Kathryn S. Olmsted. Real enemies: conspiracy theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11

In 1963, historian Richard Hofstadter donned the clinician's white coat to describe conspiracy theorists and a "paranoid style of American politics" given to exaggeration, distortion, and fantastical thinking. If still the favorite of journalists, Hofstadter's ideas have been significantly revised in the last decade by scholars from diverse disciplines. Their studies have placed conspiracy theorists in a broader frame by considering the institutional, cultural, and technological means that have made conspiracy thinking a mainstream phenomenon. These scholars have suggested that elites in government and the media join countersubversives to teach citizens to fear conspiracy.

Kathryn S. Olmsted. Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. Author(s): Robert A. Goldberg Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 115, No. 2 (April 2010), pp. 576-577 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/ahr. 115.2.576 Accessed: 14/04/2011 12:52 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [e-mail]. The University of Chicago Press and American Historical Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The American Historical Review. http://www.jstor.org 576 Reviews o f Books cfcllcr, Mayor John Lindsay, and Senator Jacob Javits, to tack to the right. Both authors also employ a similar and traditional methodology, ably mining the archival record to give primacy to election results and political figures-party leaders, campaign aides, and elected of­ficials- rather than larger social developments. The Center Cannot Hold is, in a sense, a prequel to Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking o f the American Consensus (2001), Rick Pcrlstcin's sem­inal account of the 1964 campaign, inevitably, Gifford presents familiar material on Buckley, National Review, Young Americans for Freedom, Goldwater, and the conservative operatives who saw him as their great hope. But she breaks new ground by examining the 1960 election from a ground-level, constituency-based per­spective. In particular, she contrasts the success of the Right at organization building among conservative youths, intellectuals, and southerners with the failure of liberals in the GOP to broaden their appeal to African Americans and white ethnics, for whom Nixon's anti­communist credentials mattered less than John F. Kennedy's Catholic faith. Part of the problem lay with Rockefeller himself, whose refusal to run, as Gifford rightly puts it, "deprived his liberal constituents of a legitimate voice in the political process" (p. 17). But a larger problem for liberals was their continued reliance on policy studies and top-down, elite leadership rather than grass-roots efforts to attract popular support. As a consequence, she concludes, conservatives had effec­tively captured control of the Republican Party by the end of 1960. By contrast, New York State and the Rise of Modern Conservatism begins at that very moment, when two Re­publican Wall Street lawyers, Kieran O'Doherty and his brother-in-law, J. Daniel Mahoney, decided to organize conservatives into a third party so they could punish liberals like Rockefeller for their supposed lack of loy­alty to Nixon in the recent campaign and take advan­tage of New York's unique laws, which set a low ballot threshold and permitted minor parties to cross-cn- dorse-or not-the candidates of major parties. At times, the Conservative Party and the state GOP co­operated when it was to their mutual advantage. At oth­ers, they competed, as in 1965 when Buckley ran un­successfully for mayor against Lindsay. In 1970, however, James Buckley, William's brother, ran suc­cessfully against liberal Republican incumbent Charles Goodell, whose antiwar stance had angered the Nixon White House. "We got that son of a bitch," Vice Pres­ident Spiro Agnew reportedly stated (p. 111). Within a year, Lindsay had switched parties and Rockefeller had become an advocate of law and order. By 1980, the Con­servative Party had achieved its aims of institutional co­operation and ideological compatibility with the Re­publican Party, symbolized by the joint election of Alfonse D'Amato to the U.S. Senate, replacing Javits, the last great liberal Republican in the Empire State. Both of these books have minor flaws. Gifford im­plies, with an air of finality, that after 1960 the triumph of the conservatives over the moderates in the GOP was complete and irreversible. Yet in the wake of the Gold- water defeat and the Watergate