American History

Eugenics

Eugenics

Eugenics Eugenics refers to methods of improving the hereditary qualities of a race or breed. Some critics of eugenics have argued that...

Encryption

Encryption

Encryption Encryption, which derives from the Greek word “kriptos,” refers to the concealment of information through the conversion of ...

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="blank"><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlPQDlKrfMLHsk3dw5ANjyVGjXozHzMD_B0a6utBlUMaWuOe-KpmyyEhswLMk08gXN1z1yOqr2-Jtip4nMv0QpM600VWP81utPit0v8V8OY-v6l7gnL0YhUWtscsnNMuYm1Kr65UE8hAg/s1600/drugs.jpg" that="" the="" title="Drugs" use="" user="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drugs</td></tr> </tbody></table> Apart from the possibility that the excessive use of certain drugs can make the user paranoid, illicit drugs have been at the center of a number of conspiracy theories over the past century. One cluster of conspiracy theories surrounds the use of opiates, and another focuses on marijuana. Opiates Opiates—opium, morphine, and heroin—have figured largely in drug conspiracies. One of the earliest conspiracy theories surrounding opiates in the United States concerned Chinese immigrants on the West Coast. When Chinese immigrants began arriving in the United States around 1870, their habit of smoking opium drew condemnation. Chinese laborers, derogatorily called “coolies,” were essential to the completion of the first transcontinental railroad, but when economic depression beset the country in the late nineteenth century, white fears of labor competition, combined with Chinese opium smoking, led to repression of the <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0142004170" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="553dc3307e406e3a206170f12d649f60" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Chinese population" href="http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-America-Narrative-History/dp/0142004170/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=553dc3307e406e3a206170f12d649f60&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_5776191" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Chinese population</a><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_5776191" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=553dc3307e406e3a206170f12d649f60&_cb=1482129822081" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" the="" use="" user="" width="0" />. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1906860165/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1906860165&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=CCLLO6SZSSWBLXPB"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1906860165&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" height="1" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1906860165" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" that="" the="" use="" user="" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DT55OA4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00DT55OA4&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=7SO7JLTONRV3457O"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B00DT55OA4&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" height="1" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00DT55OA4" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" that="" the="" use="" user="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Nativism, xenophobia, and the conviction that opium smoking posed a threat to U.S. society helped lead to the 1882 <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Chinese Exclusion Act</a>, which barred Chinese immigration to the United States. Other repression came in the form of local and state laws that targeted Chinese Americans, as well as harassment by native-born whites, particularly on the West Coast. In 1875 a San Francisco City ordinance banned opium smoking. Stories of Chinese immigrants who lured white females into prostitution, along with media depictions of the Chinese as depraved and unclean, bolstered the enactment of anti-opium laws in eleven states between 1877 and 1900. On the federal level, in 1909 President <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Theodore Roosevelt</a> signed the Opium Exclusion Act, which forbade the importation of smoking opium. Although no fully formed conspiracy theory emerged among anti-opium advocates, by the turn of the century the association between Chinese immigrants, opium, and societal decay illustrated the widespread belief that opium smoking (or the consumption of any psychoactive substance for nonmedical purposes) threatened to erode the Anglo-Saxon race’s ability to propagate itself. Put another way, during the Social Darwinist–infused days of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, drug addiction among white Americans was thought to result in racial suicide. More delineated conspiracy theories concerning opiates materialized during and after World War II. Propagating numerous drug conspiracies was <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0874133521" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="99531d09dfcf39e3a9fecad0f71649de" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Harry J. Anslinger" href="http://www.amazon.com/Protectors-Anslinger-Federal-Narcotics-1930-1962/dp/0874133521/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=99531d09dfcf39e3a9fecad0f71649de&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_3435375" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harry J. Anslinger</a><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_3435375" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=99531d09dfcf39e3a9fecad0f71649de&_cb=1482129899946" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" the="" use="" user="" width="0" />, who served as commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) from 1930 to 1962. Anslinger had an imposing physical appearance: somber-faced, bald, thick-chested, and square-jawed, he resembled a cross between Benito Mussolini and the infamous British satanist Aleister Crowley (Sloman, xi). As head of the FBN, Anslinger dominated U.S. drug policy for thirty years, during which time he maintained the link between foreigners and drugs, brought a high level of bureaucratic order to federal drug policy, embarked upon a campaign to demonize and restrict marijuana, melded antinarcotics policy with U.S. foreign policy and security issues, and sought repressive measures to deal with addicts and dealers. During <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World