This was an era in which public trust in government slumped to record lows. According to the National Election Study, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, around 60 per cent of voters said they trusted the federal government to do the right thing most of the time. By the end of Bush’s presidency, this had fallen to less than a quarter. This broad base of mistrust provided a readymade audience for conspiracy theories.
9/11 conspiracy theories intensified following the launch of the Iraq War in 2003. The misinformation around Saddam Hussein’s links to al-Qaeda and his weapons of mass destruction led many to say, ‘I knew we were ruled by liars’. This showed how problematic conspiracy theories had become – what should have been a rigorous, rational critique of this war propaganda, which was nothing new in historical terms, descended into yet more conspiracy theories.
The distrust of institutions – of the government, of the media, of experts – that started to grow in that era, is still here to this day. It is no wonder, then, that we have numerous conspiratorial movements – from QAnon to anti-vaxxers – alongside more ‘respectable’ conspiracy theories about Russia controlling US elections or swinging the Brexit vote. Worse still, the authorities have absolutely no idea how to recover that lost trust.
Twenty years on from 9/11 and an alarming number of Americans are still more willing to believe madcap theories than their own government. That should provoke much more soul-searching among the political elites than it has up to now.
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