Seize Your Copy The United States Of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory Assembled By Jesse Walker Distributed In Booklet

United States of Paranoia is based on historical sources, not interviews, and Walker is far less interested in the inner lives of the conspiracy theorists he profiles than in showing how their seemingly disconnected fantasies fuse together into one grand American paranoid pastiche.


Describing this pastiche is an ambitious intellectual project, But at times, Walkers approach seems overly reductionist, As the author describes it, “paranoia” is a broad label that can be applied to just about any activist group, Internet discussion forum, lone nutbar, cleric, politician, or agency that exhibits any sort of unfounded fear.
Toward the end of the book, as his libertarian stripes become more apparent, Walker exploits this broadly constructed definition of paranoia to draw dubious comparison between dangerous, hardboiled conspiracy theorists and the government agents seeking to monitor them.
"

The full review, "A Nation of Birthers," is available on our website: sitelink theamericanconservative. co Halfway through, I began to think the whole book was a conspiracy itself, I hadn't heard of any of these religious fringe people or satirists and was only vaguely familiar with much of the content.
Sure, its probably just a hole in my knowledge, but it began to feel inescapably like this was a book of made up facts about made up people.
Or is that what the author wanted me to think

Walker's basic premise is this: conspiracies are neither new to American culture nor confined to the right wing lunatic fringe.
Educated elitists often believe in conspiracies too, and not all conspiracies are necessarily wrong, This is more or less stated in the introduction, When I began, I'd heard the author was a libertarian, and unfairly assumed that the book would be an extended defense of reactionary nutjob Alex Jones types "The Sandy Hook shooting never happened!".
I was wrong. Walker is a libertarian in the traditional sense, a Thoreau type, rather than the more modern less churchy Republican brand, As such, he gives equal time to how conspiracy thinking has demonized the left and the right, It's seemingly very balanced.

The best parts of the book, which incidentally only relate tangentially to conspiracies, are his moments of literary and film criticism.
He spends a lot of time discussing how films and books of different eras reflect common fears and conspiracyish beliefs about, in his words, "The Enemy Outside, The Enemy Within, The Enemy Above and The Enemy Below.
" The book runs a little long and can be pretty repetitive as conspiracies blend together and start to resemble one another, but it certainly has its good moments.
Conspiracy n. the act of conspiring an evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more persons plot,. a combination of persons for a secret, unlawful, or evil purpose, Law. an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act,. any concurrence in action combination in bringing about a given result, Dictionary. com

Paranoia n, Psychiatry. a mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others, sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in selfdefense or as a mission.
. baseless or excessive suspicion of the motives of others, Dictionary. com


I admit, Im a bit of a conspiracy theorist, I have a hard time believing that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, Im fairly certain that a shadow government run by the Koch Bros.
who may or may not be a part of the Illuminatiis bent on world domination, and I have a sneaking suspicion that malevolent extraterrestrials have infiltrated the highest levels of government in an attempt to slowly steal our natural resources air, water, marijuana via a perfect storm of environmentally destructive policies, higher taxes, and indoctrination of our nations youth with antiscience curriculum.
I cant prove it, but Im willing to bet that Ted Cruz is to blame for a lot of it, too,

Paranoid You bet, I live by one simple axiom: If you think youre too paranoid, then you aint paranoid enough

Paranoia comes naturally, though.
I am a citizen of the United States of America, possibly one of the most paranoid countries in the world, Well, if not the most paranoid, then the one with greatest number of offthewall and kooky paranoid conspiracy theories, Weve honed paranoia down to a science, Were extremely good at it,

Our nations history is a colorful and frenzied state of paranoia, Jesse Walker, in his book “The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory”, joyously documents the many wonderful, weird, and in some cases tragic examples of American paranoia, from our early Puritan settlers to the Founding Fathers to the Civil War to the Cold War to our paranoid present.