War II</a> Anslinger charged the Japanese with conspiring to spread narcotics addiction throughout the West, remarking that a drugsodden nation could offer little resistance to an invading Japanese military. The Japanese were flooding China with narcotics during the war but no evidence corroborated their supposed plan to foment addiction in the United States. Similarly, in the early cold war years, Anslinger unrelentingly maintained that heroin addiction was part of Communist China’s plan for subversion in the United States. Lacking any proof of such a conspiracy, Anslinger nonetheless fostered stories and images of syringe-wielding Chinese soldiers poised to take over the free world and outlined the details of the Chinese Communist Party’s heroin conspiracy in his 1953 book The Traffic in Narcotics. Anslinger’s conspiracy theories demonstrated the link between federal drug policy and national security issues, which is to say that the FBN’s claims were in line with America’s anticommunist mission in Asia. The commissioner never recanted his accusations and his claims persisted into the 1970s. In a reversal of Anslinger’s claims, two other drug conspiracies emerged during the cold war, which charged the U.S. government, not foreign nations, with spreading narcotics addiction and using drugs for undemocratic purposes. One conspiracy theory accused the CIA, from the 1950s through the 1980s, of willingly allying itself with narcotics (opium, morphine, and heroin) traffickers in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Afghanistan, and Pakistan as part of the agency’s anticommunist crusade in Asia. By supplying these unsavory elements with funds, equipment, and intelligence, the CIA provided a zone of protection around drug lords and blocked investigations of their clients’ drug running. Ultimately, the CIA contributed to the global narcotics trade by sanctioning their allies’ involvement. Researchers, such as <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1556524838" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="e5c14237f95324790142e49e4541b458" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Alfred W. McCoy" href="http://www.amazon.com/Politics-Heroin-Complicity-Global-Trade/dp/1556524838/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=e5c14237f95324790142e49e4541b458&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_3307961" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Alfred W. McCoy</a><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_3307961" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=e5c14237f95324790142e49e4541b458&_cb=1482129947458" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" the="" use="" user="" width="0" />, have unearthed evidence corroborating the link between the CIA and narcotics traffickers in Asia but deny the existence of a full-blown conspiracy in which the CIA intended to foster trafficking and addiction internationally, including Europe and the United States. Rather, the CIA’s short-term goal of using narcotics traffickers as self-sustaining paramilitary forces during the cold war blinded the agency from foreseeing the long-term growth in the region’s drug trade after the U.S. government no longer needed its clients’ services. In essence, the CIA, narrowly focused on anticommunism, deemed its clients’ expanded drug trafficking abilities as only “fallout” from overriding cold war concerns. For instance, when narcotics produced by CIA allies supplied U.S. addicts—as in the case of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam using heroin trafficked by South Vietnamese, Laotian, and Thai officials—the CIA, bound by law to provide intelligence on drug trafficking, illegally prevented investigations of Southeast Asian officials. Damning facts such as these have lent the air of conspiracy to the CIA’s relationship to the international drug trade. Another drug conspiracy leveled at the U.S. government involved the Nixon administration’s drug policy and the White House’s reorganization of federal drug enforcement agencies. In the early 1970s President Nixon launched his “war on drugs” in response to a burgeoning heroin epidemic in the United States. Like Harry J. Anslinger, Nixon cast blame on foreign nations for America’s addiction problem. Nixon favored the use of federal drug control agencies as the answer to the country’s supposedly growing rates of drug abuse. Part of Nixon’s solution entailed the creation of the Office of National Narcotics Intelligence (ONNI), Office for Drug Abuse and Law Enforcement (ODALE), and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which replaced the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), the FBN’s successor agency. The executive branch oversaw these agencies and critics accused the president of using them for purposes not related to drug control. Specifically, skeptics argued that Nixon manufactured a drug scare that distracted the U.S. public and Congress and allowed the administration to create White House– controlled federal agencies that were used for surveillance and harassment of political enemies, not apprehending drug dealers. Critics charged ODALE and ONNI as being little more than a White House private police force. ODALE, housed in the Justice Department, was authorized to conduct no-knock search warrants and warrantless raids, as well as to use court-ordered wiretaps. Such an agency had the capacity to act above the law and did on occasions. Indeed, key figures in the Watergate scandal—G. Gordon Liddy, Egil Krogh, E. Howard Hunt, and Lucein Conein— were all involved in federal drug control agencies. Liddy developed the creation of ODALE. Conein, a CIA agent, apparently developed a special assassination force—ostensibly aimed at major drug traffickers—within the DEA after that organization’s creation in mid-1973. Krogh served as deputy assistant for the president for law enforcement and helped set up the Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention (SAODAP), which established federal methadone clinics. Interestingly, the federal methadone clinics—aimed at helping heroin addicts— drew criticism from African Americans as a ploy to keep inner-city populations addicted to hard drugs. In the end, the Plumbers, drawn from the Nixon administration’s drug control apparatus, and the resulting Watergate scandal derailed Nixon’s quest for unchecked executive power. Marijuana Like the opiates, conspiracy theories formed around marijuana, a drug outlawed in 1937 by the Marijuana Tax Act. Similar to the Chinese immigrants’ negative association with