Democrats have thrown down the gauntlet on Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman and QAnon conspiracy theorist from Georgia.
Greene has dabbled in 9/11 conspiracy theories, questioned whether school shootings were staged, and suggested that a “Jewish” space laser started the California wildfires. She richly deserves the opprobrium she receives. My colleague Jonah Goldberg is right to state that the “GOP has cancer. It can deal with it now, or later.” Fringe representatives from both parties have long indulged in the morass of conspiracies. Anti-Masonic conspiracies long found fertile ground on Capitol Hill. Maxine Waters, for example, made a name for herself alleging the CIA was trafficking crack cocaine into American cities. Former U.S. representative Keith Ellison was an acolyte of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan who suggested that Jews created homosexuality, financed the Holocaust and supported Hitler, and secretly control both America and Mexico.
The irony here is that while both parties scramble to counter conspiracies, for a long time, both members of Congress and diplomats have preferred to ignore the issue abroad. No matter, that is, how corrosive the conspiracy might be to American interests.
Consider: Diplomats regularly describe Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas as a centrist, never mind that his Ph.D. dissertation embraced Holocaust denial. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency published textbooks replete with anti-Semitic conspiracies. The purpose of Palestinian Authority conspiracies is quite simple. It is to undermine the normalization and the legitimacy of a two-state solution in which Israel would be a majority Jewish state. The consequence is that it is simply impossible to advance peace without first dealing with the conspiracies against that cause.
How about Iran?
Former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be the Islamic Republic’s best-known Holocaust denier, but it was reformist Mohammad Khatami who first turned Iran into a refuge for Holocaust revisionism. Had proponents of engagement called Khatami out on his lies, they might have advanced real rapprochement and bolstered trust. After all, reality should be the basis of any reconciliation with Iran, not an embrace of Iran’s anti-American and anti-Semitic conspiracies. Within Iran, of course, the problem runs deeper. Partisans largely applauded Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump but ignore Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s endorsement of genocide on the platform. What Khamenei says matters, especially as it provides support to those who say the United States created the Islamic State and to those in denial about the Assad regime’s mass murder, chemical weapons use, and forcible dislocation of Syria’s Sunni population.
Nor is the problem limited to American adversaries. The Bush administration unveiled the “Middle East Partnership Initiative” to bolster democracy. Ultimately, it was a disaster, but the policy failed not on its merits, but rather because the White House and State Department failed to counter the conspiracy theories that autocratic Arab regimes and Turkey openly promoted. Indeed, Turkey has become the greatest case study of the corrosive conspiracies. Long before the widespread recognition in Washington that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was neither a democrat nor a centrist, he and his advisers peddled conspiracies suggesting Jews were conducting telekinetic attacks (the conspiratorial tip of the Erdogan crazy iceberg). Egypt, too, has blamed everything from shark attacks to bird migration on Zionist spies.
The corrosiveness of both conspiracy and incitement are not new for those who have dedicated their careers to studying the Middle East. Almost a quarter of a century ago, Middle East Forum founder Daniel Pipes published The Hidden Hand, a comprehensive study of conspiracy theories across the Middle East. He followed up a year later with a prescient book about conspiracies more broadly. Within the region, there is broad recognition of the problem. Encyclopaedia Iranica, the major academic resource for Iranian studies, has a lengthy entry on Iran’s long interplay with conspiracy. Poking fun at the penchant for conspiracy is even a theme within Iranian literature.
To counter extremism in the region, we must no longer look at conspiracies as a laughing matter. Now that Congress recognizes how destructive conspiracies can be at home, perhaps both Democrats and Republicans can act in the same regard abroad. Liberals may be proponents of engagement with the Palestinians or the Iranians, but they should also be the first to condemn Abbas or Khamenei for their conspiracy theories or violent incitement. Likewise, conservatives may want to defend President Abdel Fattah el Sisi in Egypt or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, but they should be the first in line to shoot down their conspiracy theories.
Both parties have responsibilities here. But not just at home.