Honestly, somewhere in our Constitution or that Declaration of Independence we so cherish, it should be stated that we are a people founded on the paranoid belief that someone is always out to get us, whether it is from foreign shores, outer space, hell, or even within our own borders.
We are equal opportunity paranoids,

According to Walker, conspiracies can be broken down into four types: Enemy Outside, Enemy Within, Enemy Below, and Enemy Above.
A fifth category, Benevolent Conspiracies, is worth mentioning briefly but actually kind of boring, Angels and/or goodnatured Extraterrestrials stepping in to try and help humanity may make for cute Hallmark movies or documentaries on one of those Christian cable networks, but they dont make for good conspiracy theories.
We like our conspiracies bloody and mean,


“Indians were the first people to stand in American history as emblems of disorder, civilized breakdown, and alien control.
. . The series of Red scares that have swept the country since thes have roots in original red scares”Michael Paul Rogin

The Enemy Outside Conspiracy is the quintessential evil “Them” of the “Us vs.
Them” scenario. This has been around probably since man first started walking on two legs and huddling in tribes, The tribe you belonged to was good, Those tribes in the hills and in the neighboring valleys were bad,

To the early American pilgrims, the redskinned inhabitants of the New World were an Enemy Outside, They were the evil “Them” lurking in the woods, ready to snatch your children, and as the U, S. grew and set up a government, this fear became policy, Wars raged between U. S. soldiers and Native American warriors for centuries until, which is considered the year the white man finally broke the red man,

Native Americans werent the only Enemy Outside during the early years of this country, Catholics were viewed with just as much fear and disdain as Indians, and the state of Maryland, which was originally set up as a Catholic state, suffered a violent revolution in the lateth century.
Yes, a revolution. In this country! Protestants formed an army and seized the Maryland State House, deposed the Catholic governor and leaders, and banned Catholicism.
So much for freedom of religion, To be fair, this took place almost a century before our Founding Fathers wisely decided to make it a rule not to establish any religion or deny the worship of any religion.


Enemies Outside have since appeared in many guises throughout our history, whether in the form of Irish, Italian, Swedish, German, or Jewish immigrants.
Okay, just about every European immigrant has been vilified at some point in our history, During World War II, we even built concentration camps for JapaneseAmericans, Yes, concentration camps. In this country! Its safe to say that todays Enemy Outside is Muslim and Arabic,

According to Walker, “The Enemy Outside isnt defined by any particular origin hes defined by the fact that you think hes out there trying to come in.
The details vary at different times and places, but several characteristics recur, There is the image of the world outside your gates as an unfriendly wilderness where evil forces dwell, There is the proclivity to see these forces as a centralized conspiracy guided by a puppet master or a small cabal, There is fear of the border zone where cultures mix, the suspicion that aliens at home are agents of a foreign power, and the fear that your community might be remade in the enemys image.
And there is the tendency to see this conflict in terms of a grand, apocalyptic struggleif not literally against Satan, then against something deeply evil.
p.”



“Theres only one thing I need to know
/Whose side are you on/
Whose side are you on
/Well, theres only one thing I need to know
/Whose side, whose side, whose side” Paul Simon, “Paranoia Blues”

Sometimes, the enemies of our conspiracy fears dont come from outside.
Sometimes the enemies are internal, Sometimes they are right next door, Sometimes they are sleeping next to us,

The Salem Witch Trials were a perfect example of the Enemy Within Conspiracy, Neighbors accused neighbors, spouses accused spouses, parents accused children, children accused parents, The brilliance was that none of the accusations could be substantiated or proved, These were, after all, witches, They could work magic and sorcery to eliminate evidence, They could even alter peoples memories, Best just to kill them, Worry about it later. Which is, essentially, what happened,

Strangely enough but not really, many of our nations Enemy Within Conspiracies have to do with religion, Mormons, for example, were treated so badly and ostracized so much, that the group as a whole was sent packing out west, to Utah.
Ironic, too, that many of Mormonisms own dogmatic principles are founded on paranoid conspiracy theories, Apparently, they really were out to get the Mormons,

While certainly not as violent, the McCarthyera antiCommunist fervor that swept the country was eerily similar to the Salem Witch Trials, if only in spirit.
No one was burned at the stake to Joseph McCarthys chagrin, Im sure, but thousands of people lost jobs, families, and reputations.
Sometimes for simply having attended a proCommunist rally ten years before,

