Jared Stacy

Conspiracy theory is a caricatured, reductionist way to analyze and narrate power exercised in the material world. Rejecting conspiracy theory does not mean denying the complex, the veiled, or the existence of evil itself.

The Myths of January 6 Plus, Livestream Tonight

If conspiracy theory is a storytelling act, then Trump’s “Big Lie” is not consigned to the past. It remains a window into an ongoing story not just about America, but also about good and evil and—for evangelicals—about God.

The first major review of my book “Reality in Ruins” dropped this week

Really grateful for this endorsement of my book Reality In Ruins: How Conspiracy Theory Became an American Evangelical Crisis, from @iamfujimura.bsky.social

For friends at #AARSBL I’ll be delivering a paper on late fascism and evangelical rhetorics of freedom at the Evangelical Studies Unit this morning in Boston—via video. Hope to make it in person next year!

Toward Reality in a Time of MAGA “Disreality” Doing Theology Against Conspiracy Theories

Disreality is not pathological. It is more existential. Less a clinical condition marked by a departure from facts, more an eruption of epistemological anxiety in which new facts are created or realities constructed towards the production of an unstable certainty

"The strange #history."

Today's forthcoming-book pick from Damn History, a free monthly newsletter for readers/writers of #popularhistory. Congrats to author @jaredstacy.bsky.social & @harperonebooks.bsky.social!

Read/subscribe to Damn History: damn-history-16d93f.beehiiv.com/subscribe

Revealed: Pentagon orders states’ national guards to form ‘quick reaction forces’ for ‘crowd control’ Pentagon memo details plan to train over 20,000 national guard members across the US to carry out Trump’s order on subduing civil unrest

The (obvious) analysis: these directives give more plausibility to scenarios where free US elections are suspended or subverted in the name of "national security"

In 3 years, will an American public too familiar with the military in our streets be able to recognize that scenario for what it is?

God Does Not Need Saving Resisting MAGA Christianity with Karl Barth

Deliver us from our Christianity

The point of disinformation in an authoritarian moment isn't to convince people of alternative facts as much as it is to sow mistrust in every source of information or truth outside of "the leader"

Next week! It’s not too late to register. Manitobans: note the free lunch on the Oct 23 option 👀

“It is disturbing…that a ‘faith movement’ can acquire character and weight simply by the use of violence in the manner of the political mass-meeting and the political demonstration for propaganda purposes”

Karl Barth, 1933

3) Slow down and de-escalate (hyper-reactivity is the highway for disinformation, lies travel faster than truth. Learn to ask questions that serve as “brakes”)

Practices to counter disreality:

1) Get local, physical, and material (resist “algorithmic reality” by scaling down into your own community)

2) Cultivate good suspicion (relentlessly question content before sharing—consider images and text, A.I. renders, etc)

I keep saying it: conspiracy theory is mainstream. We aren’t dealing with one narrative here or there, we’re living through a default on “reality” — with terrible consequences.

Here is some advice:

Fascist theater: staged provocation in the political that codes/targets undesirables. It provides content for propaganda to normalize the previously unthinkable.

I mostly avoid reposting propaganda. But if I do, it’s to name it as antichrist. This is the power to crucify and it belongs to hell. Churches that bless it are Babylonian shrines. Do not confuse the power to crucify with the power of the Crucified One, who is peace.

Our elected leaders in the US executive branch are not departing from reality as much as they are creating one— a totality where their word is absolute and dissent is subversion.

Reality in Ruins For anyone who has ever said, “It feels like we’re living in different realities,” an unforgettable read and definitive explainer of the strange history of ...

www.harpercollins.com/products/rea...

Proofs are here. Feeling the weight of this book; what it stands for—naming the authoritarian nexus of falsehood & violence at work in white evangelicalism— and what it hopes in—truth for a common world.

“The hardest work is contending against the disorienting and malformed Christianities which bring themselves to bear against the vulnerable, often in the name of freedom and faith. This is the necessary work, the one the demands the church be exactly what it is.”

Everyone Marveled And Followed The Beast Devoured By America First

On the Kirk memorial from the intersection of brutality and disreality…

So glad to hear. Thank you.

Reality in Ruins For anyone who has ever said, “It feels like we’re living in different realities,” an unforgettable read and definitive explainer of the strange history of ...

The last week has only pressed me deeper into the message that led to this book—we are dealing not just with a war of facts, but the apocalypse (unveiling) of primal stories, of myths and their corruption. Here’s how we got here, and a way forward…

Preorder + share here:

A lot of talk about “authoritarianism” — and I’m here for it. But we need specificity: the contagion of authoritarian movements today spreads by a vision of capitalism without democracy.

When I was doing my PhD research on January 6, I began to feel the weight of documenting words and preserving actions that might one day be erased, revised, or mythologized.

I felt that weight all over again today reading how the DOJ is erasing studies on right wing political violence.

US justice department removes study finding far-right extremists commit ‘far more’ violence Report finding rightwing extremists have killed more Americans than other domestic terrorist groups vanished from DoJ website

Source:

The Department of Justice has erased a study from its website; the study from the National Institute of Justice found far-right political violence & extremism outpaced all other ideological violence.

Absolutely 🎯