opium smoking, marijuana was linked to another stereotyped immigrant group, Mexicans. During the first few decades of the 1900s local and state restrictions on marijuana, particularly in the West and Southwest, were established as the drug was purported to cause smokers to commit crimes. Tales of stoned Mexicans who craved violence and were immune to pain were common. Throughout the first half of the 1930s Anslinger resisted calls for federal legislation banning marijuana, believing that the states could best control the matter. But by 1936 Anslinger reversed course and embarked on a campaign in which he first stated that he had underestimated the marijuana threat and then proceeded to depict the weed as worse than heroin, and the harbinger of death and discord. Drug policy scholars have attributed Anslinger’s turnaround to his shrewd concern for bureaucratic survival—he used the marijuana issue to justify his and the FBN’s existence. According to this line of thinking, Anslinger did not create a marijuana scare; he joined one already in progress and bolstered it to best of his ability with lurid testimony at congressional hearings and in newspaper and magazine articles. Anslinger’s article “Marijuana: Assassin of Youth,” which appeared in the July 1937 edition of American Magazine, was a prime example of FBN antimarijuana propaganda. The article, as did most of Anslinger’s marijuana horror stories and other sensationalized accounts like the Hollywood film Reefer Madness, involved American youths and linked the drug with serious crimes (such as murder, rape, and mutilation), insanity, promiscuity, and general immorality. For Anslinger, the consequences of inhaling the killer weed ranged from patricide and fratricide—as the commissioner often recounted in the case of a Florida youth—to the possibility that a user would turn into a “philosopher, a joyous reveler in a musical heaven,” a statement that linked marijuana and jazz music (Anslinger 1937, 150). The outcome of all the scare tactics and misinformation was the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act, which initially curtailed hemp production, but ultimately served as the basis for criminalizing marijuana users. Countering Anslinger’s view of marijuana as a generator of crime and death is the conspiracy theory best articulated by Jack Herer in Hemp and the Marijuana Conspiracy: The Emperor Wears No Clothes. According to Herer, bureaucratic survival was not at the heart of Anslinger’s antimarijuana campaign. Rather, Anslinger’s role in demonizing marijuana stemmed from his participation in a concerted effort by powerful economic interests to stamp out competition from the hemp industry. Specifically, Anslinger, the E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company (DuPont), business magnate Andrew Mellon, and the media giant <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0618154469" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="a165908f20efa43783fc0179ce441aa7" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="William Randolph Hearst" href="http://www.amazon.com/Chief-Life-William-Randolph-Hearst/dp/0618154469/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=a165908f20efa43783fc0179ce441aa7&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_4297441" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">William Randolph Hearst</a><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_4297441" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=a165908f20efa43783fc0179ce441aa7&_cb=1482130050075" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" the="" use="" user="" width="0" /> worked hand in hand to prevent a growing hemp industry from offering cellulosebased products, such as paper (and potentially textiles and plastics), from competing with DuPont’s products. By the 1930s DuPont had developed patents for producing paper from wood pulp and also had plans to make plastics from petroleum products. <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B0006D7UJU" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="7a468b897f1792a1cedab13036256751" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Andrew W. Mellon" href="http://www.amazon.com/Mellons-Millions-Biography-Fortune-Andrew/dp/B0006D7UJU/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=7a468b897f1792a1cedab13036256751&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_6420966" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Andrew W. Mellon</a><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_6420966" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=7a468b897f1792a1cedab13036256751&_cb=1482130016778" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" the="" use="" user="" width="0" />, secretary of the treasury and owner of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, which was one of only two banks DuPont dealt with, appointed his future son-in-law to head up the newly created FBN in December 1930. Anslinger’s appointment to the FBN, housed in the Treasury Department, tied him to Mellon’s and DuPont’s financial interests, which included stunting a hemp industry that had grown over the 1920s and 1930s. The Hearst newspaper syndicate, the nation’s largest, was also tied economically to the woodpaper industry. Moreover, Hearst, known for his disdain of jazz music, Mexicans, and African Americans, readily published antimarijuana tracts that put his newspapers in line with the federal government. Ultimately, all of these actors constituted a conspiracy orchestrated to make hemp illegal. According to this theory, the 1937 <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B015YZXIU4" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="745ea538e7709826c44f5a151e91d024" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Marijuana Tax Act" href="http://www.amazon.com/Marijuana-Stamp-Vintage-Metal-8120074/dp/B015YZXIU4/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=745ea538e7709826c44f5a151e91d024&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_4655104" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Marijuana Tax Act</a><img alt="Apart" border="0" can="" certain="" drugs="" excessive="" from="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_4655104" make="" of="" para="" possibility="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=745ea538e7709826c44f5a151e91d024&_cb=1482129785437" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" that="" the="" use="" user="" width="0" />, far from outlawing a supposedly murderous drug, was in fact legislation designed to further DuPont’s financial fortune.

