ABSTRACT
The story of Chuck Harder and the United Broadcasting Network illuminates the central ambiguities of populism and its articulation with conspiracism.1 Before I tell that story, however, it would be helpful for me to set the stage with a brief conceptual discussion, drawing on the insightful cultural analysis of Mark Fenster. Fenster has argued that it is a mistake-both analytical and political-to trivialize conspiracist thinking by framing it in terms of metaphors of pathology, especially paranoia; for framing it in this way draws attention away from the real social circumstances to which conspiracism might otherwise be seen to respond. Pathologizing conspiracism not only produces inadequate explanations of it but is also politically self-limiting, for the appropriate response to pathology is treatment of the individual(s) suffering symptoms. Rather than being symptomatic of pathology, Fenster argues that contemporary conspiracism articulates, in distorted and selflimiting ways, a populist critique of contemporary social conditions and a desire for a meaningful political space which can be inhabited by ordinary “citizens.” Fenster writes: “just because overarching conspiracy theories are wrong does not mean that they are not on to something”.