scandal the moderates made strong, if ultimately failed, bids to reassert their preeminence within the party. Sullivan suggests that William Buckley's call for law and order during his failed bid for city hall in 1965 highlighted the potency of the issue to a national audience without taking into full consideration the greater impact of Reagan's cap­ture of the statehouse in California in 1966. At times both works also become preoccupied with campaign tactics and political minutiae from an insider's perspec­tive, which is not surprising given the sources used. Fi­nally, more attention to the changing electoral dynam­ics and demographics at the state and national level would have provided more contextualization for the ar­guments the authors make. Nevertheless, these engaging and insightful studies offer a healthy corrective to structural arguments that minimize human agency and historical contingency. They remind us that ideas and individuals matter, that the rise of the Right was not preordained, regardless of what some conservatives or liberals may believe. Whether the demise of the moderate wing of the GOP was permanent is another matter. As Bill Clinton ob­served during a budget debate in the White House in 1992, "We're all Eisenhower Republicans here." But of course he was speaking of his fellow Democrats, and in 2010 the Obama administration has struggled to win a single GOP vote in the U.S. Senate for domestic ini­tiatives such as health care. In any event, the strange death of liberal Republicanism, here astutely analyzed and autopsied by the authors, has without question had a profound impact on the political world in which we live today. Michael Flamm Ohio Wesleyan University Kathryn S. Olmsted. Real Enemies: Conspiracy The­ories and American Democracy, World War 1 to 9111. New York: Oxford University Press. 2009. Pp. x, 320. S29.95. In 1963, historian Richard Hofstadter donned the cli­nician's white coat to describe conspiracy theorists and a "paranoid style of American politics" given to exag­geration, distortion, and fantastical thinking. If still the favorite of journalists, Hofstadter's ideas have been sig­nificantly revised in the last decade by scholars from diverse disciplines. Their studies have placed conspir­acy theorists in a broader frame by considering the in­stitutional, cultural, and technological means that have made conspiracy thinking a mainstream phenomenon. These scholars have suggested that elites in government and the media join countcrsubversives to teach citizens to fear conspiracy. In her new book, Kathryn S. Olmsted focuses on the behavior of the federal government, the "taproot" of modem American conspiracism (p. 42). She argues that conspiracy thinking underwent a fundamental transfor­mation during World War 1. Before that time, Amer­A m e r ic a n H is t o r ic a l R e v iew A p r il 2 0 1 0 Canada and the United States 511 icans were conccrncd about groups subverting the gov­ernment and turning it to their own devices. This shifted in the crisis of war as the federal government assumed new powers and plotted real conspiracies against its citizcns and peoples around the world. Lies, covcr-ups, illegal surveillance, and even assassination bccamc the official means to control events. Govern­ment officials also developed conspiracy theories to covcr their misdeeds and mobilize Americans. Mean­while. government harassment and spying on dissenters promoted paranoia and discredited alternative views. From these beginnings and over the dccadcs arose the "proto-sccrctivc national security state." one given to imperialism, militarism, and the suppression of pro­gressive politics (p. 14). in cncyclopcdic fashion, Olm­sted offers a rogue's gallery of federal shame. She de­tails the misinformation campaigns of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt before and during World Wars 1 and 11. J. Edgar Hoover's an­ticommunism and the FBI COlNTHLPRO's work to si­lence dissidents, Kennedy administration attempts to kill Fidel Castro, the Watergate crisis, the CIA's MK- ULTRA plot to use LSD on unsuspecting subjects, and George W. Bush's conspiracy to lever the 9/11 tragedy into war with Iraq, among many other plots. Defending democratic practiccs and traditions, con­spiracy theorists responded to federal provocations with "counter narratives" (p. 6). These men and women were "authentic patriots" who sought only to awaken their country to the enemy within (p. 12). Among con- spiracism's countcragcnts and watchdogs arc Amcrica- Firstcrs Charles Lindbergh and John T. Flynn; scientist Linus Pauling; John F. Kennedy assassination re­searcher Sylvia Meagher; and the so-callcd "Jersey Girls," who were widows of 9/11 victims. If less hon­orably mentioned, also included arc right-wing extrem­ist Randy Weaver, Branch Davidian David Korcsh, and the Unabombcr Theodore Kaczynski. Olmsted's conspiracy theorists may be combating the real enemies and constraining centralized power, but she sounds a note of caution in her conclusion. Their challenge injects "toxins" into the public discourse and spreads a "dreaded disease" of magical thinking and tortured logic that short circuits historical discovery (pp. 236. 