-fines-clinton-campaign-for-lying-about-steele-dossier-in-finance-filings\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">conceived<\/a> by a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/first-trans-state-senator-predicts-future-trans-president\/\" title=\"First Trans State Senator Predicts Future Trans President\">major political party<\/a> and spread by establishment media. Earlier this year Nancy Pelosi was still on MSNBC <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/02\/22\/the-russia-collusion-reboot-is-going-to-be-terrible\/\">claiming<\/a> that Putin probably \u201chad\u201d something \u201cfinancial\u201d on Trump.<\/p>\n<p>But the left\u2019s unhinged paranoia about Trump has been widespread and normalized. In an implicit admission of the environment the hyper-hyperbole had created, MSNBC did not air \u201cMorning Joe\u201d this morning, instead going with breaking news coverage of the attempted assassination of the former president. CNN <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2024\/07\/14\/media\/msnbc-morning-joe-pulled-trump-assassination\/index.html\">reports<\/a> that executives were nervous about what would be said on the show.<\/p>\n<p>They should be. Joe Scarborough \u2014 an alleged moderate who takes the temperature of the D.C. consensus each morning \u2014 has claimed that Trump was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.msnbc.com\/morning-joe\/watch\/joe-scarborough-on-trump-he-s-actually-doing-vladimir-putin-and-russia-s-bidding-66956869702\">taking orders<\/a> from Putin, that Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/white-house-slams-joe-scarborough-comparing-nazis-and-immigration-officials-980073\">deployed<\/a> border agents as SS guards, and warned that the former president would <a href=\"https:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/americas\/us-election-2020\/trump-putin-scarborough-journalists-kill-msnbc-morning-joe-b1348485.html\">kill<\/a> reporters <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/theblaze\/status\/1727009016575062354\">and<\/a> \u201cexecute whoever he\u2019s allowed to imprison, execute, drive from the country\u201d if he won the election.<\/p>\n<p>One regular guest, erstwhile historian Michael Beschloss \u2014 a trustee of the White House Historical Association and the National Archives Foundation \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/media\/bidens-favorite-historian-says-gop-victory-in-midterms-means-our-children-will-be-arrested-and-conceivably-killed\/\">warned<\/a> that if Democrats lost<em> the midterm 2022 election<\/em> it would be the difference between \u201cwhether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed.\u201d Beschloss is hardly alone. There are scores and scores of similar examples.<\/p>\n<p>Though we don\u2019t know much about the assassin yet, nearly the <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/08\/30\/who-are-you-calling-a-fascist-mr-president\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">entire message<\/a> of Democratic Party since Biden\u2019s \u201cRed Wedding\u201d speech has been to accuse the opposition of violence and fascistic intentions. For years now, Trump has been <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2024\/07\/14\/us-news\/dems-dialed-up-violent-rhetoric-against-trump-with-hitler-comparisons\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">cast as Hitler<\/a>, or worse \u2014 not by hyperbolic pundits but by mainstream Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>Then again, for modern Democrats, every political loss, every inconvenient event, threatens democracy itself. There have been so many ginned-up moral panics over the past few years that it\u2019s difficult to keep track of them all. More than that, even the left\u2019s policy prescriptions \u2014 even what it views as our most pressing societal problems \u2014 are increasingly tethered to groundless or sensationalized anxieties, myths, revisionist histories, pseudoscientific alarmism, and outright lies. Democrats no longer debate, they accuse you of sedition.<\/p>\n<p>From Jim Crow 2.0 to the plot to institute a Republic of Gilead to scheming to revive the Confederacy to the plot to turn off the Internet and on and on. Even the violence we saw from Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and pro-Hamas rioters was often based on ginned-up paranoia that was pushed by the media about the prevailing evils of American society.<\/p>\n<p>None of this is to say Republicans are immune from conspiratorial thinking. Hardly. But unlike right-wing conspiracies, there is no real countervailing force to stop it. How many people really believe in QAnon? The right\u2019s ham-fisted theories are crude, screwy, and largely inconsequential to policy. <\/p>\n<p>But the left\u2019s conspiracies and hoaxes have been laundered through mass media, polished off with high production values, calibrated for maximum plausibility, and draped in a patina of legitimacy. How many Democrats still believe that the Russians stole the 2016 presidential election? How many believe that there are \u201cbook bans\u201d in red states, or that one can\u2019t \u201csay gay\u201d in Florida, or that the Supreme Court is secretly run by a cabal of oligarchs?<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s paranoia all the way down.<\/p>\n<p>I have a book coming out in a few months detailing the history and mainstreaming of conspiracy theories, panic, and paranoia on the contemporary left \u2014 including the Trump-is-Hitler variety. It\u2019s been decades in the making.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<div>\n<p>      David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist, a nationally syndicated columnist, a Happy Warrior columnist at National Review, and author of five books\u2014the most recent, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Eurotrash-America-Reject-Failed-Continent\/dp\/0063066017\/\">Eurotrash: Why America Must Reject the Failed Ideas of a Dying Continent<\/a>. Follow him on Twitter, <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidharsanyi\/\">@davidharsanyi<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The morning after an attempted assassination on Donald Trump, a top political adviser to a Democratic Party mega-donor questioned why no newspapers or opinion leaders were considering the possibility that Trump and Putin staged the incident. The adviser, Dmitri Mehlhorn, suggested that the shooting may have been encouraged or even staged for Trump&#8217;s benefit. This conspiracy theory gained traction on social media and was even entertained by academics and activists. The founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, who pledged millions to oppose Trump, also hinted at Russian involvement in the alleged staging. The left&#8217;s paranoia about Trump has been normalized, with mainstream media outlets airing breaking news coverage of the assassination attempt instead of their regular programming. Democrats have long portrayed Trump as a fascist dictator, leading to a culture of fear and conspiracy theories within the party. While Republicans are not immune to conspiratorial thinking, the left&#8217;s theories are often polished and legitimized by mass media, leading to widespread belief in falsehoods such as Russian election interference and censorship in red states. This culture of paranoia on the left has been decades in the making and is detailed in an upcoming book by the author<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":831,"featured_media":2295315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Rise-of-Blue-Anon-cover.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[34701,32133,3685,35105,5894],"class_list":["post-2295314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-current-events","tag-democrats","tag-party-of-paranoia","tag-politics"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Rise-of-Blue-Anon-cover.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/831"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2295314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2295314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2295315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2295314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2295314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2295314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}