When a crisis sprouts, one can bet the conspiracy theorists will have their day. While such people used to get relegated to the fringes where they belonged, the current political environment allows such baloney to have a home within certain quarters of the mainstream Right.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, many on the fringe Left concocted absurd conspiracies about the attacks, including the ridiculous idea the terrorists carried out the attacks with the knowledge and approval of President George W. Bush. A decade later, during the Great Recession, cranks on the Right convinced themselves that President Barack Obama had a plan to enact martial law and subject dissenters to isolation in concentration camps operated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, aka “FEMA camps.”
