Rush Limbaugh and the Social Construction of a Liberal Conspiracy Theory: Some Notes From the Field

The City University of New York Graduate Center

Introduction

This paper is concerned with the content and form of the liberal conspiracy theory of politics presented on the Rush Limbaugh Show, a talk and call-in program which airs on the ABC radio network. As a form of political discourse, conspiracy theories are nothing new. They continue to be used as a resource in the production and maintenance of political order because they offer a convincing narrative through which to understand political events. I say convincing here because the essential characteristic of a conspiracy theory is that it provides a holistic and all encompassing system of explanations through which to understand the complex and unreal politics characteristic of large scale societies. Conspiracy theories in other words, offer a way of looking at the world which makes it intelligible, which makes it "make sense" when, through the lens of everyday reasoning it does not. The purpose of this paper is to offer an analysis of the logic of the conspiracy theory presented on the Limbaugh program and to try to show how such a theory is made to appear reasonable to an audience. In what follows I explore the central features of Limaugh's conspiracy theory, the "evidence" he offers to support it, the daily "work" he performs to maintain the theory and the ways in which he utilizes the talk radio form to present the theory.

The Program

Limbaugh's show airs nationally for three hours each weekday. The program follows a talk and call-in format and is presented as an issues oriented show focusing on political and social news. I say "issues" oriented here but from that one should not infer that the show presents material with the seriousness characteristic of typical news analysis program. Unlike such programs, Limbaugh's show seeks to entertain, which it does, primarily through the twin vehicles of satire and hyperbole. Each broadcast consists of roughly equal portions of monologue and discussion with members of the radio audience who call in to express an opinion or ask about an issue of interest. Favorite topics include the women's movement, the fiscal policies and more generally the character of the present administration, the Congress, taxes, the environment, and the range of social issues usually falling under the heading of family values.

To characterize the program in this simple manner however misses the point of what actually occurs during a typical broadcast. More than anything the program is a vehicle for the presentation of the host's far right political analysis. From a practical standpoint this "analysis" consists of the presentation and elaboration of a conspiracy theory of politics in which soft-headed or more frequently evil-minded liberal public figures plot to extract support, money and votes from a misguided and ignorant citizenry. The primary task of each broadcast is the repetition of this underlying message. Secondary to this, is the mockery of liberal ideology and liberal political figures. Running parallel to both of these, is the presentation of the true wisdom of conservative analysis although as a proportion of actual air time this represents a relatively small part of what is said.

Practical Requirements of a Conspiracy Theory

The dictionary defines a conspiracy as a plot or secret plan to do harm, in particular political harm. In terms of its usage in everyday political discourse however the essential characteristic of a conspiracy is somewhat different. As a resource for the production of power, what matters is not so much the existence of an actual or imagined plot but rather the existence of a group of plotters. In terms of everyday political practice what matters most are the conspirators and not the plot itself. These enemies are prior to the plot and in fact take precedence to it. This is not to say that a conspiracy does not involve a plot, it does, but only because the conspirators require, for narrative purposes, a project of some sort with which to threaten or subvert valued institutions or ways of life. But a conspiracy narrative is more than just a story. It is more than just a tale which lays out, typifies and accounts for a group of conspirators and their actions. A conspiracy theory offers, to those who subscribe to it, an entire explanatory system through which to account for the disparate and often incomprehensible events which make up political life. A conspiracy theory in other words is a sense making device.

Conspirators

Three characteristics typify conspirators. The first and most important of these relates to the factors which motivate conspirators to create and sustain their conspiracies. To some degree conspirators are said to be motivated by material interests such as personal, financial or political gain. For conspiracy theorists however such worldly motivations do not go far enough in establishing the threat that the conspirators pose. In presenting a picture of the conspirators therefore, the conspiracy theorist must portray conspirators as fundamentally malignant in their natures. While material advantage is certainly part of what drives a conspirator, beyond that he or she is motivated by an innate malevolenceó an idea shared by conspiracy theorists on both the right and the left. For those on the right the enemy's desire to subvert the good and natural society flows directly from a bitterness over their inability to function within it. This of course serves the telling of the story in that it makes the enemy all the more difficult to defeat. Perhaps more troubling, it provides an enemy who can not be rehabilitated and therefore must be completely annihilated.

