UNITED STATES - FEBRUARY 06: Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., talks with reporters after a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the Capitol on February 6, 2018. CQ-Roll Call/ Press Association. All rights reserved.Paranoid politicians have been selling conspiracy theories to the public for decades. But with this week’s controversial release of the ‘Nunes Memo’, Trump has identified a new conspiratorial enemy. Specifically, the President and his followers have sought to insinuate into existence a mass internal conspiracy within the FBI and the Department of Justice. In so doing, they have accused Democrats of cultivating a parallel state to engineer a coup against the President.
By elevating conspiratorial fear-mongering into a political weapon of mass disruption, Trump has taken a significant step towards a more authoritarian politics. This presents a new chapter in Trump’s already paranoid mindset, and it sets the tone for a dangerous escalation of conspiratorial framing, one that could potentially lead to an irreversible unravelling of trust in America’s democratic institutions. This conspiracy theory of society is not unlike the one that led Trump’s counter-part in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to seek a purge of Turkish civil and political institutions.
I make this comparison drawing upon my own experience of having lived in Turkey and observed the gradual erosion of Turkish democracy. Turkey provides a warning of sorts, a case study as to how in a very short space of time, a genuinely democratic society can unravel into an authoritarian regime. In a similar way, Erdogan cultivated the idea of a so-called ‘parallel state’ to justify the undoing of decades of Turkish democratization. Trump is surely laying the groundwork for a similar campaign of political paranoia. By elevating conspiratorial fear-mongering into a political weapon of mass disruption, Trump has taken a significant step towards a more authoritarian politics.
