It didn’t take long for conspiracy theories to disappear after the presidential election. People on X, posters on Threads, TikTok influencers, viral Substack newsletters were all humming with breathless speculation about vote totals and Elon Musk’s votes. Starlink satellite is used to upload and change votes. Maybe Vice President Kamala Harris was talking about Starlink interference in her speech They suggested when you mentioned “stars”. In the r/Iowa community on Reddit, a user posted an image of a notice from the local county auditor stating that mail-in ballots were not counted because they were not signed. The poster commented “Surprise surprise” and implied that the ballot was not counted on purpose. Former radio DJ and self-published author Tara Dublin reposted election conspiracies in a chain letter titled “Duty to Warn” on her substack, garnering millions of views and Making false claims about election fraud about X. Gabrielle Blair, an influential mom bloggerPublished in Democratic Issues Voters should demand a hand count to ensure fairness.

There is absolutely no evidence to support any of these claims. Even the “Duty to Warn” letter includes stories referencing debunked claims about the 2020 election. The main difference between Republicans’ theories about 2020 and Democrats’ theories about 2024 is that so far no one in the party leadership has made false claims. But they keep rising to the surface like drowned corpses.

There’s a reason for this. And no, it’s not because there’s widespread voter fraud. As our social and political institutions fail us and churches and religious spaces become increasingly politicized, conspiracy theories have become the new American religion.

Americans’ trust in the media, politicians, higher education, the Supreme Court, and organized religion reached all-time lows Among members of both parties. The explanation for this is clear: in recent years the rights that Americans accepted as established law have been abolished, and now LGBTQ rights are under attackWorkers’ wages remain stagnant even as corporate profits soar, schools are overcrowded and underfunded, and a man convicted of 34 felonies is now poised to become president.

Despite the attention given to “Stop the Steal” conspiracies and the January 6 insurrection, the misinformation economy is not just the domain of Republicans. Conspiracy theories are the safe haven of the disenfranchised, the powerless, or those who feel powerless. They offer a comfortable fiction that confirms what we want to believe about ourselves and our country rather than unpopular truths.

And right now, most of the conspiracies about the 2024 elections are promoted by women who practice alternative medicine and non-religious spirituality. women working online environments And mediums We still predict Harris will win. One woman told me via email that her mother, a former evangelical who embraced alternative medicine, was a firm believer in conspiracies about election fraud. Harris voter Brook Easton told me that she has seen conspiracies emerging in the astrology community, which is largely dominated by women, gays and people of color; vulnerable people fear for their rights under the Trump administration. “To be honest, people are really looking for a silver lining that this new reality is a nightmare that we will wake up from,” Easton told me.

For members of both parties, conspiracy theories are a religion that spins delusion rather than preaching truth. In the 2016 election, scammers spun tales about “pee tapes” and game theory and were rewarded with the approval of the attention economy. Social media users have smashed the “share” buttons and followed and liked until the line between reality and reality has become completely blurred; They have created a media economy where nothing seems right and anything seems possible.

There has never been any real accounting for unchecked misinformation during this time. Unless, of course, you want to make this choice at that moment.

Now, in 2024, some Democrats find it easier to believe that there is widespread fraud than to believe that this is the America that a majority of voters want. So much so that, at a time when there was no trust in public institutions, the voters elected the person who swore to destroy these institutions.

Just before the election Harris campaign ad Telling women that their husbands wouldn’t know about their votes went viral. The ad worried me at the time: Both women in the ad were white, and it felt like a truth we wanted to believe about white female voters. The truth is that white women who voted for Donald Trump are rarely pressured. The majority of white women voted for him because they see more benefits from an alliance with the patriarchy and the control of others.

Despite claims to the contrary, no matter how you slice the electoral pie or the popular vote, Trump won the presidency and Republicans won the Senate and House of Representatives in a free and fair election, giving Trump the power to implement his policies, including mass deportations. the further erosion of reproductive care and the reinvention of our political system.

We don’t need conspiracy theories to explain our collapsing institutions. We don’t need to call Starlink to know that market CEOs raised prices above inflation. We don’t need to believe in tampering with voting machines to know gerrymandering exists. We don’t need to believe coordinated misinformation campaigns to know this. Private capital eviscerating America’s newsrooms has led to a dearth of good reporting and reporting.

But coming to terms with the fact that the election was not stolen means examining some deeply troubling things about ourselves, our country, and our neighbors and families. For example, how quickly the Democratic Party backed away from the #BlackLivesMatter movement following the protests over the death of George Floyd in 2020. How quickly the party moved to be even tougher or tougher on immigration than the Republicans. How the party rejected the demand for a ceasefire in Gaza. And the pro-trans policies of liberal pundits and politicians, their willingness to blame Black men and Latino men, anyone other than white men and women, the largest group of voters who support Trump.

We cannot change our country if we continue to follow the false prophets of the conspiracy. Because the ugly truth about this election is not a conspiracy; It’s all there, racism, gender-based grievances, all disguised as economic anxiety, which has brought us here.