Drugs

Drugs Apart from the possibility that the excessive use of certain drugs can make the user paranoid, illicit drugs have been at the cen...

The Dorr War

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="the" border="0" constitution="" dorr="" extend="" of="" restricted="" sought="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT_eDY24pz3xxoYgqrr8UuCJp72e6LKFjuQPqfgTkU33vfGsgsK4aVYoi71EuDqhCbW2r8Xw4W2K0mOaTYHMEItfxoCWstyj6fRI5RlNkZYloT-R6-UGRtak3zmBYQ_gRMMC7X3YsS7u4/s1600/Thomas-Dorr.jpg" state="" suffrage="" the="" title="The" to="" war="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thomas Wilson Dorr</td></tr> </tbody></table> A popular armed uprising in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1841, the Dorr War sought to extend the restricted suffrage of the state constitution. Although some conspiracy-minded historians have argued that Tammany Hall, the New York Democratic Club, was responsible for the Dorr War or manipulated unrest over suffrage in Rhode Island to gain partisan advantage, it appears that Tammany did not enter the picture until late in the dispute and gained very little from it. Reformers had protested for years about the right to vote being limited to property owners. By 1840 a majority of adult males no longer owned real estate in Rhode Island, but many did possess a significant amount of personal property. Suffrage requirements were contained in the royal charter granted by <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">King Charles II</a> in 1663, which became Rhode Island’s constitution in 1776. The charter also apportioned representation on the distribution of population as it was in 1663, so that as people moved from rural areas to the cities, urban dwellers became vastly underrepresented. In 1811 the Rhode Island Senate with a Republican majority passed a bill to extend the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">suffrage</a>, but the Federalists in the House defeated it. Popular agitation began with a mass meeting in Providence in 1820, and the legislature responded by putting the suffrage question to a vote of the people. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1596299592/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=f6ee7e28b2a4251c4894ee4e15e42a03" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1596299592&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="the" border="0" constitution="" dorr="" extend="" height="1" of="" restricted="" sought="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1596299592" state="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" suffrage="" the="" to="" war="" width="1" /><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Burning-Gaspee-Revolution-Rhode-Island/dp/1609494784/ref=as_li_ss_il?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1609494784&pd_rd_r=GVB8ZCZY0K9X558XNJJE&pd_rd_w=GMeg5&pd_rd_wg=69RDx&psc=1&refRID=GVB8ZCZY0K9X558XNJJE&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=23251b765410d6d53a05e811cf0f5481" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1609494784&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="the" border="0" constitution="" dorr="" extend="" height="1" of="" restricted="" sought="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1609494784" state="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" suffrage="" the="" to="" war="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> But with only property owners voting, it lost 1,600 to 1,900. In 1825, when a convention to rewrite the state constitution considered extending the suffrage, only three delegates voted for it. Then, qualified landowners voted against ratifying the proposal, which contained a reapportionment. Four years later, 2,000 persons appealed to the legislature to extend the suffrage, but the House reported that landholders were “the only sound part of the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">community</a>.” They argued that if the landless did not like it, they should acquire real property or move elsewhere. In 1832 more petitions met the same fate. Growing dissatisfaction manifested itself in the formation of the Constitutional Party at a meeting of representatives from ten communities on 22 February 1834 in Providence. The next month twenty-nine-year-old attorney Thomas Wilson Dorr, Harvard class of 1823, addressed another meeting of delegates from twelve towns. When only 700 persons voted for its candidates in 1837, the party disbanded. Then, in the autumn of 1840, Dr. J. A. Brown organized an anti-Whig group called the Rhode Island Suffrage Association, which spread to every town in the state. It published a paper called the New Age, held mass meetings characterized by lively speeches, wore badges, waved banners, and paraded with a band. When the legislature rebuffed the people’s petitions, the association called for a People’s Day on 17 April 1840. Three thousand attended the demonstration in Providence and adjourned to Newport the next day, where delegates appointed a committee to call a People’s Constitutional Convention, and paraded through town, several carrying guns. Events moved rapidly. On 28 August 1841, 7,512 people voted for delegates to the People’s Convention, which drafted a constitution on 4 October. They revised it on 16 November and called for its ratification. From 27–29 December, 13,944 people voted for, 52 against. The People’s candidate for governor was the same dedicated and obstinate Thomas Dorr, who had addressed the Constitutional Party meeting in 1834. He was the son of an aristocratic Woonsocket manufacturer, a respected member of the community, a onetime Federalist, an anti-Jackson Whig, a pro–Van Buren Democrat, president of the Providence School Committee, treasurer of the Rhode Island Historical Society, and representative in the state legislature. On 18 April 1842, 6,359 people voted for him to lead a new People’s government. But the charter authorities were not idle. They opposed what they considered a usurpation of authority and provided severe penalties for those who ran for office or voted in the People’s election. To prevent his being arrested, Dorr called for an armed escort on inauguration day, 3 May. According to the Providence Daily Journal, 3,000 people marched in the inaugural parade, approximately 850 under arms. The next day the charter government declared Rhode Island in a state of insurrection. On 17 May Dorr and seventy armed volunteers forced a six-man, sword-armed guard to surrender the Armory of the United Train of Artillery and captured two six-pound cannons. By 1:00 A.M. the next day Dorr’s troops dwindled to 250 men. They approached the Providence Arsenal in a fog under a flag of truce, and Dorr demanded the Arsenal surrender. From his well-fortified position with an overwhelming force Colonel Blodgett refused, but held his fire. Dorr lit the fuses on his cannon. There was a flash of powder in the pan, but no report and Dorr and his troops slipped away in the early morning fog. The next day he escaped to Connecticut. He tried to establish his government again and met the same opposition. The only fatality in Dorr’s War occurred on 27 June. In Chepachet, a group of brick-throwing Dorr sympathizers from Massachusetts assailed the Kentish Guard at the Pawtucket Bridge. When the crowd failed to disperse, the Guard volleyed over their heads. The crowd continued to throw bricks and the Guard fired into the crowd, killing one man. On 21 June 1842, the state legislature called a constitutional convention with delegates apportioned on the basis of the 1840 census. The convention drafted articles extending the suffrage and redistricting the legislature, and the people ratified the new document, ending the longtime struggle. Both sides appealed to the national government for assistance, but all three branches demurred. President John Tyler refused to send troops, the Senate tabled a resolution requiring the president to inform Congress of his actions, and Chief Justice Roger Taney, speaking for the Supreme Court in an 8–1 decision involving a dispute over which government was the proper authority, wrote: “No one, we believe, has ever doubted the proposition, that, according to the institutions of this country, the sovereignty in every State resides in the people of the State, and that they may alter and change their form of government at their own pleasure. But whether they have changed it or not by abolishing an old government, and establishing a new one in its place, is a question to be settled by the political power. And when that power has decided, the courts are bound to take notice of its decision, and to follow it” (Luther v. Borden). When Dorr returned to Providence in October 1843, after being celebrated by Tammany Hall in New York, the government arrested him at the City Hotel, tried him before the state Supreme Court, and convicted and sentenced him to life in prison. The legislature released him on 27 June 1845, restored his civil rights in May 1851, and pardoned him in January 1854. He died a year later at age forty-nine.