239). Her solution to these problems is to re­strain the federal government with new rules of trans­parency. accountability, and oversight. Olmsted appropriately conccntratcs on the role of federal authorities in promoting conspiracy thinking. Their acts have doused public faith and bccomc tinder for conspiracism. By operating a cult of official sccrccy. authorities have also abused the public's trust. These arc the raw materials of paranoia. Though such federal behavior is already well known, Olmsted's book docs a fine job of exposing its long history and enabling read­ers to disccrn the pattern of abuse. The author is also to be commcndcd for revealing the role of women in conspiracy thinking, particularly in regard to unraveling the stories behind Kennedy's assassination and 9/11. That said, such revisionism goes too far. Painting in broad brushstrokes and crying conspiracy blurs the nu- anccs of geopolitics, bureaucratic competition, political crosscurrents, and personalities, among other variables in government action. Condemning Wilson and Roosevelt for systematically lying also deprives the Germans and Japanese of agency and makes them unknowing patsies of their American handlers. Olmsted appreciates too much her subjects' political corrcctncss in opposing the imperial presidency. Only belatedly docs she offer muffled warn­ings about those who lacc their theories with shrill accu­sations that claim betrayal and demonize opponents. It is their tactics that help deny the compromise and civility essential to a democratic socicty. Moreover, countcrsubvcrsivcs do not simply mimic federal authorities. Their training in the art goes back before the founding of the United States. This is ap­parent in a pattern that Olmsted finds but largely ig­nores. The conspiracy theorists she profiles supposedly discovered a secret Jewish hand in many events: the coming of World War 11, the anticommunist scare, the Tuskcgcc experiment, the New World Order, and 9/11. Like Richard Nixon, they dccricd Jewish influence, go­ing as far as to rail against ZOG-the Zionist Occu­pation Government in Washington D.C. In the ease of the Pearl Harbor conspiracists, Olmsted finds that their relationship to antisemitism was "complicated" (p. 70). Some readers cannot be as sensitive to the ambiguities. Such conspiracy thinking is rooted in deeper matters than federal malfeasance and long predates the coming of World War 1. For these conspiracists, perhaps anti­government theories were more a means to a broader end-a solution to the so-callcd Jewish problem. Robert A. Goldberg University of Utah James Wolfinger. Philadelphia Divided: Race and Pol­itics in the City of Brotherly Love. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press'. 2007. Pp. xii. 318. S49.95. James Wolfingcr's book is a significant addition to the burgeoning literature on race, politics, and mctropoli- tanization in the United States following World War 11. It also joins a growing chorus that locates the origins of a postwar conservative backlash not in the wake of the riotous 1960s but rather in the race-conscious liberal­ism evident in the New Deal and World War 11 eras. With such an approach, Wolfinger richly contcxtu- alizcs the Philadelphia story and moves beyond the con­cerns over housing and residential segregation that have served as focal points for much of the earlier work in the field. He traces the now familiar story of public housing, slum clearance, and urban renewal from the New Deal to the 1960s, showing how the rise of the civil rights movement and, especially, the reconstruction of American cities in the postwar period coincided with the demographic shift that rendered them increasingly non-white and segregated. But he also docs much more. Focusing on jobs and the racial segmentation of the labor market. Wolfinger provides a richly informative and finely detailed account of Philadelphia's World A m e r ic a n H is t o r ic a l R e v iew A p r i l 2 0 1 0