Second, in order to pose a credible threat, the conspirators must be persons who possess the ability to influence the unfolding of current events. This ability may stem from control of financial or military resources although with respect to the "liberal" conspirators it more typically flows from the ability to control political and symbolic resources (media for example). Lastly, conspirators are said to operate in secret. This secrecy serves a number of functions within the conspiracy narrative. First, it supports the idea that the conspirators are indeed sinister. If they weren't, if their goals and actions had any legitimacy, they would operate in the open. The fact that they do not is proof of their malignant intent. Second, this secrecy provides the anti-conspiracy forces with a focus for its effortsó the exposure of the conspiracy. This emphasis is especially important for a radio program which does not have any other means (prosecutorial for example) with which to attack the conspirators.

Sympathizers and Dupes

Participation in the conspiracy is not limited only to conspirators. Sympathizers are persons who support the conspiracy but are not substantially active in pursuing it. Like the conspirators, they favor the goals of the conspiracy because those goals serve an interest. Again, while this interest may be material, it is more likely to spring from some quality internal to the sympathizer. The dividing line between sympathizers and conspirators is a shifting one and varies according to the requirements of the particular tale being told. While the degree to which one pursues the goals of the conspiracy is significant, in general one may say that a conspirator is an identifiable enemy whereas a sympathizer is an unspecified one.

Dupes are required for the narrative because they account for the ability of the conspirators to pursue the conspiracy unchecked. While the conspiracy hurts everyone the dupes are characterized by their failure to recognize the activities of the conspirators. If the dupes could only see clearly what the conspirators were up to, the conspiracy would be ended. The existence of the dupes again serves to magnify the seriousness of the conspiracy because it gives evidence of the ability of the conspirators to fool the people. This ability is founded primarily on the conspirators' nearly total ability to direct the information available to the masses through their allies in the media. Like the mark in a confidence game, the dupes are easily swayed by the appearance that they will derive easy benefits from conspirators' scheme. Not surprisingly the best antidote for dupery is a regular dose of "The Way Things Ought to Be" either as provided in Limbaugh's book with the same title or through one of his mass media outlets.

The Conspiracy Theory

The discussion thus far has emphasized the conspirators because as I have stated their existence is prior to the existence of the conspiracy itself. While it is true that the conspirators gain materially from their efforts to disrupt society, in the main they are motivated by an inability to cope with the requirements of everyday life. Acting out of a fundamentally malignant nature, the conspirators seek to destroy what they can not have. From this it follows that the root purpose of the conspiracy is to supplant the natural social order with an illegitimate one that favors the conspirators and their sympathizers. The defining characteristic of this social order is that it represents the antithesis of society as the conspiracy theorists envision it. This notion of antithesis plays throughout the conspiracy tale in particular in the characterization of the conspirators.

The next section lays out some of the rhetorical techniques used in assembling the conspiracy story. The primary activity for conspiracy theorists is the exposure and typification of conspirators. But beyond this, their more important task is to establish a system of accounting, capable of making sense of the disparate events which make up politics or for that matter everyday life. In terms of it success in putting forth the conspiracy theory, the key measure of this system is its ability to ascribe every trouble, every bit of bad luck, every occasion where things turn out badly to the conspirators. Its success is bound up in the neatly tied and unambiguous narrative it provides.

Putting It All Together and Making It Work

Having outlined the general form of the conspiracy theory let me now turn to a discussion of the day to day aspects of its telling. As a practical matter, the most important item on Limbaugh's daily agenda is the characterization of liberal political figures, liberal policies and liberal accounts of news events. These characterizations, which are never anything but highly disparaging, serve to construct an enemy who is responsible for the conspiracy and indeed who personifies it. In a fundamental sense the show turns around this enemy without whom it could not exist.

Ridicule

The ridicule of liberal political figures serves a number of functions on the program. For one thing it provides material for Limbaugh's mocking humor and makes the show entertaining to listeners. More subtle,Limbaugh's ridicule legitimizes an attitude of hatred in the audience to the extent that it degrades and dehumanizes the enemy. Often this involves that sort of adolescent humor which concerns sexuality and women's bodies. Sometimes it revolves around inversions of the sacred as when Limbaugh refers to abortion as the sacrament of the women's movement. Sometimes it involves the use of violent imagery. In mocking the animal rights movement for example, Limbaugh super-imposes the theme from the movie Born Free over the sounds of machine guns and explosions. The list of such devices is extensive and indeed part of the program's success has to be attributed to the host's ability to manufacture entertainment from hatred and hatred from entertainment.

