Manufacturing Hysteria:
A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America
By Jay Feldman
Manufacturing Hysteria offers a chilling overview of how American political culture has generated domestic enemies to justify massive infringements of rights.
Jay Feldman begins with the World War I era and charts how the federal government (and often the states) developed bureaucracies of surveillance that often spilled into mob violence of the worst sort. He shows how the government "protected" democracy by systematically attacking those whose beliefs departed from official positions, thereby undermining the very political culture it was supposedly protecting.
What it means to be a patriot has changed over time, but Feldman sees how the urge to define "untainted Americanism" has persisted from the hysteria around German immigrants during the First World War to fears of a fifth column -- be it made up of Russian Bolsheviks, Japanese saboteurs or Islamic terrorists. In 1919 the Washington Post applauded "serious cleaning up" of "bewhiskered, ranting, howling, mentally warped, law-defying aliens" and "international misfits," and in subsequent generations we find parallel support for official, well-muscled efforts to make us feel safe by finding an internal enemy that can be attacked.
Feldman emphasizes two salient dimensions of this curious process of generating security by feeding paranoia. The first is that these efforts themselves violated the Constitution they claimed to be defending. Again and again, our elected officials (and the bureaucracy that shores up their power) have used extralegal means to pursue enemies. And they did so knowing they were violating the law or exceeding their authority. They often conjured up a sense of crisis to justify their actions, but Feldman does a good job of showing how their elaborate security designs were developed well before any emergencies actually occurred. These were well-planned efforts to ensure that future crises wouldn't go to waste -- that the government would be in a position to use them to increase political homogeneity.
The second dimension that Feldman emphasizes is that the insecurity was illusory, that the hysteria was "manufactured." He does indicate, very briefly, that in times of prosperity, such as the 1920s, the propensity to create ideological or ethnic purity through violence is much reduced. But he does not examine how threats -- such as the existence of a real world war or the work of spies who are really gathering information on behalf of a well-armed foreign power -- might change security issues. Feldman notes that after hundreds of thousands of investigations of private citizens, there were few prosecutions, but he mistakenly concludes that this means that there never were any real security threats.
The communist witch-hunts of the McCarthy period are for Feldman the paradigm for America's "neurotic nightmare." He doesn't see the relevance of the communist tyranny in Asia and Europe, a form of oppression willing to murder millions, and he is silent about the tactics of the American Communist Party -- from its embrace of the Soviet alliance with Nazi Germany to its willingness to accept the mother ship's mass persecutions of dissidents. Instead, Feldman opines that it was communism's "powerful critique of the social inequities of the capitalist system ... that made the Communist Party so threatening to the established order." But he gives no evidence at all that it was a "critique" J. Edgar Hoover was worried about.
And Hoover, longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is at the heart of Manufacturing Hysteria. Hoover's obsession with dissidents of all kinds, his reckless abuse of the Constitution, his power over lawmakers turned feelings of suspicion into policies of surveillance and control. The internment camps for Japanese Americans were just the tip of the iceberg; given the right conditions, Hoover was ready to round up millions. The FBI's thousands of informants were in the field to discredit civil rights organizations and antinuclear groups -- anyone who might depart from the narrow band of mainstream American life.
Alas, Feldman does not explore Hoover's motivations, or why this man so desperate to conceal his own private life from scrutiny became a master of intruding into the lives of his fellow citizens. The author rarely digs beneath the political surface, and his focus remains stubbornly on conventional, mainstream American history. Do other republics (or political organizations) also create political scapegoats? Of course they do. How does the American example compare to the French, or the British? What about socialist countries and their manufacture of hysteria to shore up those with power? Unfortunately, one learns nothing in this book about how modern political regimes of various kinds are prone to the hysteria that has also infected the United States.
Feldman's focus on American political elites is meant as a cautionary tale, and his epilogue describes how much worse things have become in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Manufacturing Hysteria is a political book, aimed at reminding those dedicated to civil liberties (especially the right to dissent) how fragile our freedoms are and how "close to a police state" we have come over the last century.
In his preface, Feldman writes: "Now, as ever, vigilance is required if liberty is to survive." He does not seem to recognize that many of those whose "hysterical" actions he deplores could have written this very same sentence. We can be grateful for his account, while still being disappointed that he did not explore what drives officials here and in other countries to believe that in periods of great insecurity the rights of some should be sacrificed to protect their own particular version of freedom.
