The fact that the U.S. Army Special Operations Command was planning to conduct extensive training exercises in the southwestern United States was known to local officials for several months before the right-wing fringe convinced itself that Operation Jade Helm 15 was a prelude to the Obama government declaring martial law and ushering in a New World Order.

The sheriff’s office of Victoria County, Texas, disclosed it to the press in December of last year. At about the same time, Gelid County approved the “U.S. Army’s Jade Helm realistic military training” unanimously.

By mid-to-late March of this year, though, conspiracy theorists got hold of the military’s official request, and drove the right wing into a panic over everything from gun confiscation to state-sanctioned murder to military occupation to economic catastrophe.

Nobody who’s read "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" can claim to be surprised that these theories took hold among many citizens, or even that politicians would try to gain a boost from the political energy driving that paranoia. But there’s something unusual about a mass of God-and-country conservative Texans convincing themselves that America’s most elite service members will take over the southwest—a mass so large that prominent Texan politicians, including Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott, have stepped in not to quell suspicion but to confirm, or at least validate, their suspicions.

Abbott has instructed the Texas State Guard to monitor Jade Helm. As for Cruz: “I understand a lot of the concerns raised by a lot of citizens about Jade Helm. It’s a question I’m getting a lot, and I think part of the reason is we have seen, for six years, a federal government disrespecting the liberty of the citizens. And that produces fear, when you see a federal government that is attacking our free speech rights, or religious liberty rights, or Second Amendment rights, that produces distrust.”