Stein - American panic a history of who scares us and why

American Panic

American Panic

A
History
of
Who Scares Us
and
Why

Mark Stein

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

AMERICAN PANIC

Copyright Mark Stein, 2014.

All rights reserved.

For information, address St. Martins Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United Statesa division of St. Martins Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN 978-1-137-27902-6

Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, ext. 5442, or by e-mail at .

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Stein, Mark, 1951

American panic : a history of who scares us and why / Mark Stein.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-137-27902-6 (hardback : alkaline paper)

1. PanicPolitical aspectsUnited StatesHistory. 2. FearPolitical aspectsUnited StatesHistory. 3. Moral panicsUnited StatesHistory. 4. National characteristics, AmericanHistory. 5. Political cultureUnited StatesHistory.
6. Social changeUnited StatesPsychological aspectsHistory. 7. United StatesPolitics and government. 8. United StatesEthnic relations. 9. United StatesSocial conditions. I. Title.

E183.S776 2014

306.20973dc 3

2013047097

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Letra Libre, Inc.

First edition: May 2014

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.

To Harry and David

Contents

It is better TO LIGHT A CANDLE than curse the darkness.

Hyenas in human formno good INDIANS except those that are dead.

There are plenty of people in this country of ours who would far rather see... the entire white race here rotted by heroic injections into their veins of all the SAVAGERY AND CRIMINALITY IN THE NEGRO than have any number of the latter... in any way inconvenienced.

[T]o prepare for the overthrow of the government, no measure could be more effectual than the toleration of THE INSTITUTION OF FREEMASONRY, which inculcates principles of arbitrary power and slavish obedience, the most abhorrent to freedom.

Chapter Four

The despots of Europe are attempting, by THE SPREAD OF POPERY IN THIS COUNTRY to subvert its free institutions.

The menace to the Western world lies in the... MILLIONS OF YELLOW MEN.... There is a certain integrity... a sympathy and comradeship and warm human feel which is ours... and which we cannot teach to the Oriental.

WHEREVER THE JEW IS ALLOWED TO ESTABLISH HIMSELF dishonesty takes the place of honesty; immorality, of virtue; disease, of health; sluttishness, of cleanliness; anarchy, of order.... He is now carrying out his work of deterioration and destruction in the United States.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY, USA, works day and night... virtually invisible to the non-communist eye... for its objective, the ultimate seizure of power in America.

CORPORATIONS HAVE BEEN ENTHRONED ... and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign... until all the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.

Chapter Nine

WOMAN SUFFRAGE ... revolutionizes society... revolutionizes religion... revolutionizes the Constitution and... the legitimate and proper sphere of woman.

WEAK AND EFFEMINATE Romans were powerless... [and] the great empire... collapsed, never to rise again.... Shall we permit ourselves to fall into this DISGRACEFUL DEGRADATION?

America is under siege, facing a hostile invasion on its own soil.... The invaders are ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, their battleground is the U.S.-Mexico border, whats at stake is the money, security, and freedom of all Americans.

Some of the most influential Islamic spokesmen and leaders in the United States... envision not only a Muslim president, but that the United States Constitution be replaced or amended so as to comply in all particulars with ISLAMIC SHARIA LAW.

We have met the ENEMY, and he is US.

Acknowledgments

T his book began on a hunch that the political panics that have erupted in American history emanate from common sources. With little more than that hunch, my friends Mark Olshaker, Janet Bickel, David Dugoff, Ben Tannen, along with my sister, Roberta Redfern, and nephews Daniel L. Goldberg and Matthew Kahn, raised questions or mentioned works that enabled me to develop this idea into a manuscript. During this process, I was fortunate to receive insights from scholars such as Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr., Omar Khraishah, Marianne Noble, David Pike, and Richard Zweigenhaft. I also wish to thank Arlene Balkansky of the Serial and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress, for her assistance with my research. I thank her especially for reading each chapter on her own time, and for marrying me over thirty years ago. I have also been blessed to have been represented by Kenneth Wright and Alec Shane at Writers House, under whose guidance this book was given birth and brought to Karen Wolny at Palgrave Macmillan. Here again I was blessed, for Karens skills and insights, backed by copyeditor Bill Warhops keen eyes and laser logic, kept this panic-prone writer feeling safe in their blue-pencil-wielding hands.

Introduction

It is better TO LIGHT A CANDLE than curse the darkness.

Chinese proverb

P olitical panic, the irrational fear that ones government is in danger, is by no means unique to any country. In America, it dates back to the 1692 Salem witch hunt, though conceivably earlier panics may have occurred among Native American tribes. The panic that began in Salem commenced after seizures suddenly afflicted three girls, ages nine through twelve. When the colonys physicians could not explain it, fear arose that sorcery was taking place in Salem and endangering its Puritan rule. After the first suspect was arrested and charged with witchcraft, a capital crime, more accusations quickly followed, many of them leveled by individuals who stood to gain from the conviction of the people they accused. In little over a year, nineteen colonists were executed, eight others awaited execution, fifty awaited sentencing, and 150 still awaited trial when the colonys governor ended the proceedings by fiat.

What happened in Salem over 300 years ago continues to reverberate in the United States. Witch hunt remains a phrase in the American vernacular, ensconced in our dictionaries as an investigation of disloyalty based on unverified assertions and public fear. In other ways, too, the Salem witch The pattern emerges from the fact that Gribbin was not writing about the Tea Party. He was writing about the Anti-Masonic Party, an early nineteenth-century movement barely remembered today.

An element regarding the present-day Tea Party that echoes an element from the Salem witch hunt surfaced when Washington Post commentator Susan Jacoby wrote in the papers October 20, 2010, online edition, All of the Tea Party/Republican candidates this year are ignorant. The statement did that which statements by Tea Party adherents frequently do: stereotype a group of people. In so doing, the statement entered the realm of panic by doing that which it fears. Similarly, during the Salem witch hunt, one of the townspeople urged a slave in the community to prepare a witchs cake, a confection made with urine from a person whom the devil has possessed. The cake is then fed to a dog. The dogs ingesting of the cake was believed to cause the devil to spit out, from the possessed persons mouth, the identity of his agent. Here, too, panic resided in doing that which one feared; in this instance, fearing that sorcery was endangering the community, the townsperson engaged, via the slave-made witchs cake, in sorcery.