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Mark Crispin Miller

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Mark Crispin Miller
Miller speaking at New York City's Open Center in 2012
Born6 November 1949 (age 75)[1]
NationalityAmerican
OccupationProfessor
Academic background
Alma materNorthwestern University (BA)
Johns Hopkins University (MA, PhD)
Academic work
DisciplineMedia studies
InstitutionsNew York University (NYU)
Websitemarkcrispinmiller.com

Mark Crispin Miller (born 6 November 1949[2] ) is a professor of media studies at New York University.[3] He has promoted conspiracy theories about U.S. presidential elections, the September 11 attacks and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting as well as misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines.

Background and career

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In the introduction to Seeing Through Movies, Miller argues that the nature of American films has been affected by the impact of advertising.[4] He has said that the handful of multinational corporations in control of the American media have changed youth culture's focus away from values and toward commercial interests and personal vanity.[5]

In a June 2001 profile by Chris Hedges for The New York Times, Miller described himself as a "public intellectual" and criticized television news "that is astonishingly empty and distorts reality".[6] He has appeared on the Useful Idiots podcast and was praised by its host, Matt Taibbi.[7][8]

Conspiracy-theory and disinformation promotion

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In his social and political commentary, Miller frequently espouses conspiracy theories.[9]

On social media and in other statements, Miller has promoted conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks;[10] Miller is a signatory to the 9/11 Truth Statement[11] and a member of the 9/11 Truth movement.[10][12] He dislikes the term "conspiracy theory", calling the phrase a "meme" used to "discredit people engaged in really necessary kinds of investigation and inquiry." In a 2017 New York Observer interview, he said anyone using the term "in a pejorative sense" is "a witting or unwitting CIA asset".[13]

Election fraud conspiracy theories

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In his book Fooled Again, Miller claims that the 2000 and 2004 U.S. presidential elections were stolen.[14] He has since claimed that the 2020 U.S. Presidential election was stolen.[9]

In 2024, on a post in his Substack page, Miller gave a detailed statement about the U.S. Presidential elections he believed were stolen.[15][16] In the post, Miller claims that the 2000 U.S. Presidential election was rigged in favor of George W. Bush over his rival Al Gore to allow the war on terror, that the 2004 Presidential election was again rigged for Bush to ensure victory over John Kerry, that the 2016 election was rigged to allow Donald Trump to win over Hillary Clinton but that Trump did legitimately win reelection in 2020 (or just "election" as Miller claims his first term in office was actually an "ascension" due its illegitimacy) and despite that was stolen to force him out of office and replace him with Joe Biden.[17][18] In the same post, Miller also claims that the rigging of the previously mentioned elections were carried out in collaborations by the CIA, the media and both the Democratic and Republican parties (but for the last two, only against the other party).[19][20] Miller claims that both the Democratic and Republican parties routinely steal elections from the other and that to say otherwise is misguided and that saying that only one party steals elections is partisan.[21][22] Miller also uses his post to denounce the term "election denier" and its use by the media to describe himself and other people who claim that the 2020 election was stolen, claiming that the term "election denier" is used to compare them "morally and intellectually" to "Holocaust deniers", a group of conspiracy theorists propagating the view that the Holocaust was a hoax, a view denounced as racist and dis-proven not only by Miller but also the vast majority of legitimate historians and the media.[23][24]

9/11 hoax conspiracy theory

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Main article: 9/11 conspiracy theories

In 2016, Miller gave a speech to the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.[9] After a "truthers" symposium on 9/11, Miller told Vice that the official explanations for 9/11 and John F. Kennedy's assassination "are just as unscientific as the ones that everybody feels comfortable ridiculing".[25]

Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre hoax conspiracy theory

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In a blog post, Miller suggested that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax; in a subsequent interview, he denied that any children died in the shooting and voiced "suspicion" that "it was staged" or was "some kind of an exercise".[9] Miller praised a Sandy Hook denial book by James Fetzer as "compelling" (a $450,000 defamation judgment had previously been entered against Fetzer, after the father of one of the murdered Sandy Hook students sued him for false statements made in the book).[9]

Anti-vaccination and COVID misinformation

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Miller has also screened for his students the anti-vaccination film Vaxxed, produced by disgraced[26] former physician Andrew Wakefield (who was struck off the medical register in the UK for scientific misconduct).[10][13] Miller has spread COVID-19 misinformation, including misleading claims about the efficacy of face masks and false claims that COVID-19 vaccines alter recipients' DNA,[9][27] and believes the virus may have been an artificially created bioweapon.[28]

Books

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Miller's books include:

  • Miller, Mark Crispin (1988). Boxed in: the Culture of TV. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 0-8101-0791-0. OCLC 18017073.[29][30][31][32]
  • Seeing Through Movies (edited, 1990), Pantheon Books.[33]
  • The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder (2001)[34]
  • Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order (2004), W.W. Norton & Company, ISBN 0-393-05917-0.[35]
  • Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them) (2005), New York: Basic Books ISBN 0-465-04579-0.[36]
  • Loser Take All : Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 (IG Publishing, December 2008, ISBN 978-0978843144)

