Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy by Colin Dickey

Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy Reviews

• 
  Jesse

  Colin Dickey has absolutely cultivated the best beat as a writer--he's done ghosts, cryptids, and now conspiracy theories. I've read, whew, Hofstadter and Kathryn Olmsted and two books on QAnon and one on flat-earthers and the gonzo one on William Milton Cooper and Norman Cohn's on The Protocols, and Dickey's cryptid book kind of talks about this tangentially as well. (Probably at least 5-6 more I can't think of right now.) Anyway, I still learned a lot of stuff--there were letters claiming Lincoln was using the Civil War as a pretext for his real goal (secretly trying to kill the Catholic church), as well as a whole bunch of enslavers' conspiracy theories circulating well before 1860; Henry Ford, just after being challenged on his publicizing of the Protocols, got mysteriously run off the road by...you know, someone who was clearly part of a nefarious plot. Oh, and that McGuffey readers were teaching 19th-c school kids anti-Semitic tropes, and that John Buchan's original version of The 39 Steps ascribes the evil plot our stalwart British hero defeats to a cabal of...you'll never guess who. As Dickey astutely points out, the fact that this passage could be excised in later editions (would love to know how fast, and whether there were protests, which is especially interesting because it's one of the earliest spy novels in most accounts, yet I've never seen this mentioned before) without materially affecting the novel points up the vaporous narrative function of anti-Semitism. His big thesis is that conspiracy theories are not just not a sporadic distraction from American democratic functioning (he points out that they're constantly springing up and just as constantly being forgotten) but actually a constituent and recurring phenomenon of its existence created by, among other things, the Enlightenment's elevation of humanity as the prime mover, the shocks of capitalism, and the inexorable contradictions of living among diverse people--as he emphasizes, one of their functions is to pathologize and resist cultural advancement. He's at his best collating theories and showing, for instance, the recurrence of abused-child tropes from 19th-c convent exposés through the Satanic Panic through QAnon, or how David Icke recycles and repurposes various aspects of the, uh, ideas sold by multiple previous cranks. He's also strong on the very real conspiracies that did exist, highlighting the midcentury malfeasance of the CIA and FBI and even giving me new material on the Birchers, who I was pretty sure I'd never need to read another word about. The argument gets repeated a bit too often for my taste, often using essentially the same phrasing, and wow, the copyediting could have been a whole lot sharper. But this is both entertaining and disturbing.
• 
  Dan Burt

  4.75 stars.
• 
  Sara Allen

  This nonfiction account of conspiracy theories in America didn’t do much for me. It really never made its point and didn’t seem to come from an unbiased perspective.
• 
  Ron

  Secret societies - the Illuminati, the Masons, the Lizard People, "slaveocracy," and the John Birch Society are all part of the American Historical landscape. But so are the Ku Klux Klan, witches, slave revolts, the Molly Maguires, Haymarket anarchists, the Satanic ritual scare, and the recovered memory movement. Each of these and others were involved in "moral panics" that swept across America. In Under the Eye of Power, Colin Dickey walks the reader through the conspiratorial-laden underbelly of America.
  
  Colin Dicky begins his meanderings with the Freemasons and its offshoot - the Illuminati in the section As Above, So Below. He spends four chapters dealing with how the Freemasons developed, came to America, how its symbols are everywhere, yet its rituals are secret, so secret that some Masons have murdered a former member to halt their publication. Next stop - Deep-Laid Schemes - has six chapters filled with slave revolts, slave conspiracies, Underground railroads, ant-Catholicism, witchcraft trials in Salem and elsewhere, and in Texas, Abolitionist arsonists! In National Indigestion, Dickey has five chapters with anti-immigrationists, anarchists, bankers, Wall Street, antisemitism, and the (In)Visible Empire. In Wonders of the Invisible World, Dickey, in four chapters, explores subliminal messaging, the CIA and "truth drugs" plus LSD, ant-fluoridation societies (which includes anti-Communist groups such as the John Birch Society), and the FBI COINTELPRO on anti-war and leftist groups. Finally, Dickey, with six chapters in Behind the Hieroglyphic Streets, ventures into cultural wars, modern conspiracy theories, Satanic rituals, recovered memories, Q-Anon, the Lizard People, ritual sacrifices, and Citizen Commissions.
  
  Under the Eye of Power is wonderful for readers interested in American history with all the warts and stains included or for the reader who longs for a primer on all the ways secret societies and conspiracies have played a role in U.S. history.
  