Deconstructing Liberal Facts

The show's denunciation of liberalism extends well beyond liberal personalities to include liberal facts and explanations about the way the world works. By liberal facts here I am referring to statements which report the existence of some empirical condition, for example, the unemployment rate. Liberal explanations refer to the accounts through which these facts are explained. For example, unemployment might be explained as the result of the export of jobs by corporations who have little concern for their employees. While the vilificaiton of liberal facts and explanations is an end in itself, it serves another purpose as well. In order to establish the alternate reality which the conspiracy theory represents, the conspiracy theorist must raise doubts about the conventional understandings he or she seeks to replace. For Limbaugh, as for any conspiracy theorist, these conventional explanations are the property of the enemy and therefore represent an integral part of the problem. Limbaugh's repeated denunciation of the existing explanatory system accomplishes this deconstruction.

One method for debunking a liberal fact is to claim that the person or entity reporting it is motivated by a hidden agenda. If the conventional explanation of an event can be shown to serve an interest then that explanation is prima facie suspect. Motive talk is after all central to the overall structure of the conspiracy story since it has, at its core, a cast of enemies whose actions are rooted in a set of pre-existing interests. In using this sort of approach, Limbaugh's task, once he has established the legitimacy of this list of interests, is to tie a liberal fact to a likely motivation. As unlikely as many of these connections are, establishing their validity is not the least bit problematic for Limbaugh, who, as we shall see, is an expert at constructing the complex and rather far fetched linkages which hold the conspiracy theory together. But more than this, the theory makes it inconceivable that a "fact" which might serve the enemy's interest or support the enemy's claims could possibly be true. Why? Because the ideas of the conspirator enemies, by definition, stand for the perfect negation of truth and fact. Characteristic of the sort of anti-logic he employs throughout the program the reasoning goes like this: Liberalism is an unsupportable ideology, therefore any claims of fact which might to support it must be false.

Deconstructing Liberal Ideology

In addition to debunking liberal claims of fact, Limbaugh is also interested in debunking basic liberal values and understandings of social life. In many instances this is also accomplished by ascribing hidden motivations to such values. More often however, Limbaugh provides an account of the ways in which they deviate from basic truths of human nature and society. There is nothing surprising about the content of these truthsó they comprise the now familiar conservative view that economic individualism, private property and white male privilege are somehow "natural" or at least "naturally American". What is interesting however is the way in which he utilizes these beliefs, which are admittedly part of American folk understanding, to present a much more radical conservatism. But then Limbaugh's talent, beyond his considerable ability to manage the language of ridicule, is his ability to fashion believable arguments based not merely on misrepresentations of reality but often on absurd logical connections. What makes this astonishing is that unlike most polemicists Limbaugh is sufficiently confident in his persuasive ability to lay out such arguments in step-by-step detail, and to do so hour after hour and day after day. Starting from a handful of assumptions which to some degree resonate with American folk understandings about the way the world works, Limbaugh is able to build, entirely on a set of false analogies and misplaced connections, an explanatory edifice which his listeners find convincing and compelling, and upon which they are presumably willing to act.

Consider the following strip of talk. Limbaugh mentions, with his usual degree of mockery, that the Clinton administration views health care as a right. He then notes that the administration has said it will be necessary to raise taxes in order to provide health care. So, he concludes you have to raise taxes in order to provide rights. This, he says, he is opposed to. But then he adds the following. He says that free speech is also a right and asks if this means that every time one exercises that right a tax will be collected? I have to admit that I am at a loss in trying to understand how it is that Limbaugh can consistently get away with reasoning like this and indeed how he can base a whole system of ideas on it. But making false connections and integrating contradictions is what the program is all about.

The Pervasiveness of the Liberal Conspiracy

From a practical standpoint much of the program centers around the analysis of news events. While these events provide opportunities for Limbaugh to further vilify the liberal enemy, they also allow him to establish both the pervasiveness of the liberal conspiracy and the efficacy of the conspiracy story in accounting for it. Like any explanatory system, a conspiracy theory achieves acceptability when it is shown to account for a wide range of empirical phenomena. The theory in other words gains ground to the extent that it can be applied to a wide variety of events; to the extent that is, that it can provide a comprehensive and unified model of the way things are. Limbaugh's ability to account for news events in terms of the conspiracy narrative is of course linked to the news events he selects for discussion. Not surprisingly, the prime selection criteria is the degree to which an event allows him to affix blame to an incompetent or devious liberal individual or to liberal ideology. If an event cannot be shown to represent a liberal failure, the event, regardless of how news worthy it may be, it is not mentioned. For this reason, Limbaugh rarely discusses events which are in flux or events for which a liberal position has not yet been established. Only events which facilitate the telling of the story may be discussed.

