Let's do a thought experiment:

You're at a party. Maybe a holiday party. Maybe a birthday party for a friend.

You start chatting it up with someone you haven't met before, I mean, how bad can it be? You all got invited, right?

The conversation is going well. You share some interests. The drinks are really greasing the wheels.

And then he/she says that the Earth is flat.

All the sound stops for a minute as you try to digest what you just heard. You go back through the conversation in your mind, looking for signs that you were talking to a crazy person. You think of all the evidence we have that the Earth is, indeed, spherical. You start to realize that, if he/she thinks the Earth is flat, he/she probably thinks we didn't on the Moon. He/she probably thinks that Sasquatch walks among us, that Nessy is really good at hide and seek, that the positions of the planets should determine what he/she should order at Starbucks today.

You start looking for an exit strategy (though, as an introvert, I already had five).

This is what it's like talking to a Leftist or, to use the parlance of the Interwebz and David Harsanyi, BlueAnon. Nothing will make me dip out of a conversation faster than someone saying "Donald Trump is a racist," "we're all going to die in twelve years because of climate change' or, God help us, "Donald Trump colluded with Russia."

The Rise of BlueAnon: How the Democrats Became a Party of Conspiracy Theoristswas one of my most anticipated books of 2024 when I first heard about it. As a conservative, I have been accused of being a conspiracy theorist. The Right has been accused of conspiracy theories since long before Alex Jones. Vaccines, Covid-19 origins, the censoring of conservative voices online, the agenda of the World Economic Forum...these conspiracy theories have all been proved true. Even QAnon, from which the BlueAnon name was taken, seems to have some kernel of truth in it. The powerful elites running our country are sex trafficking minors? Release the Epstein client list.

I collect conspiracy theories like Pokemon cards. It's fun to look at the stats, it's fun to see the artistry, it's fun to have that weird thing in your collection that no one else has ever seen before. But, I don't believe Pokemon are real. I don't even know how to play the game. When I looked up the top right-wing conspiracy theories, I got a list from Salon of things I've never heard of to the point where it's possible these are just what a Leftist thinks someone on the Right thinks. A conspiracy theory all its own...

Harsanyi's argument is that the Left has their own batch of conspiracy theories that they have fallen for hook, line and sinker and it reaches a depth that isn't even fathomable to the Right.

To start, let's define a conspiracy theory. For the sake of The Rise of BlueAnon, I think it can be defined as this: a notion or theory that many people believe despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Harsanyi digs into a litany of Leftist conspiracy theories:

• George W. Bush didn't win the 2000 election
• 2016 was stolen
• Republicans are slaves to "dark money" donors
• Election integrity is in peril because of the prevalence of voter suppression
• Stacey Abrams is the rightful governor of Georgia
• Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh are rapists
• The Jews are...well, there's a lot about the Jews and half a chapter dedicated to Al Sharpton
• The rich don't pay their fair share
• Hunter's laptop

As a casual or hardcore viewer of Louder with Crowder, it's likely you've already seen these things debunked. Hunter's laptop was admitted as evidence in a federal case. We have numbers of how much people pay in taxes. Stacey Abrams did not win the gubernatorial race. More people are voting than ever before.

Harsanyi did not offer any theories I hadn't heard before. What I did find surprising is the number of people that still believe in these things. I live in a world full of facts and evidence that doesn't define these things as conspiracy theories; they're just lies.

The bigger issue in play here, which seemingly is always the biggest issue, is the role that legacy media plays in promoting and maintaining these conspiracy theories. The media malpractice is egregious. Only three people have been held to any sort of accountability when faced with the truth of the Russian collusion hoax. Several Pulitzer Prizes were handed out for coverage of something that was ultimately false, and none of those outlets have returned the award with an "our bad," followed by some head hanging.

Yep. That's right. It all boils down to: you think you hate the media, but you don't hate them enough. And, in the context of Harsanyi's book, he brought the receipts. The Rise of BlueAnon is incredibly well sourced. He takes you from Barry Goldwater being called a Nazi to Ronald Reagan colluding with Iran to Hillary Clinton's "vast right-wing conspiracy." We even start to see where Leftist conspiracy theories start to circle back on the right and become right-wing conspiracy theories, too.

If you want to find most of the Left's conspiracies all tied up in a neat package, this is the book for you. If you want to know why these conspiracy theories persist, well, it's because of a media malpractice and a lack of journalistic integrity. Harsanyi gives you the articles where it all started. You won't be shocked by what you find, but you might be surprised by how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Happy New Year. I hope one of your resolutions is to read more books because mine always is.

And never, ever get stuck in a conversation with one of the BlueAnon.

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Kate works in production at LwC. She is an author. When she isn’t writing...who are we kidding? She’s always writing. You can find her here on X.