THREAD: Laura K Field’s latest diatribe against the Claremonsters et al. contains extraordinarily stupid ramblings from a low IQ Straussian “intellectual.” It’s almost uniquely bad and deserves examination. I will rip it apart piece by piece https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-highbrow-conspiracism-of-the-new-intellectual-right-a-sampling-from-the-trump-years/

First, a note on style (I can’t help myself). Field writes like an academic. It takes her multiple paragraphs to make a point that could be made in one or two sentences. This reads like a poorly thought out conference paper.

Now, onto substance. The main thrust of her piece is that the New Right (i.e. anyone who’s interesting and to the right of Bill Buckley) engages in “conspiracism,” a word she seemed to make up unnecessarily (again, poor academic prose, many such cases!).

What is conspiracism you ask? It seems to mean either distrust in our national elites, or the belief that conspiracies (a coordinated usually concealed group effort against the common good) happen. Sacklers pushing opioids, Epstein, CIA spying on Congress, are confirmed examples

Field, copping Richard Hofstadter’s (20th c. midwit) “paranoid style,” claims conspiracism has a long history on the Right (and note how she adds racism, as if that has anything to do with her argument). She doesn’t ask why this is? Is it a reasonable position?

Of course it is! The John Birch Society was right about communist infiltration in high levels of the government. They were also right that the CIA actively conspires against everyday Americans (I’d encourage Field to read the wiki entries for Operations Northwood & Mockingbird)

Field adds another element to conspiracism (boy this just keeps getting more complex). Saying the Left is out to destroy America or foment revolution is part of this mindset. Nvm that many on the Left openly call for revolution or to dismantle political institutions.

Noticing a pattern? Field constantly accuses the Right of acting in irrational fear w/o actually assessing their claims. The point is make you think Claremont et al are evil lunatics so you don’t think to explore their ideas. Here she attacks a speech from Bill Barr

I present you, reader, with Nancy Pelosi’s words from yesterday. Sounds pretty religious to me, almost as if Floyd is a new messiah. https://twitter.com/breaking911/status/1384626072046784513

Field attacks Mike Anton for the inflammatory rhetoric of “The Flight 93 Election.” Oh no not heated rhetoric! That’s worse than George Bush and Obama getting thousands of American soldiers killed! Also, I wonder why the New Right thinks the deck is stacked against it

Field mocks Pat Deneen for depicting all Biden voters as oligarchs (which he never did). Now something you should know about Laura Field: she studied political philosophy under Thomas Pangle. I think Pangle gets a lot of things wrong, but unlike her, is very intelligent.

Pangle knows the classics very well. Field would have to as well to pass his classes. She must know that oligarchs have clientele (common theme throughout history). The high and low vs. the middle, so to speak. That’s the phenomenon Deneen is speaking of (and he’s clearly right!

So either she is playing coy or is truly dumb. She gets into Qanon, which, conveniently, is undefined. Of all the people she names in the essay not one do believes in Q messages or whatever. It’s a smear. But it’s worth thinking through for a moment: just how outrageous is Qanon?

What exactly is outrageous about that particular “conspiracy theory”? Is it the belief that influential political and social figures are pedophiles? Does remembering that Ghislaine Maxwell is being moved from cell to cell to avoid assassination count as believing in Qanon?

Field also attacks Barr for exaggerating the powers arrayed against the Right. “Barr is wrong, not literally 100% of academia, the media, and Hollywood is hostile to the Right!” Exaggeration is worse than the time the gov’t bailed out all the bankers who crashed the economy

Here’s Field admitting that she really doesn’t have anything substantive to say. The New Right *feels* bad because they’re loud and scared the country is heading off a cliff. Maybe they have a point though, but I’m not gonna dig into that because they’re so uncouth!

Claremont seems to be her favorite target. Now, can Laura Field tell you how many unarmed black people were killed by police in the US last year? I can! 18. Sounds like a narrative is being drummed up by the media class to promote racial strife rather than an systemic problem

Near the end Field pretends to be nonpartisan: the Left is conspiratorial sometimes too! (Or, well, “sometimes veered towards conspiracism.”) She very quickly wheels back to rightwing “conspiracism.” Brian Sicknick and Russian bounty agents were unavailable for comment.

At the beginning I said this essay was almost uniquely bad. But it’s not actually unique. Field epitomizes a common tactic of the mainstream: to accuse your opponents of being dangerous lunatics and ignore any substance in their claims.

My point in adding all the evidence which disproves the implications she attempts to draw is to show that she has nothing. She can’t engage w/ arguments. She can’t marshal evidence or reason. She’s an unserious scribbler, the kind rewarded w/ headpats by our corrupt establishment