Establishing the Conservative Case

In a limited sense the program is also concerned with establishing the validity of the conservative counter explanation. While secondary to the construction of the conspiracy, this effort also employs a number of rhetorical strategies worth mentioning. First, as I have already noted, Limbaugh presents conservatism as entirely "natural" and consistent with the basic American character. While useful in itself, such a characterization allows him to locate his views squarely in the center of the political spectrum and thereby to claim as allies a wide range of American historical figures. In the process of course he also alienates the liberal enemy from those figures. An interesting example here is a recent segment devoted to a 1962 speech made by John F. Kennedy. The segment consisted of a series of audio clips in which Kennedy advocated a lowering of tax rates in order to ensure economic growth. The point stressed in Limbaugh's commentary was that even Kennedy, a democrat, and supposed hero of liberalism, was a supply sider. Later in that same broadcast listeners were told of a speech by Hubert Humphrey, also a great liberal according to Limbaugh, condemning the breakup of the family. More than just providing an endorsement for his beliefs, segments such as these function to locate Limbaugh's point of view in a treasured and for most people un-problematic past. At the same time, they cut off the liberal enemy from that past and demonstrate how far outside and how alien he is. But then the underlying purpose of the program is to establish the existence of such an "other" who is defined, at the end of the day, not by any specific set of characteristics or beliefs but rather by his otherness. In the true sense of the word that is what the enemy is.

The theme of otherness is picked up in Limbaugh's discussions of conservative ideology. Although he does articulate a specific set of beliefs their essential characteristic is the fact that they represent the antithesis of liberal beliefs. Just as liberal beliefs are entirely problematic, conservative beliefs are entirely non-problematic. Just as liberal ideology is always and completely wrong, conservative ideology, as its antithesis, is always and completely right. This suggests of course that there can really be only one true conservatism- if there were more than one not all could be right. In fact discussions of the multiplicity of conservative ideologies is de-emphasized. Where they are recognized however they are typified as a strength and contrasted with liberal closed mindedness.

The notion that conservatism is always and completely right has implications for the selection of news events on the program and for the particular spin given to the events which are selected. I said before that news events are chosen according to their ability to discredit liberal beliefs. Similarly, they are selected according to their ability to demonstrate the wisdom of the conservative case. Just as discussion of an event which might make the anti-liberal case is withheld until it unfolds in an anti-liberal direction, discussion of an event which supports conservative claims is withheld until it unfolds favorably for conservatives. This is not to say that the program eschews of predictions about future events. But in accounting for these later it is not surprising that only correct predictions are remembered. Like a bad surgeon, and perhaps for the same reasons, Limbaugh buries his mistakes so as to appear infallible. He has to be infallible because he represents an infallible system the wisdom of which is trumpeted at every opportunity.

In attempting to establish the validity of conservative belief Limbaugh must often rely on supporting facts which are, through the lens of conventional wisdom, far fetched to say the least. Undaunted by the obscurity of many of these facts he turns their unbelievability into a resource for establishing their truth. The strategy he employs in establishing conservative facts may be best thought of as a corollary of his technique of falsifying liberal facts by exposing the interests they serve. Under this strategy a fact is true according to the degree of to which it is suppressed by the liberal enemy (the liberal enemy of course controls the means through which facts are disseminated). Moreover, the more removed a particular claim is from mainstream discourse the more validity it must have. I recall one instance in which Limbaugh spoke of a man who had written to him claiming to be a former NASA engineer. In his letter, which Limbaugh read on the air, the writer claimed that he had made certain discoveries, using already existing NASA data, which proved that the ozone hole was a natural phenomenon. It seemed clear from the letter that the man in fact had access to some specialized NASA research although of course it might well have been a fraud engineered by the program. The point of this story however is to underline the enemy's ability to manufacture false facts and to establish a criteria for testing the validity of facts which prove the conservative case. Of course, the disclosure of these suppressed facts is also a reason for tuning into the program in the first place. It gives the program the veneer of a current events show to the extent that it uncovers "news" which the mainstream liberal media is unwilling to report. I would argue that like the strategy of invalidating facts which can be shown to serve an interest, the use of a fact's suppression as a criteria for its validation is common to the rhetoric of conspiracy theories in general whether they originate on the right or the left.

