FT258

On the BBC News website on 24 November, Ahmed Rashid wrote of “dozens of satellite news channels” in Pakistan, the viewers of which “will be bombarded with talk show hosts… trying to convince viewers of global conspiracies against Pakistan led by India and the United States”. In America, dozens of radio and TV commentators are offering conspiracy theories about President Obama and plots by the Democrats to turn America into a Communist society.

In one sense, nothing new is going on here: this is the return of the witch-hunts of the post-WW2 era, when the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joe McCarthy hunted for commie ‘witches’, an activity whose template was the witch-hunts which erupted across Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.