The Dorr War

Thomas Wilson Dorr A popular armed uprising in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1841, the Dorr War sought to extend the restricted suffrage ...

Ignatius Donnelly

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="and" an="" apocalyptic="" author="" border="0" donnelly="" dystopian="" ignatius="" novel="" of="" popular="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLeoBzsr8NFC37zH1c46iHarNKHpfxNsU8fHupXnXCb2WV2AZgMpexCs86MtWKjXSggFz2GT_7UadcbCuRgllignTb-UFYdvL1D4Hwxj0ikw7hOIMWMRprT8E486HHSXyyg3irNGzS2Wk/s1600/Ignatius-Donnelly.jpg" title="Ignatius" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ignatius Donnelly</td></tr> </tbody></table> Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901), known as “the Prince of Cranks” and “the Apostle of Discontent,” was a politician, farmer, newspaperman, orator, reformer, and popular author of an apocalyptic dystopian novel, who became a leader of the Populist Party in the 1890s. As both a political organizer and movement intellectual, Donnelly contributed greatly to the political culture of the Populist Party and to the conspiratorial imagination of late-nineteenth-century agrarian radicalism. In his speeches and writings for the party, Donnelly gave voice to the deeply held belief that the spread of plutocracy and monopoly capitalism left the United States “on the verge of moral, political and material ruin.” Born in Philadelphia, Donnelly moved to the utopian community of Nininger in rural Minnesota in 1856. After the community broke up, Donnelly remained in Minnesota where he fought for the “have nots” against the “haves” as lieutenant governor in the state legislature, in Congress, and as the president of the Minnesota Farmers Alliance. Donnelly was also a prolific author, writing books on the existence of Atlantis, the scientific basis for Armageddon myths, and The Great Cryptogram, in which he argued that Francis Bacon was the author of Shakespeare’s plays. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000JQUAPA/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000JQUAPA&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=LILXPCJ24ADOKFLS"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=B000JQUAPA&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="and" an="" apocalyptic="" author="" border="0" donnelly="" dystopian="" height="1" ignatius="" novel="" of="" popular="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000JQUAPA" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1440493618/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1440493618&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=KLLE4XRWG2WYGBPP"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1440493618&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="and" an="" apocalyptic="" author="" border="0" donnelly="" dystopian="" height="1" ignatius="" novel="" of="" popular="" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1440493618" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Donnelly’s most important literary work is the novel Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. Published in 1890, Caesar’s Column extrapolates what he saw as the worst tendencies of the 1880s—unfettered capitalism, bribery and corruption, the degradation of labor, and the monopolization of culture by the rich—and constructs a narrative around the cataclysmic self-destruction of this imagined destiny. Set in 1988, Caesar’s Column begins with the protagonist’s arrival in New York City by airship where he finds a magnificent city of glasscovered streets and pristine high-rise buildings. However, this utopia above ground is paralleled by the hell found underground, where the teeming millions of the working class are brutalized into a nearbestial state. This absolutely divided society is ruled by an inner council of oligarchs and dictators who maintain order with a fleet of airships known as “Demons” armed with poison bombs. While the rich have grown decadent and autocratic, the working class has also lost its ideals and organized itself into the nihilistic <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B001W2I3T0" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="246a13949426271048eef73587535db2" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Brotherhood of Destruction" href="http://www.amazon.com/Brotherhood-Of-Destruction/dp/B001W2I3T0/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=246a13949426271048eef73587535db2&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_9033577" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brotherhood of Destruction</a><img alt="and" an="" apocalyptic="" author="" border="0" donnelly="" dystopian="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_9033577" ignatius="" novel="" of="" popular="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=246a13949426271048eef73587535db2&_cb=1482128996858" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" />. Conspiracy thus faces conspiracy and when the rebellion begins it sets off an uncontrollable riot of looting and massacre. So many people are killed in this massive uprising that bodies clog the streets. Imagining himself a conqueror, Caesar Lomellini, the military leader of the Brotherhood, orders the bodies piled up in Union Square and encased in concrete, forming a gigantic column to stand as a monument to the uprising. At the novel’s end, Caesar himself is murdered, and as the city burns the protagonists escape the conflagration in an airship to begin a new society in Africa based upon Populist values. After publishing Caesar’s Column, Donnelly rose through the Minnesota Farmer’s Alliance to become one of the leading intellectuals of the Populist movement. Donnelly authored the preamble to the Populist Party platform of 1892, a philosophical statement that powerfully expresses the susila and political outrage behind the rapid growth of the Populist movement among both farmers and industrial workers. Delivering the preamble in person at the party convention in St. Louis, Donnelly dramatically asserted: “From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes—tramps and millionaires ... A vast conspiracy against mankind has been organized on two continents, and it is rapidly taking possession of the world. If not met and overthrown at once it forebodes terrible social convulsions, the destruction of civilization, or the establishment of an absolute despotism”. Donnelly’s suggestion of “a vast conspiracy” of financial manipulators was interpreted by historian Richard Hofstadter as evidence of the reactionary nature of the Populist revolt, and that this “folklore” revealed Populism to be a hayseed movement that was led by “pseudo-intellectuals” who were possessed by the “paranoid style of American politics.” However, Donnelly’s statement can also be read not as evidence of demagoguery, but as a cultural expression of a distinct structure of feeling that united U.S. farmers and workers in the 1890s. Increasingly subjected to the manipulation of railroads and banks, and reduced from their proud status as autonomous working men to “wage slaves,” Populist Party leaders and followers alike articulated this monopolistic intrusion as a deliberate depravation of their much-prized independence. Without democratic change, Donnelly demands, the conspiracy of the present could become the Caesar’s Column of our future.

