This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Saturday, February 10th, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The conspiracy theories that infected the 2016 presidential election were often shocking,

often quickly shown to be false false but one thing they were not

unprecedented

Anthony Kamegna is editor of a new volume from libertarianism.org lives of the

necromancers by William Godwin. Godwin shows how the wealthy, powerful, and educated

few exploited the people's credulity to satisfy their own will to power.

In the 2016 election, and we should probably back up a little bit before the 2016 election and

go back to when Donald Trump was touring the country making sort of making claims about where Barack Obama was born. And talking about while he was born in Kenya, we don't know a lot of things,

we need to investigate this very fully, asking for long-form birth certificates certificates and my view in light of his presidential

campaign and in light of him actually getting elected president I viewed that

as a test that that pitch of the bertherism I viewed that as sort of a test. I was like what can I

get these people to believe.

And to the extent that if I am correct about that,

it's not unprecedented by any stretch.

No, it's a very common thing.

And I think this goes back into the midst of history, if you will, to quote Hillary Clinton, about the foundation of traditional

marriage.

Well, politicians' ability to exploit people's thinking goes back into the midst of history.

So in the book that you've edited, Lives of the Necromancers, William Godwin, who was William

Godwin and what was the

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