Sarah Jones recently gave a rundown of some prominent liberal conspiracy theorists on Twitter, with the offending tweets and their authors gathered here. She also linked to this unusually thorough essay on the nature of conspiracy thinking, which extrapolates from some overlapping case studies.
I felt sheepish recognizing that I've been sucked in by some of these people before, and that some of my thinking verges on conspiratorial. I do however hope my approach is dialogical rather than monological. That's part of the purpose of my blogpost roundups. I want to juxtapose the contradictions and see what results. Maybe that will mean finding new information that overwrites the old, or perhaps new information shows up wanting compared to what I've read before.
I think many people have suspected this, but it's nice to see it written so bluntly and persuasively: the more left-wing parties compromise, the better right-wing parties get at snatching those votes. On the other hand, parties that remain steadfastly leftist can fight off both right-wing and center-left challengers.
The idea of approaching Errol Morris' new book as insight into the author appeals to me. Not just because Morris sounds unhelpfully dogmatic about his side of the dispute, but also because I'm interested in works that lay bare their authors' beliefs.
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