  Thanks Netgalley for the chance to read this title!
• 
  Jennifer Stringer

  A fascinating look at of how fear of the "other" has shaped American history. The author shows how rather than being one-off's of bizarre beliefs that pop-up out of the blue, conspiracy theories have been with us since the beginning. From the founding fathers right through the Trump phenomena, fear of change inspires the strangest beliefs that then culminate in some of the most heinous actions. We've gone from believing that secret plots threathen our government to believing in secret plots come from our government, but they all originate from a fear that we will be worse off if someone else is granted the same rights and privileges we ourselves enjoy - be in Catholic, Irish, Jews, and the formerly enslaved in years past, to immigrants, "elites" and still, the Jews in more modern times. That's not to say there hasn't been conspiracies - the difference being that the those were based in fact that could be investigated and ultimately exposed. Today's conspiracists will claim "lack of evidence IS evidence" and reason can't be used to persuade otherwise. Conspiracies pervade both political parties. Conservatives tend to believe conspiracies coming from the governement while liberals tend to believe conspiracies coming from big corporations. I know after reading this I feel more inspired to question why I believe what I do.
  
  The author reminds us that it's easy to give in to despair, but hope is the braver course. Actual conspiracies have been exposed when everyday citizens saw something and said something. The absurd conspiracies die away as the fear they promoted changes and is no longer a threat, only to resurface when a new fear presents itself. (Society didn't collapse after the 8 hr work day was introduced afterall.) People who fall down these rabbit holes of conspiracy theories tend to feel outside of society and excluded in some way. Belief in the theory du jour offers a feeling of superiority - they are wise to the secret and therefore superior to the sheeple who believe what they are fed by mass media. We can all work to be better neighbors and citizens who are inclusive and actually know one another. There is no easy fix, just many small points of connection and inclusion.
• 
  Laura Jordan

  I love Colin Dickey's particular brand of cultural anthropology for the fact that his books allow for a reframing of the way we see the world, revealing what drives so much of our modern-day beliefs, anxieties, and obsessions. His thesis here -- that fears of some secret, malevolent, all-powerful group (witches, Freemasons, slaveholders, Catholics, immigrants, communists, Satanists, the Hollywood elite, etc.) are a feature of our history (rather than isolated incidents) and should be seen as a constant since the founding of the United States -- is a fascinating one, and while I do wish his treatment had gone for some depth along with the breadth, I find his assessment to have a great deal of merit. (I was particularly drawn to his discussion of Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies and Popper's idea that the modern conspiracy theory replaces the old notions of the gods/God as being responsible for the evils of the world. Dickey adds: "The conspiracist is at heart nostalgic for an earlier model of the universe with distinct causality, one where everything can be explained and understood, where randomness is banished evermore.") There's also, of course, something to his views on how people come to be drawn into conspiracy theories: as a form of "magical thinking" that help us to "cope with difficult emotions" and as a font of "exclusive knowledge" that "elevates [the conspiracist] above the sheeple who know nothing," conspiracy theories have power and give meaning to otherwise terrible and incomprehensible events. I'm reminded of
  Elizabeth Williamson's book about Sandy Hook conspiracists, where she posited that a number of the people who bought into the idea of a "false flag" hoax did so because, for them, it was impossible to imagine a world in which their own children might be murdered in an elementary school classroom.
• 
  Rachel

  Colin Dickey has covered ghosts, the paranormal and now secret societies and conspiracy in how they shaped American society. It's a natural progression. The Masons, KKK, MK-ultra, COINTELPRO and Q-anon all come into play. Along with addressing the history, he breaks down the why of these groups existing and often being thought of as more powerful than they actually are. It's at times depressing, but never the less engrossing.
• 
  Lisa

  I have often asked why people are so gullible. QANON conspiracy theories were so laughable to me. Those who believe them find it no laughing matter. Colin Dickey takes you through all the conspiracy theories that have plagued American culture since the birth of this nation. Today’s media and freedom to state false narratives make us even more susceptible. I found this book fascinating.
• 
  Andrew

  Sort of a follow-up to Dickey's excellent Ghostland. Although equally illuminating in terms of subconscious American history, it's not quite as fun of a read because of the nature of what he's describing. Ghost stories are narratives seeking to make sense of the world; conspiracy theories are sort of anti-narratives making nonsense of the world to resolve cognitive dissonance. P.S. This book could use an index in the paperback edition.
• 
  Hannah

  colin dickey always knocks it out of the park! an enlightening read that ends on a hopeful note, and encourages us to think deeper about the patterns of paranoid thinking and conspiracy culture in america.
• 
  Rich Tate

  A compelling look at a cornerstone of our nation, the conspiracy theory. It's amazing how much history repeats itself after changing some keywords. This novel really hammers home how xenophobia and manipulation are part of the fabric of America.
• 
  Amy

  DNF. Distracted by the copyedit level mistakes in the digital version via Cloud Library.
• 
  Carol Kearns

  What I learned—conspiracy theories have been with us since the beginning of time.
• 
  Oliver Bateman

  An absolute mess — rushed, partisan at points when partisanship was unnecessary or the stupidity of the side in question was evident, full of ahistorical overstatements, and representing a further and perhaps decline from Ghostland, about which I interviewed Dickey years earlier (he unfollowed me on social media not long thereafter — sad!). That said, this seems like it was farted out to preserve a book contract, perhaps because this mostly-decent author had other stuff going on in his life. So it goes