Conspiracy Theories and the First Amendment
Conspiracy theories are becoming the political right wing's main method of motivating voters.
https://signalpress.blogspot.com/2021/12/the-boundaries-of-responsibility-and.html
"It is entirely possible that the sources of all of this trash actually do believe what they promote. But what I find more plausible and reasonable is that this is pure manipulation. Those who push this, particularly the Q-Anon idiocy, have political power as their goal. They are counting on the fact that there is little legal accountability for their lies, distortions of the truth and "alternative facts" and that there is a vast audience of people who are gullible, ignorant, and either uneducated, or grossly undereducated, glued to their phone screens and lacking in common sense, incapable of critical thinking. So those who are behind the conspiracy theories must have a very low opinion of their own followers.
I don't see this on the political left, among progressives, moderates and liberals, and I have looked for evidence of it. Q-Anon is clearly built on attacking Democrats and appeals almost exclusively to right wingers. My theory is that since the political right has offered nothing but obstruction or trickle down nothingness for more than a decade now, this is becoming a necessity in order to motivate their voters. Consipracy theories aimed at people who don't know any better and won't make any effort to find out the truth, and that emphasize being a victim and feeling persecuted for "not thinking like the government wants you to think" have some success in getting people to the polls. "
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