Ignatius Donnelly

Ignatius Donnelly Ignatius Donnelly (1831–1901), known as “the Prince of Cranks” and “the Apostle of Discontent,” was a politician, farm...

Dominion Theology

Dominion Theology

Dominion Theology While evangelical Christians agree on expecting the Second Coming of Christ, they differ as to what they should do in ...

Domestic Terrorism

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="s" associated="" been="" border="0" conspiracy="" domestic="" has="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQrUPwDp6G1itjzzrKzFILMYZ7qnNy5L8PAwCcIb39ocrgXqjmf3973wWBCjcGaocnyLCIj6Bjw3dRHK1X38sqknYsJfcPAT8_v_UctLT5mprq3Bf6ICHXtYhX4_VzeDzE0S0lSIKx5tY/s1600/Domestic-Terrorism.jpg" strongly="" terrorism="" theories="" title="Domestic" with="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Domestic Terrorism</td></tr> </tbody></table> Since the mid-1990s domestic terrorism has been strongly associated with conspiracy theories. While acts of domestic terrorism have no necessary relationship to conspiracy theories, the two have been linked in two major ways. First, conspiracy theories have been defined as causes for, or leading to, domestic terrorism. In this thinking, particular conspiracy beliefs lead to acts of domestic terrorism. Second, a number of conspiracy theories have arisen about acts of domestic terrorism. In other words, conspiracy theories provide explanations for what is behind terrorism. Because of both of these aspects, there is a strong link between domestic terrorism and conspiracy theories. Definitions The terms “terrorism” and “terrorist” have been used to describe a wide range of violent actions against societies and governments. One of the major definitional difficulties associated with domestic terrorism, regardless of the connection to conspiracy theories, is coming up with a clear and rigorous meaning that is consensual. There is no clear agreement on what domestic terrorism is. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591810493/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=b8c858ae4bdf4caf72b1fcf6ab8edc0d" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1591810493&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="s" associated="" been="" border="0" conspiracy="" domestic="" has="" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1591810493" strongly="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" terrorism="" theories="" width="1" with="" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161614646X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=161614646X&linkCode=as2&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=VACKR5GF3JCSTPUO"><img border="0" src="http://ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=161614646X&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="s" associated="" been="" border="0" conspiracy="" domestic="" has="" height="1" src="http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=as2&o=1&a=161614646X" strongly="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" terrorism="" theories="" width="1" with="" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> For example, an armed and violent political organization can be classified as a terrorist group or as freedom fighters, depending on the political perspective of the classifier. Also, there are differing opinions whether the notion of domestic terrorism applies solely to actions carried out by ordinary individuals, or to actions carried out by the state and its agents. In addition, there are also at least two ways of defining “domestic.” It could mean a violent political act that takes place within the national borders of the United States, the most famous example being the <a href=" " target="_blank">11 September 2001</a> destruction of the World Trade Center. Even though the alleged terrorist network responsible for the act was international in nature, the fact that it happened on U.S. soil makes it an act of domestic terrorism. The other definition of “domestic” requires that the perpetrators themselves be citizens of the nation under attack. The most famous case here is the 1995 <a href=" " target="_blank">Oklahoma City bombing</a> of the Alfred P. Murrah Building, carried out by Timothy McVeigh, a U.S. citizen. With all of these differences it is no wonder that Richard E. Rubinstein, director of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, once argued that a “definition of terrorism is hopeless ... terrorism is just violence that you don’t like.” The United States Department of Justice defines domestic terrorism as “the unlawful use of force or violence, committed by a group(s) of two or more individuals, against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” This definition has been modified to accent the target of domestic terrorism, namely, civilians or noncombatants. History While domestic terrorism may seem to be a twentieth-century (if not 1990s) phenomenon, history provides numerous acts that could fit the definition. The word “terror” can at least be traced back to the Reign of Terror conducted after the French Revolution in 1789, in which thousands were executed in order to prevent and intimidate counterrevolutionary forces. In U.S. history, the Boston Tea Party has been viewed as a terrorist act, insofar as it was a public display of violence and destruction to achieve political and social ends (antiBritish taxation). The American Revolution itself, in this view, depended on domestic terrorism against British colonizers to accomplish its goals. A variety of rebellions arose in the first 100 years of the United States that could be characterized as terrorist. The Whiskey Rebellion tax revolt, suppressed by federal troops in 1794, was a case where military