The Talk Radio Format

Limbaugh's success in putting forth his agenda hinges on an exceptional ability to exploit the practical features of the talk radio format. Central among these is the ability to prevent persons with dissenting points of view from gaining access to the air waves. With respect to the Limbaugh program this is straight forward enough, the host never airs interviews with newsmakers- neither those who might oppose nor those who might support his point of view. The reasons for denying access to persons with dissenting opinions are obvious enough, more interesting is his avoidance of those who share his perspective. This relates, I suspect, to the necessity of maintaining precise control on the telling of the conspiracy story which is in some respects a fragile one. To allow guests on the program is after all to allow the presentation of issues which may not fit into the conspiracy narrative or may inadvertently reveal its weaknesses. More than that, a guest, even a sympathetic one cedes some portion of the tale from Limbaugh's control. Remember that with each and every story, each and every anecdote, Limbaugh reiterates the same unchanging message. To the extent that a guest takes time away from this most central activity he interferes with the function of the program.

Given all of this, it may seem paradoxical that audience call-in segments would make up such a large part of every broadcast. If the uncertainties associated with guests, who can at least be screened and perhaps coached in advance present a problem, one would think that the uncertainties associated with audience callers would be even more problematic. But they are not. In fact the callers, as much as any other feature of the program, are integral to the construction of the conspiracy story. Much more than for a live guest, Limbaugh is able to exert a tremendous amount of control over what these callers say on the air. This control is in part the result of an off air screening process but also depends upon Limbaugh's skilled use of the program's time delay which enables him to cut off a caller without the audience's awareness. The significance of this ability is that it enables Limbaugh to appear to be engaged in conversation with a caller when in fact he has cut that caller off and moved forward with his own agenda items. In point of fact, regardless of whether Limbaugh actually cuts a caller off or not, he steers his exchange with callers back to his set of agenda items regardless of the point the caller makes. If a caller says something not immediately pertinent to this agenda he returns with a "that reminds me of" or a "that brings up" statement which enables him to go back to his set of issues while appearing to address the audience's set of issues. Often, when this occurs, we don't here from the caller again although Limbaugh proceeds as if in conversation. For this reason, the callers can best be thought of as props with which to foster the impression that the show is about something it is in fact not about, the free wheeling discussion of issues. Their primary role on the program is to feed the host a stream of rhetorical opportunities while legitimizing Limbaugh's set of beliefs. The callers are on stage with him but have no say in the action which was scripted before they dialed into the show.

At the same time, the callers, as representatives of the world of opinion outside the program, serve to reciprocally validate the show's point of view. They verify the reasonableness of Limbaugh's message when they agree with it and give Limbaugh the chance to explain its finer points when they do not. This is not to say that there is ever any real disagreement with the host- no one ever gets on the air and accuses him of being unfair, bigoted or incorrect in his analysis. Indeed many callers begin their remarks with the phrase "mega dittos" in recognition of their total agreement with everything Limbaugh stands for. Disagreement is over the fine points and as such serves the purpose of defining the range of views which are acceptable. Not surprisingly the terrain of acceptability, the terrain of "not the enemy" is a narrow one- much more lays outside of it than inside. On another level, the callers function as representatives of the audience to the audience. They provide an otherwise anonymous community with a glimpse of itself. As proxies for the larger group of listeners, their validation of Limbaugh's beliefs serve to legitimate those beliefs for everyone else. Beyond endorsing Limbaugh's assumptions about the world and the beliefs which flow from them, the callers also model and at the same time legitimize the version of folk wisdom and common sense reasoning which he employs. There ability to do this rests on their status as representatives of the common folk and for this reason they are essential.

Conclusion

Every word spoken on the show is part of the total message because every word serves either as an excuse to vilify the liberal enemy, construct the conspiracy story, or point out the superiority and inevitability of the conservative program. The show's essential feature is its ability to fold anything and everything into the tale being told; to draw on a broad compass of news events, personal anecdotes and listener commentary and to use them as resources in the construction of a far right political narrative. More than the "big lie" which is created from a fabrication "facts", Limbaugh's narrative approach manufactures an entire system of beliefs and more than that an entire process to reasoning, an entire process through which to account for events in political and in everyday life. By laying out in such detail the processes through which he arrives his beliefs, Limbaugh makes reasonable not only a set of facts about the liberal enemy but also an overall approach to knowledge. What is disturbing of course is the degree to which this epistemology violates the normal reasoning processes of everyday life.

Back to the Anti-Rush home page.