“In Calmer Times.…”

Fried, Richard M.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195043617.003.0007

Cited by 3 publications

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“…An interesting corollary of this approach is that it will probably detect a few strong conspiracy myths before the 1960s. This seems to be the case at least in the USA, where according to Butter ( 2020 , p. 648–649) until the 1950s conspiracy theories were “officially accepted and legitimate knowledge“ which was “believed and articulated by elites,“ exerting “a significant influence on culture and society.“ It was only in the late 1950s that their status changed, and they began to be seen as “stigmatised and illegitimate knowledge.“ Thus, e.g., the “Red Scare“ was in the early 1950s “shared and seldom questioned by most liberals as well as conservatives“ (Fried, 1990 , p. 36), which means that it was closer to a political myth than a conspiracy one. It was only at the end of the decade that the anti-communist suspicions ceased to be voiced by mainstream media and official government publications and came to be preached only by the marginal John Birch Society, in effect shifting toward the conspiracist end of the scale and at the same time assuming more and more fantastic and anti-systemic forms (Butter, 2020 , p. 653–654).…”

Section: Implications For Defining Conspiracy Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Conspiracy Narratives as a Type of Social Myth

Chlup

2023

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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It has long been recognized that conspiracy narratives may be seen as a special kind of myth. In most cases, however, this is taken as a sign of their irrational and unsubstantiated nature. I argue that mythical modes of reasoning are actually far more pervasive in modern political and cultural discourse than we commonly admit and that the difference between mainstream discourse and conspiracy narratives is not one between “rational” and “mythical” thought but rather one between different types of mythical thinking. The specific nature of conspiracy myths is best understood in relation to two other types of social myths: political myths and fictional myths. Conspiracy myths are a hybrid of these two genres: like fictional myths, they make use of imaginative elements, but like political myths, they are understood as having a relatively straightforward relation to reality and not just a metaphorical one. They are essentially anti-systemic, and their chief ethos is that of distrust. Nevertheless, the degree to which they reject the system varies, and it is thus useful to distinguish between weaker and stronger conspiracy myths. While the latter reject the system altogether and are incompatible with political myths, the former are capable of co-operating with them.

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Section: Implications For Defining Conspiracy Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Conspiracy Narratives as a Type of Social Myth

Chlup

2023

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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“…There has been much written about McCarthyism in the United States but much less regarding Canadian McCarthyism. Useful works on McCarthyism in the United States include Fried (1991), Schrecker (1998), and Storrs (2012). A volume that deals with the time in which Canadian McCarthyism occurred is Whitaker and Marcuse (1994).…”

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confidence: 99%

The War on the North American Left-Wing Labor Movement From World War I Through the Post-World War II Period

Devinatz

2024

Labor Studies Journal

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Repression of the North American trade union movement dates to the late nineteenth century. Much of this repression has occurred in response to union militancy during strikes, some of which were directed against political radicals of various orientations. Peaks of repression against radical trade unionism occurred during World War I and in the immediate postwar years as well as in the early Cold War period, after World War II’s conclusion into the early 1950s. Through the analysis of three recently published volumes, I argue that the repression of North American left-wing unions was intentionally severe because of the strength of these labor organizations and the threat they were perceived to pose to employers and the government. Given that these left-wing unions were much more militant than the American Federation of Labor unions, this governmental repression (as well as that of other forces) can be viewed as a conscious set of tactics invoked that were meant to break, or at a minimum tame, these radical unions in the service of capital. Such behavior also acted as a warning to nonradical unions that repression could be directed against them as well.

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“…I draw on the archival collections of Elmer Davis at ABC and Eric Sevareid at Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) to study a moment in American history when the so-called masses and the elite of the press were out-of-sync: Truman’s removal of MacArthur from his command. In 1951, the polity was already divided by McCarthyism, as the congressional investigations into communist subversion in US institutions—ongoing since the late 1930s—found a publicity-seeking champion in Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin (for more, see Freeland, 1971; Fried, 1990). McCarthy and his supporters were especially critical of the press (Alwood, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

“The right to voice your opinions”: A historical case study in audience members’ emotional hostility to radio journalists

McGarr

2022

Journalism

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A focus on political consensus in the United States in the early 1950s has created a false sense of a period of national unity and of the press in that period as a trusted institution. This article uses listener hate mail to radio reporters during a divisive moment—President Harry Truman’s removal of General Douglas MacArthur from his command in the Korean War in April 1951—to identify a politically rancorous discourse, aimed at the press. This period of high emotion for Americans provides a case study in audience members’ sometimes hostile relationship with journalists and does so at an early moment in the creation of a truly mass national news audience. I analyze hundreds of unpublished, archival letters, from a time when public opinion polling was relatively new and still problematic, to rethink what our baseline measurement is for media trust and better contextualize claims about its trajectory. I find three tropes that are especially resonant in the present day and became more visible parts of the public discourse with the presidency of Donald Trump: anti-press attitudes, isolationism, and antisemitism.

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“In Calmer Times.…”

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Conspiracy Narratives as a Type of Social Myth

Conspiracy Narratives as a Type of Social Myth

The War on the North American Left-Wing Labor Movement From World War I Through the Post-World War II Period

“The right to voice your opinions”: A historical case study in audience members’ emotional hostility to radio journalists

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