An increasing number of right-wing conspiracy theorists are promoting a morbid rumor suggesting that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been dead for weeks while shadowy deep state forces are working behind the scenes to keep the president from nominating her replacement.
Even a few high-profile Republicans have bought into this absurd delusion, giving legs to a theory that only serves to reinforce the liberal view of conservatives as superstitious, gullible, and ignorant.
Dead wrong
Rumors began swirling around the status of Ginsburg’s health after she underwent surgery in late December to remove two cancerous nodules from her lower left lung. When the progressive justice missed oral arguments for the first time in her 25-year Supreme Court career, even mainstream news sources began questioning whether Ginsburg would ever return to the high court.
The gossip surrounding the 85-year-old’s health “appears to have originated on the message boards that house the QAnon theory,” a Chicago Tribune report determined, referencing the baseless conspiracy theory which alleges a “deep state” plot to undermine President Trump and his supporters.
“An anonymous but influential account posted a stew of doubt-mongering, wondering about Ginsburg’s ‘real medical diagnosis’ and wondering what kind of ‘off-market drugs’ were sustaining her,” the report stated.
QAnon quackery
However, any doubts regarding Ginsburg’s health should have been dismissed after she was spotted by concertgoers attending her daughter-in-law’s Feb. 4 concert at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. But because Ginsburg was seated in the back of a dark theater, and photographs were strictly forbidden at the event, conspiracists refused to believe that the judge was alive and well.
Even now that Ginsburg has been back to work long enough to hear oral arguments and author several court opinions, social media platforms continue to be bombarded with accusations of body doubles and doctored images. Even when presented with clear evidence of the justice’s presence at a memorial last week for Israeli author Amos Oz, Twitter users were unconvinced.
“Love the creepy hand to the right by Ruth they always make stupid photoshop mistakes,” one QAnon fan tweeted in response to a photo of Ginsburg attending the event. “Like a freudsche slip. #RuthBaderGinsburg is dead.”
One misguided internet sleuth posted a video, shared more than 2,000 times, claiming that a “hearse was just seen leaving [Ginsburg’s] neighborhood.” Meanwhile, online search engines are inundated with thousands of tweets, videos, and articles making the case for Ginsburg’s death.
Rubber stamping a lie
One of the reasons this fallacious narrative has survived so much mainstream scrutiny is support from prominent public figures. Conservative cartoonist Ben Garrison questioned Ginsburg’s whereabouts in a tweet and wrote an article on his blog discussing whether liberals would keep Ginsburg’s death “a secret” to prevent another conservative justice in the Supreme Court.
The Ginsburg conspiracy even has the support of former White House aide Sebastian Gorka, who questioned the legitimacy of the judge’s first post-surgery appearance, asking how “there can be a ‘public’ appearance behind closed doors.”
The rumors became exponentially stronger when, due to a technical error, Fox News accidentally aired a live graphic announcing Ginsburg’s death. This was all the evidence some misguided Americans needed to finally jump on the Ginsburg-is-dead bandwagon.
Joseph Vitriol, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and expert on conspiracy theories, believes that the Ginsburg death claims are so popular because it reinforces ingrained conservative opinions of liberals.
“Conservatives who believe in this conspiracy believe in it for that function — to justify the belief that Democrats are dishonest and nefarious,” Vitriol told The Hill. “And that can function to make conservatives feel more vindicated in the perception they have of Democrats.”
But with so much verifiable evidence pointing to liberal villainy and deep state collusion, conservatives don’t need to buy into the toxic combination of populism and ignorance which persists in QAnon chat rooms. These conspiracies only undermine genuine, carefully documented instances of Democratic misconduct, and besmirch the reputation for reason that typically characterizes the modern conservative movement.
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