Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill: How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence

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Chip Berlet: Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill - 1 - Doublespeak: Rhetoric of the Far-Right Since 1945
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Published version appears as Chip Berlet. 2014.
“Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill:
How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence,”
in Matthew Feldman and Paul Jackson (eds),
Doublespeak: Rhetoric of the Far-Right Since 1945,
Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag.
Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill
How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence
By Chip Berlet
‘Get the nigger’! The voice came from within the racist mob after it had just forced a Jewish
counterdemonstrator to swim across the park’s pond to escape being attacked’. Kill that nigger! Stomp
him!’ Yelled a white teenager as the terrified black youth realized he has pressed his luck too far by
attending a neo-Nazi rally. He dodged fists as he ran to escape, but a leg snaked out and he fell. Face
down in the grass he only had a moment to consider his plight before the first boot smashed into his ribs.
‘Kill the nigger, kill the nigger’, chanted the crowd. More boots, then fists, and as the black youth
struggled, his shirt was reduced to shreds. Blood tricked down from his nose, and the corner of his mouth
was split as yet another fist found its mark. A handful of white people rushed forward to the rescue, being
pummeled in the process.
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The racist mob then surrounded a small group of counter-protesters from a neighborhood
synagogue’. Go back to Skokie, Jew bitch’, yelled one white teenager at a young woman. Skokie is a
northern suburb of Chicago, Illinois in the United States with a high percentage of survivors of the Nazi
genocide’. Do you sleep with the niggers? Why don’t you go back to Africa with them?’ ‘Jews go home’,
the crowd chanted, ‘Jews go home’. 1
No one, not even the leader of the neo-nazis in his fiery speech, directly told the members of the mob
to go attack blacks and Jews that day. Yet each person in the mob just knew what was expected of them.
Why? How does this work?
- - -
As intellectuals we often remove ourselves from the bloody reality of words that provoke violence. I
have therefore used the troubling and offensive language above to describe an incident I witnessed in
1978 in the Chicago neighborhood where my wife and I lived and joined in anti-racist work. While
scholarly research exists on its own intellectual merits, we need to recognize that helping unravel the
complexity of bigotry and xenophobia assists those working to extend human rights. The leaders of
organized political or social movements sometimes tell their followers that a specific group of ‘Others’ is
plotting to destroy civilized society. History tells us that if this message is repeated vividly enough, loudly
enough, often enough, and long enough—it is only a matter of time before the bodies from the named
scapegoated groups start to turn up. 2
Levin persuasively argues that both culture and self-interest shape prejudiced ideas and acts of
discrimination or violence, which are ‘in many cases, quite rational’. According to Levin, respect for
‘differences can be so costly in a psychologically and material sense that it may actually require
rebellious or deviant behavior’, in contrast to the existing norms of a society. 3 Social science since World
War II and the Nazi genocide has shown that under specific conditions, virulent demonization and
scapegoating can—and does—create milieus in which the potential for violence is increased. What social
science cannot do is predict which individual upon hearing the rhetoric of clear or coded incitement and
turn to violence.
In approaching some of these questions, this concluding study will unpack the concepts of
‘constitutive rhetoric’; the vilification, demonization, and scapegoating of a named ‘Other’; coded
rhetorical incitement by demagogues; the relationship between conspiracism and apocalyptic aggression;
and the process of scripted violence by which a leader need not directly exhort violence to create a
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constituency that hears a call to take action against the named enemy. It will argue that these processes
can and do motivate some individuals to adopt a ‘superhero complex’ which justifies their pre-emptive
acts of violence or terrorism to ‘save society’ from imminent threats by named enemies ‘before it is too
late’.
In the United States, following the 1995 Oklahoma City terrorist bombing by a small cell of right-
wing militants, there were calls by Democrats and liberals to show restraint in the rhetoric used in
electoral campaigns. A handful of principled conservatives also joined in this call. Overwhelmingly,
however, the response by Republicans and conservatives (and a few liberals) was to denounce such
concerns as falsely linking media rhetoric to violent action and thus endangering First Amendment free
speech guarantees. A few of the more macho voices declared such concerns to be a sign of political
weakness. Actually, such claims rebutting the link between rhetoric and violence are based on a
misunderstanding or misrepresentations of existing social science.
