Postscript is Cameron Kunzelman's weekly column about endings, apocalypses, deaths, bosses, and all sorts of other finalities.
The idea of “conspiracy nostalgia” reminds me of playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution and being hit with the big reveal 2/3rds of the way in that the bad guys are in fact… THE ILLUMINATI. I actually laughed out loud.
I know that it was part of the original Deus Ex and so had to be part of the Human Revolution plot because of Lore Reasons, but the idea that a game released in 2011 would play the Illuminati card, completely straightfaced, and expect it to be a serious “oh shit” moment was hilarious to me.
I am nostalgic for when the conspiracy theories in my life were about Big Foot and Alien coverups. As opposed to being weaponized xenophobia to sway public opinion, which is what most theories seem to boil down to. Not that this is something new, but it’s so much easier to effectively spread this bullshit, chilling really to watch it at work.
I have friends who have basically said to me, when I say the same thing, “But they’ve ALWAYS been attached with the xenophobia. You just didn’t notice.”
And I guess that’s partially true. The Zionist conspiracies that infect so many other ones stretch back as far as pre-WW2.
I feel like saying “pre-WW2” is underselling it a bit, when stuff like blood libel myths go back almost 1000 years, and its precursors maybe 2000.
Very interesting, insightful and well researched. I never though of this as a nostalgia.
I think this sentiment is exarcebated by the contradition the american people find themselves in. They are at the same time complicit in these international crimes of the US and ignorant of them, only knowing post-fact, from far away realities that might as well be fiction.
It’s an open history book that the rest of the world knows and lived with and it’s something americans are oblivious even though they are the ones doing it.
Americans are both powerless do to anything about it, just watching it unfold as news stories and at the same time, are the only group of people who can do anything to stop it, in the whole world! They are the ones fighting in those wars, piloting those airship carriers, electing those congressmen and paying the taxes that finance the war efforts.
At the same time they are greatly indirectly benefited from the profits from the war and exploitation of less developed countries, most americans do not see any direct benefit in their lives from all that money.
What I’m trying to say is, get your sh*t together America. No one else in the world can get it for you. We would if we could (just like america did because they can). Eisenhower’s council had an explicit policy of opposing political or economic progress in the Middle East. A lot of governments since and before had that as an implict policy and everywhere in the less developed world. So… the american people is the only ones left, there’s no external power that can help you shape american politics in a more democratic direction. You have to take democracy from the hands of those who obstruct it inside the US (and in doing so, you’re on the way of solving those contradictions up there)
