• • The world has gone nuts. We’re in a perfect storm of occult lunacy, with a yin of delusional wartime government accelerating a yang of conspiratorial public outrage. It won’t be easy to get out of this. I started covering this issue twenty years ago, with The Great Derangement (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Derangement-Terrifying-Politics-Religion/dp/038552062X). The premise was that corrupt government was inspiring rational outrage, but protest energy was being drained into “competing visions of… conspiratorial weirdness and Internet-fueled mysticism.” I spent time undercover in John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, where congregants were taught the glorious End Times would be preceded by a period when “many nations (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel%2038&version=NIV)” oppose Israel in battle. Because of this, I nearly had a heart attack a few weeks ago when Hagee said, “Prophetically, we’re right on cue (https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/pete-hegseths-christian-rhetoric-reignites-scrutiny-after-the-u-s-goes-to-war-with-iran).” This was after periodic flashes of recognition whenever War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spoke, the most recent coming after his much-denounced prayer for “overwhelming violence (https://x.com/ini_fol/status/2038720474654605707).” Meanwhile, the media world rising in opposition is itself increasingly dominated by familiar conspiratorial themes, with long-developing fixations of the left and right fusing in ways that not long ago would have seemed unimaginable. Years ago, when I was researching the same topic for Hate Inc., I made a list of arguments common to moral panics. This weekend, after watching coverage of the Iran mess, I dusted off this never-published section and rewrote it for the present. It’s the sIf you find any of these elements in a news story or broadcast, be on your guard for a story that has more bull than substance: Subscribe now

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       (https://www.racket.news/p/the-top-10-symptoms-of-conspiracy)