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We Americans are fond of conspiracy theories. These imagined plots, sometimes built upon fragments of fact, satisfy the need for simple explanations of complex situations. I came of age in the 1950’s and 60’s and clearly recall the paranoia in the air of the time: McCarthy and the Red Scare; the competing who-killed-JFK stories, fluoride in our drinking water. Then came the more fantastical: chemtrails left by chemical-dispensing aircraft; the moon landing as a staged event; and a personal favorite, sightings of Big Foot, usually supported by grainy black-and-white photos.

Our inclination to embark on these flights of fancy are not novel. The Puritans persecuted accused witches, and secret societies such as the Freemasons and the Bavarian Illuminati were often imagined as nests of plotters. Anti-Semitism was frequently intergrated into these tropes, as with the infamous “Protocols of The Elders of Zion” and the persistence of the rumor that Jewish bankers such as the Rothschilds were endeavoring to rule the world. And once the theories left Earth, the sky was literally no longer the limit: We have had aliens crashing near Roswell, New Mexico, their accidental arrival covered up by the government. UFO sightings were a routine occurrence. There were humans among us who claim to have been abducted by extraterrestrials to be examined before being released back on Earth.

Given the ease with which it facilitates propagation of information, the Internet has proven to be a boon to conspiracy devotees, especially with the advent of social media. Not long after the 9/11 attacks, we were informed that it was the US government, not Islamic terrorists, who were responsible. In recent years, the amount of sheer nuttiness delivered to our computers and phones as “truth” boggles the mind: Tupak is alive, the Sandy Hook school shooting was a false flag operation by gun-control advocates using child actors, and vaccines cause autism. The flat-earthers have re-emerged after centuries in hibernation. The science of climate change and even the current pandemic are described as hoaxes in the hallowed bytes of Facebook.

By far, the supreme conspiracy theory is QAnon, which seems to have emanated from the fringe website 4chan, eventually migrating to right-wing sites like Breitbart. The mainstream media reports on it now, and the Republican primary elections this year produced several Q adherents as nominees for Congress. The essence of the Q saga is that an anonymous government employee, posting on 4chan as “Q”, claimed to have evidence of a “Deep State” plot to undermine the Presidency of Donald Trump. Implicated in this plot were prominent Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, backed by liberal billionaire George Soros (because every conspiracy needs a bogeyman). Among the depredations of the cabal was pedophilia. Early on, Q crazies hit upon a Washington DC pizzeria as the location where children were kept in the basement-  the infamous Pizzagate scandal. The debacle reached its peak when a Q-addled believer showed up at the restaurant with an AR-15 and fired off a few rounds in his attempt to free the children in the basement. However, there were no children being held captive and there was no basement.

Nonetheless, Q plowed ahead, spreading across the zany world of alt-right media. One iteration informed followers of Trump’s secret strategy, pretending to be investigated by Special Counsel Robert Mueller while the two were actually cooperating on a plan to snare the Deep State pedophiles. We have also learned that John Kennedy Jr. is still alive and working with Trump, too. 

With this background, I feel it is only right I contribute to this outlandish tapestry of genuine American crazy. In this season of protest on the streets of our cities, I have wondered about the looting and the burning. In the spirit of non-violence espoused by Dr. King, there would be no apparent reason for protests, generally  peaceful reactions to the killings of unarmed black citizens by police, to descend into riots. The images of burning police cars and drifting clouds of tear gas appear daily. Despite the aggressive tactics of the police in dealing with the riots, the overall result is the picture of American cities under siege.

This suits Donald Trump, trailing in the polls to Joe Biden, just fine. He has seized on the protests as an opportunity to take a law and order tack in the campaign, hoping to deflect attention from his disastrous management of the coronavirus pandemic. At the Republican National Convention, he returned to the dystopian theme of “American carnage” he had used at his inauguration. It is obvious Trump wants to keep attention on the violence, and will say or do anything to that end.

It is not improbable that the persons instigating the rioting are provocateurs. It is a basic tenet of white nationalism that race war between white and black Americans is inevitable.* The violence occuring at Black Lives Matter protests provide a convenient pretext for white militias to get involved. They show up on the streets brandishing firearms with the stated intent of protecting private property and maintaining order. One would wonder, of course, why peaceful marchers would tolerate looting and arson from within their ranks, knowing it would provoke both a harsh reaction from law enforcement and likely confrontation with the militia groups. While there are the antifa fanatics, whose purpose seems to be to meet the threat of violence from the white supremacists head on, the result of such escalation is predictable. In Kenosha last week, two persons were shot to death by a white-nationalist teenager. And on Saturday, a member of the right-wing group Patriot Prayer was killed in Portland. In the larger political context, the idea of violence in the streets of American cities perfectly fits the dystopian vision on which Trump is campaigning. In line with this, the involvement of alt-right extremists who support Trump is perfectly organic: his rhetoric gives them “permission” to confront the protestors.

However, it goes far beyond signaling the extremes among his supporters. Trump needs the chaos. He or some of his supporters want to ensure the persistence of the violence in the streets. The images of peaceful protests (such as the Women’s March and the March For Our Lives) do not suit Trump’s law-and-order fear-mongering. Trump donors may be covertly funneling money to these militia groups or engaging professionals (think Blackwater-style contractors) to incite violence. This is the ultimate in beyond-the-pale political dirty tricks.

The conspiracy runs deeper than that. Since the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, there have been shootings and killings of more black citizens at the hands of the police. The most recent incident was the shooting of Jacob Blake seven times in the back at point-blank range by a Kenosha officer. Such actions by law enforcement are the motivating factors in the protests. Without protests, provocateurs and white nationalists are irrelevant. The case Trump is making rests in large part on constant media coverage of urban chaos. The engine of black outrage at the actions of racist cops is fueled by more actions by racist cops. It would seem counter-intuitive that police officers would conduct themselves in this way knowing they are being scrutinized. You might ask why they do it, then, but you are missing the point: When the videos of police violence appear online, the protestors appear on the street. The stage is set for Trump’s dystopian passion play.

None of this is coincidence.

Update, 4SEP2020: About 93 percent of the racial-justice protests that swept the United States this summer remained peaceful and nondestructive

*The Turner Diaries, the novel about a dystopian race war, was labeled as "the bible of the racist right" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Dylann Roof, who killed nine African-Americans in a Charleston, SC church in 2015, claimed his motivation was to incite a race war.