A vivid example of this can be found in the statistics chronicling ethno-violence compiled by the US
Justice Department. Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US World Trade Center in
New York City and the Pentagon (the military headquarters outside the US capital city of Washington,
DC.), assaults, the defacements of buildings, the murders of people perceived by attackers to be Muslims
in the United States, showed a ghastly upwards spike. This is not just a convoluted turn of phrase. From
the first days after the 9/11 terror attacks by militant Islamic supremacists, adherents to the Sikh religion
were attacked because the truly ignorant xenophobic attackers assumed that anyone with a swarthy skin
and a ‘rag-head’ had to be a Muslim enemy of America.
In their study of how media manipulation for political ends can help incite genocide, Frohardt and
Temin looked at ‘content intended to instill fear in a population’, or ‘intended to create a sense among the
population that conflict is inevitable’. 4 They point out that ‘media content helps shape an individual’s
view of the world and helps form the lens through which all issues are viewed’. They found two patterns:
content creating fear and content creating a sense of inevitability and resignation that violence was about
to occur. According to the authors:
•In Rwanda prior to the genocide a private radio station tried to instill fear of an imminent attack
on Hutus by a Tutsi militia.
•In the months before [conflicts] in Serbia, state television attempted to create the impression that
a World War II–style ethnic cleansing initiative against Serbs was in the works.
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•Throughout the 1990s Georgian media outlets sought to portray ethnic minorities as threats to
Georgia’s hardfought independence.
Frohardt and Temin found the result was a sense within the target population that ‘imminent’ and
serious threats were to be expected, even though ‘there was only flimsy evidence provided to support
them’,
When such reporting creates widespread fear, people are more amenable to the notion of taking
preemptive action, which is how the actions later taken were characterized. Media were used to
make people believe that ‘we must strike first in order to save ourselves’. By creating fear the
foundation for taking violent action through ‘self-defense’ is laid.
‘By convincing people that conflict is inevitable, those manipulating the media create a self-fulfilling
prophecy’, explain Frohardt and Temin. ‘Consequently, people convinced of the inevitability of conflict
are much easier to move to violence. Two strategies have been used to create this sense of inevitability:
portraying conflict as part of an ‘eternal’ process, and discrediting alternatives to conflict’. 5
According to Hannah Arendt, this process is clearly observable in totalitarian movements of the right
and left. Arendt, comparing Hitlerism and Stalinism, linked it to the elevated status of the totalitarian
leader and the elite cadre of followers:
Their superiority consists in their ability to dissolve every statement of fact into a declaration of
purpose. In distinction to the mass membership which, for instance, needs some demonstration of
the inferiority of the Jewish race before it can safely be asked to kill Jews, the elite formations
understand that the statement, all Jews are inferior, means, all Jews should be killed. 6
This example illustrates the most extreme case. Few would dispute that the rhetoric of Hitler and his
propagandists had a connection to the murder of Jews and other ‘enemies’ of the Thousand Year Reich.
What is disputed is whether or not this process can be extended to less obvious forms of provocative
rhetoric.
From Words to Actions.
‘They’ always lie to ‘Us’. It doesn’t matter who ‘They’ are, because one of the hallmarks of bigotry
is that ‘Their’ religion, ideology, or culture is said to promote lying. They cannot be trusted. In fact, they
are probably conspiring against us right now. They threaten our entire way of life. They are not like us.
They don’t value human life like we do. In order to defend our nation, which reflects eternal truths, we
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must act now before it is too late. Attack first. Our war is justified. God is on our side. That’s the
universal narrative of justified aggression against a demonized ‘Other’. 7
Conspiracy theories attached to apocalyptic timetables are especially effective in building a
constituency for aggression against the evil plotters. The history of the United States is replete with
episodic widespread panic about subversion have created a mass countersubversive movement whose
bigoted charges became part of the public conversation about politics:
Freemasons (1798– 1844); Catholic immigrants (1834–60); Jews (1919– 35); Italian and Russian
immigrants, with some deported as anarchists and Bolsheviks (1919–35); Communists and their ‘fellow
travelers’ (1932–60); Communist and Jewish control of the Civil Rights Movement (1958–68), secular
humanists, feminists and the ‘homosexual agenda’ (1975– ); the ‘New World Order’ (1990– ); Islamic
menace and Sharia law (post 9/11). That’s the short list. 8
The potential for violence in a society increases when the mass media carries rhetorical vilification
by high profile and respected figures who scapegoat a named ‘Other’. This dangerous ‘constitutive
rhetoric’ can build an actual constituency of persons feeling threatened or displaced. Or to put it another
way, when rhetorical fecal matter hits the spinning verbal blades of a bigoted demagogue’s exhortations,
bad stuff happens.