Cross-posted from the San Francisco Chronicle (sfgate.com)
Manufacturing Hysteria by Jay Feldman - Book - eBook - Random ...
Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance ...
Jay Feldman's “Manufacturing Hysteria” - The Washington Post
More and more, we see mass hysteria when alleged crimes are sensationalized in the media with a result of the trial becoming politicized -- generally pressuring a judge to impose excessively harsh sentencing -- when not warranted or face ostracism by the media. As a result, it is simply easy for judges to adapt to the new norm of ever increasingly harsh punishment. Additionally, all politicians find common ground legislating, any and every penalty, imaginable. Result: media mass hysteria further defined as politics of mass incarceration.
The self correction evidenced in the past is now diminished by the influence of money on politics and media. This time around things might get worse then 1900s before they get better.
It is this mind splitting dichotomy that creates the rationale of "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"(Viet Nam era) and the hysteria fomented by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly et al to justify their rantings in order to "protect Christianity". These are just two examples of many that illustrate the contradictory nature of ourselves.
We Americans (many of us) are like victims of emotional abuse. We identify with and adopt the abuser's behavior. All the political rhetoric in the world is not going to change much until we manage to gain some insight into the human psyche. I'm not sure about how to accomplish that.
Anybody got any ideas?
AND
bllbgwll - Your post is every bit it's equal
AS TO YOUR QUESTION:
Like biological evolution, the evolution of our national intellect
is a slow, and non-linear process.
We ARE evolving intellectually and morally
REMEMBER:
The only GOOD indian, is a dead indian
Dredd Scott 1857 A black person has NO rights that a white person is obligated to respect
AND it is unconstitutional for Congress to pass any legislaton granting them such
(overturned the Missouri Compromise)
In Lincoln's time, the Negro Race was considered, by Lincoln himself, as biologically inferior to whites
President Woodrow Wilson 1912-1920, a "leader of the Progressive Movement" AND
a devout Presbyterian- Supported the KKK, and praised the racist
movie "Birth of A Nation" as a valuable cultural contribution to our nation.
As late as the 50s & 60s, Lynchings and Random Killings of blacks, browns, & etc
were common in the South here in the US- And it took enormous efforts of the
FBI and US Attorney's office in DC to end this reign of terror
********************
If you want to get a read on the spectrum of thought of the politically
engaged population here in the US
Listen in to CSPAN's Call-In program any morning @0700ETS
Mr. President you truley are the most gifted of all,in my estimation. I see the reflection of we the people in your shining eyes.Please carry on you know whats best for all. I believe no one can outsmart you take care and don't outsmart yourself. We can no longer fight inflation with war is the only thing I need to hear.
Listen to those GOPt folks cheering execution and you see the future if you don't wake up.
Vote for the Locke liberal US founder types, the CPC Progressive caucus, Kucinch folks in the primaries:
http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/
Not the Obama Clinton Rahm Blue dog new dem DLC corporatist anti-populist folks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council
Then vote straight Dems in the general, because the GOP/Tea are much worse.
Cheering for executions,
Too bad neither Brian Williams, not Wolf brought up the case of Todd Willingham,
the man who was almost certainly innocent,
that Perry refused to stay the execution to examine a credible challenge-
and then derailed the Texas Forensic Science Board's after-the-fact
investigation of his case
Good Shoutout to Kucinch, don't forget Bernie Sanders, and many other DEMs
Occasionally when they can afford to follow their consciences,
some Repubs like Linsey Graham & John McCain do the right thing
also some extreme rightwingers like Bob Barr
How are those speech codes at Wesleyan University doing?
Now, think about both the best and worst you have ever been and think about a person in control deciding what you should have to pay for services and if you do not you are cut off.
Most Americans have only the vote to keep their lives safe. They have only two parties to choose from. Both parties have joined together to keep power. You are powerless and know it. Have a great day.
While I disagree that we are powerless, you make a very good point. While most people say that U.S. citizens are "free," that is factually incorrect. We are not free, nor do we want freedom. We want a peaceful, orderly society, preferably one that is also just.
Our rights are not free, nor do they make us free. Freedom is a false value. We must work to create our rights, and we must work to maintain them. Nothing is free.
Jesse
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2011/09/security-familyland-fatherland-or.html
similar to Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine.