The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory by Jesse Walker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Deep State Is Deeper Than You Thought

I recently floated the idea that victimhood is the central part of American identity (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). I now find that I am a late-comer to the party. Several others as long ago as the 1960’s had already made the point. More recently, Jesse Walker has expanded on the original hypothesis. The United States of Paranoia is the result. It is convincing, comprehensive, and scary as hell. American society seems to be imploding into its own hollowness. That vacant space at its core is, I think, the profound but unacknowledged racism which is an implicit principle of American society.

What could it be that provokes such a large part of the population of a technologically advanced country to believe any number of questionable and even obviously false assertions about the world? Conspiratorial obsession is not a fringe activity in America. From colonial times it’s has been part of popular culture as well as mainstream politics. But the obsession doesn’t seem to be something imported from Europe with its various waves of immigrants to North America. Every new immigrant group found it in place when they arrived. The obsession arose within a home-grown sociology unique to the place, and quickly adapted to by its new residents.

Several explanations for this peculiarly American phenomenon get made from time to time. Some blame technology itself for disseminating rumour and politically motivated lies. But America has been susceptible to threatening fantasy long before radio, television, or the internet. The 19th century version of the Deep State was Slave Power, the purported conspiracy of slave-owners to ensure their political dominance. It is that conspiracy which is responsible, according to its proponents, for the assassination of not only Lincoln, but also the death by poisoning of three other presidents, and the attempt on the life of a fourth.

Like religious heresy, any conspiracy rapidly creates its counter-conspiracy. So, of course, the counter-conspiracy among anti-slavery elements according to Slave Powerists is responsible for, among other things, delaying the annexation of Texas into the Union. And much more besides: “Southerners had elaborate conspiracy theories of their own, blaming slave revolts, both real and imagined, on the machinations of rebellion-stoking abolitionists, treacherous land pirates, and other outside agitators.” Conspiracy generates momentum for yet more conspiracy. As Walker says, “It was a paranoid time. In America, it is always a paranoid time.”

This sociology, according to one of its most prominent researchers, is dominated by a “style of mind” which is typified by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” Historically, if this style of mind has nothing external, like immigrants, on which to alight for its edification, it will turn inwards. One third of Americans believe the US government was involved in 9/11. Almost three quarters believe there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK. A similar proportion believes the government is hiding what it knows about UFO’s. Conspiracy becomes a habitual routine, a first port of intellectual call, and an abiding destination. Once conspiracy is mooted, it just doesn’t go away.

So it isn’t surprising that within minutes of the recent announcement of the suicide of the sex-criminal Jeffrey Epstein, accusations were made in the right-wing media against the Clintons. These were endorsed by the Rumour-Monger-In-Chief and will undoubtedly simmer on the media fires of sensation-seeking pundits for decades. This is only the latest instance of the frequent moral panics that seems to sprout when there seems least need - the Beatles tour, the O.J. Simpson trial, H.G. Wells broadcast of War of the World’s. It seems almost anything can set off a sociological hair-trigger looking for plots, secret cabals, and threats to democracy and religion.

Since this sort of repetitive behaviour is rather stupid on the face of it, one might suspect the level or quality of American education to be a factor in its prevalence. If the nuttiness were restricted to the economically less well off or those without access to better schools and universities, this might make sense. But it is often the elite in American society, those who have had what is generally considered the best of advanced education who share most enthusiastically in the most wild of conspiracy theories. From the Puritan leader, Cotton Mather, to Mark Twain and other popular intellectuals, to Senator McCarthy and his cronies, to a number of presidents (including at least Harrison, Wilson, Nixon, Clinton and the present one), cultural leadership has consistently promoted the idea of imminent conspiratorial threat.

It is as if the United States is haunted. And perhaps it is. The poet William Burroughs wrote that there was evil abroad on the continent even before the European settlers arrived. He might have been right in the sense that the native population was, by their very existence, a continuous threat to early settlers. They lived in close proximity but shared neither language, nor habit, nor religion. The native population were inhibitions to progress, to be either forced somewhere else, isolated, or eliminated. Even today, with native Americans snugly corralled on reservations, the suspicion and mistrust of tribal culture persists.

