by Maisie Allison

The Center for American Progress investigates (pdf). The report exposes a small, powerful collaboration at work, with a focus on familiar "misinformation experts" and several foundations, which have devoted more than $42 million to the cause since 2001. Stephen Walt is miffed:

The irony in all this that the extremists examined in this report have gone to great lengths to convince Americans that there is a vast Islamic conspiracy to subvert American democracy, impose sharia law, and destroy the American way of life. Instead, what we are really facing is a well-funded right-wing collaboration to scare the American people with a bogeyman of their own creation, largely to justify more ill-advised policies in the Middle East.

Justin Elliott interviews two of the report's authors. Adam Serwer sighs at the GOP's lazy malevolence:

Until Republican leaders try to appeal to the better angels of their constituents’ nature — rather than feeding on and profiting from their paranoia — things are unlikely to change.