Ethics in Your World with Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead

Date: 

Friday, October 11, 2019, 3:00pm to 4:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA 02138

A lot of People are Saying book cover

Harvard Book Store and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics welcome authors and professors NANCY L. ROSENBLUM and RUSSELL MUIRHEAD for a discussion of their new co-authored book, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy.

About A Lot of People Are Saying

Conspiracy theories are as old as politics. But conspiracists today have introduced something new―conspiracy without theory. And the new conspiracism has moved from the fringes to the heart of government with the election of Donald Trump. In A Lot of People Are Saying, Russell Muirhead and Nancy Rosenblum show how the new conspiracism differs from classic conspiracy theory, why so few officials speak truth to conspiracy, and what needs to be done to resist it.

Classic conspiracy theory insists that things are not what they seem and gathers evidence―especially facts ominously withheld by official sources―to tease out secret machinations. The new conspiracism is different. There is no demand for evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of shadowy plotters. Dispensing with the burden of explanation, the new conspiracism imposes its own reality through repetition (exemplified by the Trump catchphrase "a lot of people are saying") and bare assertion ("rigged!").

The new conspiracism targets democratic foundations―political parties and knowledge-producing institutions. It makes it more difficult to argue, persuade, negotiate, compromise, and even to disagree. Ultimately, it delegitimates democracy.

Filled with vivid examples, A Lot of People Are Saying diagnoses a defining and disorienting feature of today's politics and offers a guide to responding to the threat.

The “Ethics in Your World” series, presented with Harvard Book Store, features leading thinkers taking on tough problems that matter to us all.