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Kaminer, Ariel (2012-11-08). "Long Day for a Professor Suspicious of Voting Machines". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-05-15.
  2. ^ Kaminer, Ariel (2012-11-08). "Long Day for a Professor Suspicious of Voting Machines". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-05-15.
  3. ^ "Mark Crispin Miller: Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication". NYU Steinhardt. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  4. ^ Rothenberg, Randall (March 13, 1990). "The Media Business: Advertising; Is It a Film? Is It an Ad? Harder to Tell". The New York Times. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  5. ^ "Interview: Mark Crispin Miller". Frontline. PBS. 2012 [2000]. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  6. ^ Hedges, Chris (June 15, 2001). "Public Lives; Watching Bush's Language, and Television". The New York Times. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  7. ^ Taibbi, Matt; Halper, Katie (December 31, 2020). "Stimulus Checks, Larry Summers, Plus Mark Crispin Miller on Academic Freedom". Rolling Stone.
  8. ^ Taibbi, Matt. "Meet the censored: Mark Crispin Miller". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
  9. ^ a b c d e f Dery, Mark (May 12, 2021). "The Professor of Paranoia: Mark Crispin Miller, who is suing his colleagues, used to study conspiracy theories. Now he pushes them". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Archived from the original on November 22, 2023. Retrieved May 18, 2021. He thinks there is 'abundant evidence' that Biden stole the 2020 election.
  10. ^ a b c Kennedy, Dominic (June 13, 2020). "Conspiracy theories spread by academics with university help". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Archived from the original on 13 June 2020. Retrieved June 14, 2020. The founders of the OPS include Piers Robinson, a former journalism professor at Sheffield, and Mark Crispin Miller, a media professor at New York University. Both are 9/11 "Truthers" who challenge the official explanation of the World Trade Center attacks. Professor Crispin Miller has shown his students the film Vaxxed, made by Andrew Wakefield, the disgraced British doctor struck off for falsely linking the MMR jab to autism.
  11. ^ Rossmier, Vincent (11 September 2009). "Would you still sign the 9/11 Truth petition?". Salon. Retrieved 19 March 2018.
  12. ^ Keate, Georgie; Kennedy, Dominic; Shveda, Krystina; Haynes, Deborah (April 14, 2018). "Apologists for Assad working in British universities". The Times. London. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved June 14, 2020. (subscription required)
  13. ^ a b Stutman, Gabe (July 26, 2017). "NYU Professor Uses Tenure to Advance 9/11 Hoax Theory". Observer. New York. Retrieved December 5, 2018.
  14. ^ Kaminer, Ariel (2012-11-08). "Long Day for a Professor Suspicious of Voting Machines". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2021-05-15.
  15. ^ https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/nate-silver-sees-trump-leading-harris-by-8-points
  16. ^ https://archive.ph/kmZHG
  17. ^ https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/nate-silver-sees-trump-leading-harris-by-8-points
  18. ^ https://archive.ph/kmZHG
  19. ^ https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/nate-silver-sees-trump-leading-harris-by-8-points
  20. ^ https://archive.ph/kmZHG
  21. ^ https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/nate-silver-sees-trump-leading-harris-by-8-points
  22. ^ https://archive.ph/kmZHG
  23. ^ https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/nate-silver-sees-trump-leading-harris-by-8-points
  24. ^ https://archive.ph/kmZHG
  25. ^ Thompson, Alex (September 12, 2016). "9/11 'truthers' vow to never, ever forget". Vice. Retrieved April 11, 2020.
  26. ^ Deer B (2011). "Wakefield's article linking MMR vaccine and autism was fraudulent". The BMJ. 342: c5347. doi:10.1136/bmj.c5347. PMID 21209059.
  27. ^ NBC New York (2020-09-23). "NYU Student Calls for Professor's Firing After He Urged Masks Are Propaganda". NBC New York. Retrieved 2021-10-14. [He] said that the worldwide mask-wearing is propaganda peddled by the "left" and mainstream media
  28. ^ Kennedy, Dominic (10 April 2020). "British academics sharing coronavirus conspiracy theories online". The Times & The Sunday Times. Archived from the original on 11 April 2020. Retrieved 21 December 2023. Another director, Mark Crispin Miller, a professor at New York University, has written that the coronavirus "may be an artificially created bioweapon".
  29. ^ Rabinovitz, Lauren (1991). Marc, David; Miller, Mark Crispin; Kaplan, E. Ann; Fiske, John (eds.). "Television Criticism and American Studies". American Quarterly. 43 (2): 358–370. doi:10.2307/2712935. ISSN 0003-0678. JSTOR 2712935.
  30. ^ Fromm, Harold (1989). Levine, Lawrence W.; Miller, Mark Crispin (eds.). "Cultural Power". The Georgia Review. 43 (1): 179–188. ISSN 0016-8386. JSTOR 41399517.
  31. ^ Peck, A. (1988). "I Am a VCR, by Marvin Kitman and Boxed In: The Culture of TV, by Mark Crispin Miller: Chicago Tribune".
  32. ^ "Books". Journal of Communication. 40 (2): 128–192. 1990-06-01. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1990.tb02266.x. ISSN 0021-9916.
  33. ^ Reviews: James E. Vincent ETC, JSTOR 42577289; Janet. Staiger, Journal of Communication, doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.1991.tb02325.x; Publishers Weekly
  34. ^ The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder, W.W. Norton, ISBN 0-393-32296-3, 2001. Reviews: Jill Ortner, Library Journal, [1]; Elayne Tobin, The Nation, [2]; Publishers Weekly
  35. ^ Reviews: "Early Evaluations of the Bush Presidency", Karen M. Hult and Charles E. Walcott, Rhetoric and Public Affairs, JSTOR 41940149; Michael A. Genovese, Library Journal, [3]; David Lotto, Journal of Psychohistory, [4]
  36. ^ Reviews: Publishers Weekly; Kirkus Reviews; Farhad Manjoo, Salon, [5]
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