Conspiracy Theories in Donald Trump’s Political Discourse: the Case of Birtherism

Abstract

The emergence of conspiracy theory as a magnificent power within the American politics in the twentieth century, especially during Donald Trump's presidency has coincided with a rise of parallel suspicious culture which generated from conspiratorial thinking. The proposed research intends to focus on the way in which conspiracy theories are incorporated into political discourse especially with the existence of social media platforms by politicians such as the head of US. Also, to understand the real motives of adopting conspiracy theory in the political rhetoric, arguing that the Birther conspiracy theory is not simply a tendency of Donald Trump and his supporters but also holds conspiratorial ideas. Conspiracy theorists can use conspiratorial ideas to either spread their ideology which result a higher tendency of public confusion through their manipulations, or to spread and promote politicians’ ideology to mislead the masses. Given the lack of detailed data concerning the Birther conspiracy theory and how it was utilized by Mr. Trump and his supporters; data concerning the topic are taken from Trump's twitter account and some of his interviews. Taking the case of the Birther conspiracy theory, the result demonstrates a significantly positive relationship between his prominent conspiracy theory used in Trump political discourse and racism, hatred, and racial segregation, which suggests that conspiracy theories play a major important role in framing Trump's arguments and the American politics as well. Moreover, through the use of qualititative method this paper comes to several conclusions about the Birther conspiracy theory. This theory helped in conveying the hidden ideology of Donald Trump, as Birtherism centers around the legitimacy of the first African-American president of the USA, and suggested a Muslim plot implicitly hidden within a conspiratorial discourse. Finally, this paper incorporates the critical discourse analysis approach to discover the real aims, motives, of Donald Trump's utilization of the Birther conspiracy theory in his political discourse.