In the moment, [anti-government ideals] allies many Republicans with conspiracism and gives it a partisan penumbra. But this is not to say that the new conspiracists see themselves as bound to the Republican Party or as promoting a partisan program. In the end, the new conspiracism is not a partisan project. The communities of special knowledge that conspiracists delegitimate—the doctors, economists, and engineers who regulate the safety of airplanes or steward the macroeconomy toward low inflation and sustainable growth—do not belong to one side of the partisan divide. They are what is necessary to make government capable and responsive to popular wants and needs. To undermine them is not to damage liberalism or progressivism or the Left or Democrats or errant Republicans but rather to damage democracy.
That said, for the moment the partisan penumbra of the new conspiracism is indisputably conservative and Republican. While the Left is drawn to classic conspiracism, when it comes to the new conspiracism, it is a mistake to imagine symmetry between the Left and the Right. Left conspiracism is not about the delegitimation of democratic institutions. Though it may seem entrenched, the conspiracist alliance with radical conservatism is contingent, and ultimately the new conspiracism will devour its Republican fellow travelers. For conspiracism is a force that is antithetical to any governing philosophy and to any party. It is the acid that dissolves the institutions and processes—the parties, partisanship, and […] the apparatus of knowledge-based policy—that make democracy work.