October 25-2013
A new poll shows that more than a quarter of Americans believe US Muslims are secretly inserting Sharia law into the US justice system.
The poll by Public Policy Polling (PPP) reported that 55 percent do not believe in such a plot but that 26 percent do believe it while 19 percent aren’t sure.
The poll found a huge partisan difference with 42 percent of Republicans believing in the Sharia threat but only 12 percent of Democrats believing it. Republicans in many state legislatures have been pushing legislation in recent years to bar Sharia law from US courts even though the US Constitution already bars enforcement of any laws that conflict with US law.
The poll was not about Sharia law, but about the susceptibility of Americans to conspiracy theories, a problem more often attributed to Iranians than Americans.
But PPP found lots of Americans endorsing conspiracy theories, though it said Republicans show far more of a tendency in that direction than Democrats.
Overall, 36 percent of Americans believe the Obama Administration is secretly trying to take everyone’s guns away. A total of 62 percent of Republicans believe that, but just 14 percent of Democrats.
One in four Americans says President Obama is secretly trying to figure out a way to stay in office beyond 2017 – including 44 percent of Republicans.
Some 13 percent of Americans believe the US government engages in so-called “false flag” operations, where the government carries out terrorist or mass shooting events and blames those actions on others. At 21 percent, Republicans are more than twice as likely as Democrats (9 percent) to believe this theory.
A total of 19 percent believe the old canard that a secret society produces America’s political and financial leaders to serve the wealthy elite. And 17 percent said they think a group of world bankers are slowly eliminating paper currency to force most banking online – only to cut the power grid so regular citizens can’t access money and are forced into worldwide slavery. Nearly one in three Republicans (27 percent) believes this currency theory while 10 percent of Democrats agree.
PPP asked Americans whether they thought the government has engaged in the assassination of entertainers such as John Lennon and Tupac Shakur and political leaders such as Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. whose messages they didn’t like. Those polled were nearly twice as likely to think the government killed political leaders to silence them (23 percent yes, 61 percent no) than entertainers (12 percent yes, 72 percent no.)
One of the most widely-believed theories involved the rigging of professional sporting events with 32 percent believing major sporting events such as the NBA playoffs or the Super Bowl are sometimes rigged by league offices and referees to increase ratings and revenue for the sports—49 percent said they were certain this doesn’t happen, and 19 percent weren’t sure.
But the biggest conspiracy theory of the 20th Century seems to have died in the 21st Century. Only 3 percent of those polled believe the US government has been conspiring with aliens from outer space.