The Enemy Within has, of course, been with us for as long as the Enemy Outside has been with us.
Im sure early cavemen wondered about their neighbors and suspected their own cavewoman and cavechildren of not being completely kosher,

Walker writes, “If the Enemy Within is the most dreamlike and fantastic of Americas primal conspiracy myths, it is also the most homely and prosaic.
The suspicions that haunt our daytoday lives usually feature our families, neighbors, and coworkers, even if we dont believe theyre puppets of a Satanic cabal.
Think back to New Englands earlier witchcraft cases, before the frenzy ofbroke out: petty feuds fueled by gossip and bad blood.
A largescale, Salemstyle mania may seem bizarre to us, but the daytoday misgivings that led Americans to cry witch shouldnt seem so strange at all.
p.”



“Rumors flew about that black bands, numbering in the scores, even hundreds, were fanning out in all directions.
Messengers galloped hither and yon to warn villages of approaching rebels, Invariably the rumors proved falsebut no matter, an explanation was ready to hand, Black informers, it always turned out, had luckily alerted the white people to their impending doom, days or just hours beforehand, and the ringleaders were now safely in jail, the others having melted into the shadows.
Yet everyone was warned to stay vigilant, no matter how normally the slaves were behaving in the quarters and fields, ” Bertram WyattBrown

Its safe to say that slavery is a horrible thing, It is, however, not so safe to say that slavery in this country was particularly horrible, Some conservative historical revisionists would like us to believe that our nations brand of slavery wasnt that terrible, that our slaves were treated much better than others, that our slaves were pretty happy and satisfied with their station in life.


Of course, that is bullshit, No amount of sugarcoating or whitewashing our history will wipe away the stain of slavery, Our nations treatment of black people was and, arguably, still is atrocious,

A large part of the reason is because black people, in the minds of many racists, are inferior people, subhuman, not really entitled to the same rights and respect as those above them, namely white people.
The Civil War may have ended slavery, but the racism that spawned that evil institution never really went away, It existed in the Klu Klux Klan, the Jim Crow laws, the attempts at segregation, It exists today on our city streets and in our prisons, where a disproportionate number of black people are beaten, shot at, and imprisoned.


During the years of slavery, Enemy Below conspiracies constantly entertained the minds of white people, Always fearful of a violent slave uprising, whites were quick to dole out punishments and harsh treatment to their slaves for perceived attempts at gaining their freedom.


Of course, black people havent always been the only target of Enemy Below conspiracies in this country, The upper class has always had a fear of the lower class, white or black, Its the “Haves” vs. the “Havenots”, and it hasnt changed, The wealthy classes in this country still like to think that poor people are fomenting “class warfare” and “hatred of the rich”.
And yet, its the wealthy who continually lobby politicians to pass laws that hurt the poor and help the rich, So, whos fomenting class warfare

Granted, us poor people like to entertain our own conspiracy theories about the rich, which brings us to the fourth type of conspiracy, the Enemy Above.




“I always feel like somebodys watching me, . . ” Rockwell, “Somebodys Watching Me”

Weve all occasionally felt it: a nagging feeling that no matter what we do, the outcome will always be the same, that someone or somethingcall it what you like: Fate, God, Satan, Extraterrestrials, Ted Cruzis pulling the strings, and we are all just puppets.


Walker calls this the Enemy Above conspiracy, There have been many manifestations of the Enemy Above throughout history, perhaps the most notorious and persistent one being the Illuminati, a secret society of powerful men generally thought to be part of the Brotherhood of Masons who are conspiring to take over the world and to create a vast slave workforcenamely us.


Of course, its not just the Illuminati who want to control us, Theres multinational corporations, the Koch Bros, George Soros, Big Oil, NASA, Big Pharm, FEMA,

Basically, any large institution is a potential Enemy Above, The problem with these Enemy Above theories, according to Walker is that they “are the most disreputable sort of conspiracy narrative, since they challenge rather than reinforce the social order.
In the media, the phrase “conspiracy theory” is often used as though it refers only to Enemy Above stories, You neednt even invoke a conspiracy to earn the conspiracytheorist tag, as long as you entertain suspicions about the people in charge.
p.”