The resulting violence can incite a mob, a mass movement, a war, or an individual actor. Individual
actors who engage in violence can emerge in three ways. They can be assigned the task of violence by an
existing organizational leadership; they can be members or participants in an existing organization, yet
decide to act on their own; or they can be unconnected to an existing organization and act on their own.
According to the US government definition, a ‘Lone Wolf’ is a person who engages in political violence
and is not known by law enforcement agencies to have any current or previous ties to an organization
under surveillance as potential lawbreakers. 9 The person committing the violence may expect or even
welcome martyrdom, or may plan for a successful escape to carry on being a political soldier in a hoped-
for insurgency. Either way, the hope is that ‘a little spark can cause a prairie fire’. 10 Revolution is seldom
the result, but violence and death remains as a legacy.
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Following the Research Trail
Social Science Responds to WWII
After World War II social scientists inspected the Nazi genocide and tried to develop theories of how
citizens in a society allow such atrocities to occur. While in some cases this research has been challenged
and newer theoretical models proposed; there is a substantial amount of theoretical claims that stand up to
the test of time; at least as social science is concerned.
The most influential early studies were sponsored by the American Jewish Committee as part of a
series that began publishing before the US entry into WWII but after the trajectory of Nazi Party
antisemitism became clear. 11 Titles included:
•Frustration and Aggression (1939),
•The Dynamics of Prejudice, (1950),
•Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder, a Psychoanalytic Interpretation. (1950),
•The Authoritarian Personality (1950),
•The Nature of Prejudice (1954).
Of these, The Dynamics of Prejudice, Frustration and Aggression, and The Nature of Prejudice have
stood up relatively well to the test of time. 12 The Authoritarian Personality has received substantial
criticism, but social scientists have made adjustments that keep it salient as a theory. The most obvious
revisions include the harsh reality that authoritarians can appear anywhere on the political spectrum; and
that authoritarian followers are in a symbiotic relationship with those who enjoy the psychic tingle of being
an authoritarian leader. The submissive can enjoy the whip of the dominant. There will be more discussion
of this later.
A benchmark 1951 study is Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, which had three major
parts: ‘Antisemitism’, ‘Imperialism’, and ‘Totalitarianism’. 13 Other works that also played a role in
establishing the post-war liberal consensus include Hoffer, The True Believer, and Rokeach, The Open
and Closed Mind. 14
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Pluralist or Classical School Emerges
What emerged in social science was what is called classical theory, the pluralist school, or centrist-
extremist theory; and a flurry of books were published around similar themes that stressed individual
psychological disturbance, mob violence, or the reaction to stress or competition in societies as viewed
through the lens of social psychology at the time. 15 In a related vein, there were a series of books by
Hofstadter, especially The Paranoid Style in American Politics. 16 The basic idea was that right-wing
movements of the 20th century—whether populist or elitist—reflected dysfunctional outbursts of
irrational ‘extremism’. Many of these books had descriptive sections that remain valuable. Hofstadter’s
work has remained the most valuable of these, if one ignores the social psychological theories that have
been revised by more recent research. 17
During the Cold War, it became politically expedient to tie communism to the theories of what social
mechanisms where involved in totalitarianism and the rise of fascism in Europe. In some cases this led to
theoretical breakthroughs, such as Hannah Arendt’s tripartite study of totalitarianism, which today (along
with Eichmann in Jerusalem) is undervalued as a significant philosophical formulation. 18 Hitler and
Stalin were both totalitarians; this never was meant to support the claim that rightists or leftists were all
totalitarians. 19 Arendt herself protested this interpretation of her work in the preface to one of her
subsequent editions.
In 1967 sociologist Michael Paul Rogin challenged the claims of the Pluralist School. 20 Other
scholars joined this critique as sociology turned to newer theories about social movements. 21
New Paradigm: Social Movement Theories
Nothing in the previous discussions should be read to imply that social movements are all dangerous,
or that only right-wing movements are dangerous. Social and political movement activists have different
ideologies and methodologies in a myriad of combinations from left to right, from non-violent to violent,
from socially constructive to destructive. People who join all sorts of social movements turn out to be
pretty much like their neighbors along a full range of demographics. 22
People who join social movements tend to be average people with grievances. They join with others
to resolve their grievances. To accomplish this they mobilize resources, exploit opportunities that open up
in the political system, develop their own internal culture, and create perceptual frames, clever slogans,
and parable-like stories to achieve their aims. 23 Sociologists talk about ‘framing’ as an ongoing process
in which social movement leaders illustrate a power struggle by narrowing the subject to a specific point
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of view or perspective easy understood by followers. 24 A narrative is simply a story told inside a
movement which is sometimes shared with the public. These stories serve as parables, with the plot and
storyline revealing heroes and villains. Movement participants learn lessons on expected ideas and actions
valued by the movement as a whole. These become internalized and exist as if they are ‘common sense’.