forces brutally responded to a violent uprising. During the mid-1800s, religious fundamentalism became violent, especially in the case of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons). Mormon insurrections were frequent in the Midwest and in Utah, as the beliefs and practices of the church (especially polygamy) clashed with dominant Christian beliefs and local laws. Rebellious Mormons ambushed and slaughtered over 100 California-bound migrants, which provoked a military response by President James Buchanan. Mormon protestors employed guerrilla tactics against the federal troops. During the Civil War, wartime tactics that easily fall under the category of “domestic terrorism” were employed by both sides. After the Civil War, the <a href=" " target="_blank">Ku Klux Klan</a> was formed in order to enact vigilante justice and protect white southerners. Their tactics, including the burning of crosses, property destruction, obstructing blacks from voting, beatings, and lynchings were all designed to intimidate citizens (as well as government officials) through terror. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, labor struggles often included elements of terror. From anarchist assassinations and bombings to the company-hired strikebreaking Pinkertons, violence and intimidation were tactics employed to further political and social ends. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, extreme protest took on a new character. The wave of demonstrations and riots sometimes turned violent, often with provocation by police forces (as, for example, during the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention). At Kent State University in 1970, four demonstrators were shot dead by National Guard troops. The <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vietnam War</a> period also saw the rise of antiestablishment and antiracist organizations that at times resorted to violence to further their goals. Premier among them was the Weather Underground Organization (formerly the Weathermen), who were blamed for a series of bombings (including the U.S. Capitol building), bank robberies, and shootings during this era. Their attempt to instigate a socialist revolution through violent provocation also included the jailbreak of Timothy Leary. Also active during this time was the Symbionese Liberation Army, whose claim to fame was the kidnapping and recruitment (or brainwashing, depending on your perspective) of Patty Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. Contemporary Domestic Terrorism The last twenty years of the twentieth century saw an explosion in the number of domestic terrorist groups, as well as the interests that motivate them. The U.S. Department of Justice classifies domestic terrorist groups into six categories: <ol> <li>violent Puerto Rican independence groups, </li> <li>anti-Castro Cubans, </li> <li>left wing, </li> <li>right wing, </li> <li>Jewish extremist, and </li> <li>special interest. </li> </ol> Among the last category’s members are antiabortion extremists, responsible for physical and psychological intimidation of abortion providers and patients, including the bombing of clinics and the murders of abortion providers. Groups like Operation Rescue, the Army of God, and the American Coalition for Life Activists have been implicated in, or accused of endorsing, a number of these crimes. Ecoterrorism, done in the name of environmental preservation, has also come under recent scrutiny. Animal rights organizations that use harassment and intimidation fall under this category (e.g., the Animal Liberation Front, which targets institutions that conduct unethical research on animals, as well as those that profit from this mistreatment). In addition, more general environmental activists like Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front have been dubbed domestic terrorists (the latter by the FBI in 2001). In the 1990s, domestic terrorism achieved a prominence that it never had before. On 26 February 1993, the World Trade Center was rocked by a bomb in its underground garage. The explosion, caused by a homemade fertilizer bomb, killed six people and injured more than a thousand. On 4 March 1994, the jury found Mohammad Salameh, Ahmad M. Ajaj, Mahmud Abouhalima, and Nidel Ayyad guilty on thirty-eight counts related to the bombing. This event was an act of domestic terrorism only according to the definition that emphasizes the place of the event (on U.S. soil). The Arab identities and foreign citizenship of the convicted perpetrators would make this an act of international terrorism under other definitions. Similarly, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the downing of the airplane over Pennsylvania, can be seen in this light. The ongoing investigation into 9/11 is primarily focused on an international terrorist network, especially Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. Conspiracy theories have abounded with these WTC attacks. One proposed motivation for the attacks is the alleged conspiratorial tendencies of the Arab mentality. Daniel Pipes’s work on Arab paranoia stresses how conspiracy theories are a part of daily life in the Middle East. The antisemitic and anti-Western nature of these theories, according to some analysts, leads to extremist behavior. A number of other conspiracy theories point to other sources. In the 1993 attack, the fact that an FBI informant had provided much of the damning evidence against the accused has led to the belief that the FBI agent was a provocateur; that is, someone who incited and provided the materials for the bombing. In the 2001 attack, numerous theories abounded that the terror was a result of <ol> <li>an inside job in the U.S. government designed to