My reactions to reading this book in 1992.

This book had a little bit to say of value about the so-called “paranoid style in American politics.” Davis makes the valid point that images of the conspiratorial enemy and its methods tend to stay the same no matter the identity of that alleged enemy. I’m not sure that really proves anything more than that people know (or at least it seems rational to them) what methods of subversion a real conspiracy (and several have been brought to light throughout history) would probably use.

His other point, also stated by Richard Hofstader, is that conspiracy mongering is not an activity undertaken by the stupid, unlearned, or ignorant. Often the conspiracy mongerer has done a great deal of research, knows his stuff, collected an impressive array of facts (even if he manufactures the occasional one or ignores facts that mitigate his contradict his conclusion). Consistently through these selections, the alleger of conspiracy sees the mainstream (usually the two major political parties of the time) as either part of the conspiracy or unknowing dupes. And constantly, as Davis points out, the cry to fight the conspiracy is linked to a admonishment to reform, to renew the spirit of the country. However, there are several excerpts in here which really are cries against conspiracy but warnings of the consequences of certain beliefs.

The conspiracy mongerers here show the typical shortcomings of the type: the presumed ultra-competence of the conspiracy. A particularly strking example is the American Protective League. About the time they were zealously and futiley looking for Communist agents, the Soviets set up a real, subtle, and effective spy network in America. The grand conspiracy didn’t exist. The subtle, small staffed one did. Another shortcoming is confusing members of a formal conspiracy with people and simply sharing a similar idealogy. One could define some ideologies as self-organizing conspiracies. Followers of the idealogy don’t necessarily have to phone and write each other to achieve their ends. Working independently towards the same end could – though probably less efficiently – acheive the goal. Another bit of flawed thinking is the temptation to see the grand conspiracy spanning large chunks of time and space.

One can see why some of those conspiracies were alleged. The Masons do seem to have killed some people in New York state. The Mormons did massacre a wagon train. The Wobblies did collaborate with foreign powers in WWI. One can see why Davis throws anti-commnism in the same heap (especially given the seventies publication date, the beginning of détente). Joseph McCarthy bizarrely accusses George Marshall of being a Communist agent. Revilo P. Oliver even more bizarrely says John F. Kennedy (the man who accussed Richard Nixon of being soft on the missile gap with the Commies) was murdered because he wasn't making American Communist fast enough. Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society, takes the classic conspiracy mongerer approach of linking similar ideas into a vast, continuous conspiracy over millenea when he traces a conspiracy from the collectivist, homosexual Spartans to the Bavarian illuminati to the Communist party.

Yet Davis, and others who mock the anti-communists, miss some crucial facts. Stalin’s Comintern did run foreign communist parties. The American Communist Party did get money from Moscow. There were communist agents in the State Department. The American Communist Party did ally itself with the civil rights movement as J. Edgar Hoover stated and Angela Davis was a communist and was only recently kicked out of the American Communist Party. Yet, the issue of civil rights and Communist conspiracy brings up a couple of subtle points missed by the conspiracy mongerers and their opponents. Those who dismiss allegations of conspiracy sometimes miss the point that a foreign idealogy or power may support a movement just to cause trouble or embarrassment. Indeed, as Robert Conquest pointed out, terrorists and agitators supported by Moscow often were the first to be killed and/or imprisoned when the Commies took over ther countries. Conspiracy mongerers miss this same point and one other: that people involved in a movement, believers in an idealogy may not subscribe to the same suite of ideas (e.g. American, anti-Communist liberals supported the civil rights like communists), guilt can not determined just by association. I liked reading about he allegations of Money Power conspiracies, the Slave Power plot (which fueled by the fact that Southern plantations did try to suppress anti-slavery speech in the South and economically took advantage of the poor whites), the Mormon scare, and the insinuation, even in 1964, that Lyndon Baines Johnson had Kennedy killed (he’s not specifically named, just a cabal of rich oil men.). Charles Beard’s attack on the usurpation by Franklin Roosevelt of several extra-constitutional powers is another example of assertions and arguments that are not really conspiracy-mongering.

This book is better as a history in its own words source rather than a editorial argument about conspiracies. ( )