Brainwashed! Conspiracy Theory and Ideology in the Postwar United States

Melley, Timothy

doi:10.1215/0094033x-2007-023

Cited by 20 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Some have argued that the increasing centrality of the notion of addiction in US culture reflects post-Second World War paranoia about the agency of the modern individual (Melley, 2002(Melley, , 2008Sedgwick, 1994). The proliferation of 'addiction' into the realms of gambling, sexual behavior, hoarding, and even shopping does suggest a generalized 'agency panic'.…”

Section: Mainstreaming the Therapeutic?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the criminal addict: Subjectivity and social control in a strong-arm rehab

Gowan¹,

Whetstone

2012

Punishment & Society

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The mandatory, state-subsidized treatment opened up by drug courts and other jail and prison diversion programs have massively expanded the numbers of the nation's poor and working class who are labeled addicts and sent to rehab, making drug rehabilitation a primary site for the re-socialization and control of the poor. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, this article examines the institutional form at the center of this process: the 'strong-arm' rehabilitation facilities most closely tied to drug courts, probation, and parole. The therapeutic community tradition's long-standing practices of moral reform through intensive behavior modification are now mobilized by the state on a large scale, transformed into a 'fuzzy edge' of the criminal justice system which resocializes far more intensively than most forms of incarceration. We understand the 'medicalization' represented by strong-arm rehab not as a reprieve from judgment, but instead as a process of translation and amplification. Translated by staff into therapeutic, moral, and finally cultural versions, the biochemical 'diagnosis' of pathology comes to serve as a neutral, medicalized front behind which the systemic injuries of race and class disappear. Instead, the strongarm process amplifies the taint of addiction into a new biologization of poverty and race.

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Section: Mainstreaming the Therapeutic?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the criminal addict: Subjectivity and social control in a strong-arm rehab

Gowan¹,

Whetstone

2012

Punishment & Society

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“…From my short and anecdotal discussion of responses to MSM reporting about the association between COVID-19 and 5G, it becomes clear that there are a lot of constants in the societal debates, which also thrived before the COVID-19 crisis started (Aupers 2012;Melley 2008). The first is that the MSM's attention to conspirational thinkers who link the current COVID-19 crisis to 5G does not cause these conspirational thinkers to trust the MSM more.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This suggests that the same mechanisms that underlie affinity with other conspiracy theories are at work here too. People try to make sense of what is going on (Aupers 2012) and combine it with an almost inflammatory anti-institutionalism (Melley 2008). In this sense, this covid-spiracy theory may be nothing but a theory based on the same mechanisms.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second factor in explaining affinity with conspiracy theories is modernday anti-institutionalism (Elchardus and De Keere 2013;Melley 2008). Because people no longer trust the institutional backbone of modern societies, politics, science, the media, and the judiciary system, they start relying on themselves for finding out the truth and explaining what is going on.…”

Section: Research On Conspiracy Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Covid-Spiracy: Old Wine in New Barrels?

Achterberg¹

2021

The New Common

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How to make sense of the current COVID-19 crisis? While many people rely on official statements made by governments, scientific institutions, and experts for answering this question, others do not. Recently, the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported on people who adhere to the conspirational theory that the current COVID-19 crisis is linked to the introduction of 5G technology. These people point, for example, to so-called 5G experiments in the province of Wuhan, China, where the current COVID-19 crisis started in 2019. The “covid-spiracy” theory suggests that behind the societal curtains, elites are trying to deal with the problem of overpopulation by means of introducing 5G and blaming COVID-19 for the negative side effects. On Facebook and Twitter, people are actively discussing these theories with increasing momentum. And, inspired by theories on the adverse effects of 5G, people have tried to destroy 5G technology and hinder the spread of this technology in the Netherlands.

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“…As a result, and despite Conant's efforts to defend his former chief physicist, 4 the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission revoked Oppenheimer's security cre-3 See Hunter (1953). Illuminating recent accounts of the brainwashing sensation include Melley (2008) and Gleason (1995, esp. Chapter 5 "Brainwashing", 89-107).…”

Section: The Cold War and The Brainwashing Ideamentioning

confidence: 99%

The Paranoid Style in American History of Science

Reisch¹

2012

THEORIA

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Historian Richard Hofstadter's observations about American cold-war politics are used to contextualize Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and argue that substantive claims about the nature of scientific knowledge and scientific change found in Structure were adopted from this cold-war political culture. Keywords: Thomas S. Kuhn; The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Richard Hofstadter; "The Paranoid Style in American Politics;" Cold War; James B. Conant; Brainwashing.RESUMEN: Las observaciones del historiador Richard Hofstadter sobre la política americana en la Guerra Fría se utilizan para contextualizar La estructura de las revoluciones científicas de Thomas Kuhn y sostener que algunas afirmaciones fundamentales sobre la naturaleza del conocimiento científico y el cambio científico que se pueden hallar en La estructura fueron adoptadas de esta cultura política de la Guerra Fría. Palabras clave: Thomas S. Kuhn; La estructura de las revoluciones científicas; Richard

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Brainwashed! Conspiracy Theory and Ideology in the Postwar United States

Cited by 20 publications

References 0 publications

Making the criminal addict: Subjectivity and social control in a strong-arm rehab

Making the criminal addict: Subjectivity and social control in a strong-arm rehab

Covid-Spiracy: Old Wine in New Barrels?

The Paranoid Style in American History of Science

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