But of course as the native population was dispersed or destroyed, a much more potent threat was being created: African slavery. Slavery was an institution which was nowhere more prevalent than the United States. It was commercially profitable but carried with it exactly the same threat as a large native population. Arguably more of a threat since the proximity of slaves was even more intimate; and their relative number among the slave-owning population was much greater. Slaves too had their own languages, their own mores, and their own syncretistic religions. And they had even more reason than native Americans to wish harm on their captors.

Slaves could not be dispersed or destroyed. Rebellion from within was therefore a constant possibility. A slave-owning, or even merely a slave-tolerant society must be acutely aware of the slightest indication of seditious behaviour. It has to learn to listen for conspiracy. Acting quickly in error to suppress such a possibility is far less risky than failing to act while a factual assessment is undertaken. Conspiracy theory becomes, therefore, a positive adaptation for survival.

Emancipation did not reduce the racial threat but increased it. African-Americans might no longer be anyone’s property, but they still lived in proximity to the white majority in concentrated, segregated groups. They insisted on the integrity and validity of their own culture. They were quite literally alien, only encountered in controlled situations of racial subservience. Watch any sci-fi movie from the 1950’s with this in mind and it’s easy to see the racist metaphor being played out openly.

The obsession among Americans with UFO’s is yet another example of this displaced racial animosity. Even the most ‘liberal’ of white folk could enjoy the frequent reports of interplanetary threats as an incidental and harmless pastime. They are neither, but rather an aspect of pervasive cultural reinforcement of the dangers we should be prepared for from the dark-skinned intruder. It is no coincidence that domestic Communism and Jazz were considered as major cultural threats simultaneously with the rise in UFO sightings.

The great gay conspiracy panic from the 1950’s onward is yet another example of the dangers posed by people who are effectively of a different race. Their threat is essentially racial not ideological or religious. Americans don’t ‘do’ ideology, and they know little of the sources of religious doctrine; but they are first rate racists.*

Lest I be accused of creating yet another theory of conspiracy, it seems necessary to point out that the racial animosity that exists in America is not the result of conspiracy. It is too prevalent and too implicit to reach the level of discourse much less plotting. It is, rather, the very peculiar ‘style of mind’ which is spread and passed down generations without a thought about its origin or even its existence as the American way of being. It is an attitude hiding in plain sight which is what makes it so difficult to confront. Conspiracy is a symptom of what has become over centuries a cultural imperative, that is pre-emptive protection from those who pretend to be like us. ‘They are not like us. We are their potential victims. We know this is our DNA not in our brains.’

Walker does an outstanding job of cataloguing the history of conspiracy theories in America since the 17th century. And many of these involve the threat posed by African-Americans both before and after emancipation. And he is entirely clear in his conclusion about conspiracies in America: “They are at the country’s core.” My principal criticism is that while he supplies an enormous number of the dots, he doesn’t connect them with anything like a theory of the case. He provides no reason why Americans act, almost uniquely, with such repetitious stupidity. The book needs an additional chapter.

Here’s an idea for that chapter: My hypothesis is that the historical and current behaviour of Americans, even the most politically and socially liberal, is driven by the cultural imperative of racial threat. This makes them particularly vulnerable to the con artists, politicians and cultists who claim secret knowledge essential for survival. Conspiracies of all sorts emanate from this central social disfunction. The range of these conspiracies is unbounded but they all have their emotional home in the fears of racial attack and retribution. Until they confront this, Americans will remain victims of themselves.

* Of course racism is subtlety expressed in many other cultures. One well-known British author, for example, clearly fears the literal drowning of civilisation and world-dominance by Africans (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). But unlike typical American fiction, no conspiracy is involved; his Africans are simply not clever enough. This is more generally demonstrated as well in the differences between British and American sci-fi and mysteries. Doctor Who fights numerous alien forces but these aren’t conspiratorial, only obsessive. Sherlock Holmes has his nemesis in Moriarty but only as an individual, never a cabal.

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