provoke a global war and domestic martial law; or </li> <li>a Mossad (the Israeli secret service) conspiracy to incite anti-Arab sentiment around the world and evoke support for Israel’s policies. </li> </ol> Some theories combined the two narratives, arguing that the purpose of the terrorist acts was to usher in a New World Order and perhaps the simpulan Armageddon. Oklahoma City and the Militias A number of domestic terrorist acts occurred in the 1990s, including the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing and the continued bombings of the Unabomber (which led to the arrest of Ted Kaczinski). Along with these came the increasing threat of chemical and biological terrorism, which erupted in Japan with the 1996 Sarin gas attacks by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, and spilled over into the twenty-first century with the post-9/11 anthrax mailings. But the event that dramatically propelled domestic terrorism and conspiracy theories into the public arena was the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. In addition to the scale of the destruction (169 dead, including 19 children), what was significant about this event was the fact that it was done by U.S. citizens against other U.S. citizens. Timothy J. McVeigh, a white Desert Storm veteran, was arrested and subsequently executed for the crime. During his trial, the prosecution stressed that a major motivation for the bombing was McVeigh’s conspiracy beliefs. Most significantly, McVeigh believed in a government conspiracy and cover-up in the 1993 destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. The David Koresh–led religious organization had lost eighty-seven members in a fiery end to a monthslong siege, when federal law-enforcement agents stormed the residence with tanks and CS gas. The date of the assault, 19 April 1993, was two years to the day before the Oklahoma City bombing. Timothy McVeigh, an avid consumer of Waco conspiracy theories, became the exemplar for the dangerous results these beliefs could produce. His alleged brief experience with the militia movement propelled these armed groups into national prominence. While militias were never legally linked to the Oklahoma City bombing, much media scrutiny was placed on them, and the Patriot network in general. This loose collection of disgruntled citizens included tax resisters, constitutionalists, white supremacists, Christian Identity members, rightto-bear-arms activists, and general antigovernment protestors. Conspiracy theories were often associated with the Patriot movement, especially theories that proposed that a <a href=" " target="_blank">New World Order</a> was imminent. The image of the conspiracy-obsessed militia member anchored the link between conspiracy beliefs and violent domestic terrorism. This association was spread by official government spokespeople, private watchdog organizations (such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Center on Hate and Extremism), think-tank experts, scholars, and even Hollywood films (like the 1999 film Arlington Road). At the same time, there were plenty of conspiracy theories about the Oklahoma City bombing itself. Steven Jones, McVeigh’s lawyer, published a book-length account that claimed McVeigh was a foot soldier in a larger network of domestic and international terrorists. David Hoffman, in his book The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror (1998), provides the most thorough example of these theories. Hoffman meticulously arranges the loose ends developed by other conspiracy theorists (including the two-blast theory, that there was more than one explosion recorded); the lack of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agents in the building during the bombing; the ATF informant Carol Howe’s testimony; the eyewitness accounts of McVeigh accomplices; and numerous other details) into a broad account of why the bombing occurred. Along with Adam Parfrey, Hoffman makes the argument that terrorism, to be effective, requires a claim of responsibility. No one claimed responsibility for the bombing, and many militia groups condemned the act. Like many Patriot members, Hoffman charges that the Murrah Building bombing was planned and executed by government insiders, in coordination with foreign agents, in order to turn popular support away from antigovernment groups and towards government institutions. According to this theory McVeigh was a patsy, similar to Lee Harvey Oswald in the Kennedy assassination. The bombing was pseudoterrorism, a pretext for the passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act and the widespread curtailing of civil liberties. This theory about the Oklahoma City bombing draws on longer standing theories about terrorism in general—namely the “strategy of tension.” The “strategy of tension,” it is argued, is a counterinsurgency tactic that involves staging violence in order to blame it on one’s enemy. The 1933 Reichstag fire, allegedly started by Nazi forces, was blamed on Communist groups to turn popular German support to the Nazi regime. Operation Gladio, which took place primarily in Italy in the 1970s, involved government infiltration and provocation of leftist groups to commit acts of terror. Some conspiracy theories argue that many of the pretexts for the twentieth century’s wars (<a href=" " target="_blank">the sinking of the Lusitania</a> and the USS Maine, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and <a href=" " target="_blank">Pearl Harbor</a>) were deliberately engineered to garner popular support for going to war.

Domestic Terrorism

Domestic Terrorism Since the mid-1990s domestic terrorism has been strongly associated with conspiracy theories. While acts of domestic...