“Im kind of a paranoiac in reverse, I suspect people of plotting to make me happy, ”J. D. Salinger

Remember the Angel craze in thes Angels were everywhere, Movie theaters were saturated with movies about angels: fallen angels “Wings of Desire”, rogue angels “The Prophecy”, drunk angels “Michael”, and Nicholas Cage “City of Angels”.
Bookstores had entire shelves devoted to books about angels, Weekly, TV viewers had the pleasure of being “Touched by an Angel”,

Granted, there has been a craze for angels forever, not just thes, Perhaps its a need that people have, especially with all the negative conspiracies floating around out there, People need to know that someone is ultimately looking out for them,

Benevolent conspiracies are the fifth type of conspiracy theory, Like the Enemy Above conspiracies, the force acting upon us emanates from on high, but these forces dont want to hurt us or enslave.
On the contrary, these benevolent forces want to help us, individually and as a whole,



“The Cold

War was supposed to end in a nuclear inferno that killed everyone, It wasnt supposed to just have the air go out of it, And a deferred eschaton has unusual power, Culturally, we spent decades expecting that we were all going to die, The reprieve didnt suddenly make everyone less pessimistic, It just turned that pessimism inward, ”Philip Sandifer

The second part of Walkers book is a detailed look at modernday conspiracies, our contemporary fears, Some of these conspiracies arent even theories, Take Watergate, for example: an event that brought to light the fact that even our President may have it in for us.


Paranoia reached an alltime high in the postWatergate years, naturally, It had been building long before that, though, thanks to Cold War fears of nuclear proliferation and the Doomsday clock perpetually hovering around a minute to midnight.


Terrorism was also a fairly new fear, Plane hijackings, bombings, kidnappings: it almost made you want to hole up in your house and wait for the nuclear bombs to drop.


Then, sometime in thes, a new conspiracy began to brew: Satanism, Across the country, strange rituals were being performed, horrible acts were being committed, mostly by teenagers, although adults were clearly free to join.
Everyone knew, too, that it was the drugs and that heavy metal music that caused it, It was the Satanic messages one heard when one played “Stairway to Heaven” backwards on the record player, Literally hundreds of thousands of teenagers were succumbing to Satans whims, and ritual animal and even baby sacrifice was at an alltime high.


Except it wasnt,

The Satanic ritual hysteria was perpetuated by people with active imaginations and those who just wanted to fuck with peoples minds.


Of course, fucking with peoples minds is exactly what conspiracy theorists love to do, Never mind that there may be some truth to the conspiracy,

Conspiracy theorists love to convince us that a secret shadow government within the U, S. government choreographed and staged the/bombings of the World Trade Center, Its clear to see on the videos on Youtube,

Oh, and conspiracy theorists also love to convince us that the Newtown Massacre didnt really happen, that those poor kids and teachers didnt really die.
It was all staged by the media,

Maybe conspiracy theories are necessary for some people to process really horrible events, Its a way of convincing ones self that life cant be that horrific,

Pareidolic apophenia is, according to Walker, the mental process of projecting patterns onto data and perceiving those patterns in meaningful ways.
This is what occurs in the brain when people see images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary in clouds, tree trunks, oatmeal, etc.
Its what enables some to hear satanic messages when one plays a Beatles album backwards, Its what helps to create images in your brain when looking at Rorschach inkblot tests, It is, essentially, a necessary process that aids in the development of our selves, by engaging in the sensory overload that is life and finding the information we need to survive.


Walker seems to think that conspiracy theories are a coping mechanism for some people, He writes, “Human beings have a knack not just for finding patterns in chaos but for constructing stories to make sense of events, especially events that scare us.
. . But when building a narrative you can fall into a trap, one where a combination of confirmation bias and serendipity blinds you to the ways your enticing story might fail to describe the world.
p.”
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