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Under the eye of power : how fear of secret societies shapes American democracy / Colin Dickey.

by Dickey, Colin

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Secret societies -- History.

Secret societies -- United States -- History.

Conspiracy theories -- United States.

Fraternal organizations.

Political science -- United States -- History.

9780593299456 (hc.)

353 p. ; 24 cm.

Colin Dickey is a writer, speaker, and academic, and has made a career out of collecting unusual objects and hidden histories all over the country. He's the author of multiple books, including Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places and The Unidentified: Mythical Monsters, Alien Encounters, and Our Obsession with the Unexplained. A regular contributor to the New Republic and Lapham's Quarterly, he is also the coeditor of The Morbid Anatomy Anthology. With a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Southern California, he is an associate professor of creative writing at National University.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 331-353).

"The United States was born in paranoia. From the Salem witch trials to the American Revolution (thought by some to be a conspiracy organized by the French) to the Satanic Panic, the Illuminati, and QAnon, one of the most enduring narratives that defines the United States is simply this: secret groups are conspiring to pervert the will of the people and the rule of law. While we'd like to believe these panics exist only at the fringes of society and the dark reaches of the Internet, history tells us, in fact, that they are woven into the fabric of American democracy. Cultural historian Colin Dickey has built a career studying how our most irrational beliefs reach the mainstream, why, and what they tell us about ourselves. In 'Under the Eye of Power,' Dickey charts the history of America through its paranoias and fears of secret societies, while seeking to explain why so many people -- including some of the most powerful people in the country -- continue to subscribe to these conspiracy theories. Paradoxically, he finds, belief in the fantastical and conspiratorial can be more soothing than what we fear the most: the chaos and randomness of history, the rising and falling of fortunes in America, and the messiness of democracy. Only in seeing the cycle of this history, Dickey says, can we break it."--From publisher.

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