25 Narrative stories can be told in ways that defend the status quo or challenge the status quo. 26
The main reason people join a social movement is that they have a grievance with society and get
motivated enough to join others to do something about it. They plug into silo-like information channels
where leaders frame an issue in a way that suggests a solution can be achieved through collective action.
They agree to use techniques for social change that step outside the normal boundaries of political
activism of using elections or lobbying, yet they often interact with political movements for elections and
legislative campaigns. The most successful movements have skilled leaders who articulate clear goals,
create positive communal interactions, and support their ideologically-driven strategies with resonant
framing of issues and narrative stories that act like parables.
Authoritarianism Revisited
The original theories about an ‘authoritarian personality’ had some serious flaws, especially what
appeared to be a bias limiting the syndrome to right-wing ideology. Later research showed there were
several inter-related factors involved; there were dominant authoritarian leadership personalities and
submissive follower personalities; and the syndrome could be found across the political spectrum.
Altemeyer discusses how the most socially-destructive individuals combine authoritarianism and social
dominance with ethnocentric prejudice.27 In 2010 he revisited his research to detail its relevance to
understanding the right-wing populist Tea Party movement in the United States. 28
Betz has studied similar right-wing populist movements in Europe which attract support by using
radically xenophobic and authoritarian rhetoric.”29 According to Taras, the ‘rise of xenophobia is nearly
synonymous with the anti–immigrant backlash’ in Western Europe, ‘especially against non–Europeans
and ‘people who are not racially Caucasian or religiously Judeo–Christian.’30 A number of recent books
have used combinations of cognitive science and sociology to argue that certain types of ‘authoritarian
personalities’ actually do tend to be more prevalent on the political right. 31
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The Tools of Fear: A Catalog of Ingredients and Processes
In terms of radical right rhetoric, it is best to start with the concept and reality of prejudice: the
preconceived formation of negative or hostile views toward a person or group of persons based on
ignorance, stereotyping, or other filter of bigotry. Prejudice can be unconscious or conscious, and any set
of prejudiced ideas may be transformed into an ideological viewpoint. Prejudice is a set of views.
Discrimination is an act. What follows in this section traces the path to violence. 32
Dualism
Dualism is a concept that divides the world into ‘Us’ versus ‘Them’; and in the religious sense,
between the forces of ‘good’ and ‘evil’. In fact, a particular form of religious dualism, Manichaeism, was
broadly practiced between the third and seventh centuries, and incorporated into many features of early
Christianity. Today the terms Manichaeism and dualism are sometimes used interchangeably. Dualism
plays a central role in ‘a totalist movement with an idealized charismatic leader and an absolutist
apocalyptic outlook’, write Anthony and Robbins’. Participants ‘engage in the ‘projection of negativity
and rejected elements of self onto ideologically designated scapegoats’, and this helps create ‘a basis for
affirming a pure, heroic self’. 33 Anthony and Robbins call this ‘exemplary dualism’. 34
Hofstadter, in turn, noted that the ‘fundamentalist mind…is essentially Manichaean’. 35 The United
States has a significant presence of politically active fundamentalist Christian conservatives, many of
whom are caught up in social and political movements that employ exemplary dualism. 36 In Europe this
worldview is found among anti-immigrant and xenophobic movements in addition to organized white
supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.
Demagoguery and Constitutive Rhetoric
Demagoguery has been used historically by both populists to denounce corrupt elites, and by
government officials to justify political repression—in both instances, its use is based on fears of
conspiracies by real and imaginary subversive elements. 37 Demagogues need to be charismatic
movement leaders; otherwise, their performance is interpreted as buffoonery.
A clearer view of the demagogic process that can lead to ‘scripted violence’ is made visible when
combining the contemporary sociological understanding of frames and narratives in mass movements
with the concept of constitutive rhetoric from the fields of speech, communication theory, and media
criticism. The early theorizing in this arena built a firm foundation for studying the societal role of
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rhetorical content in mass media, from Lippmann’s agenda-setting theory (1922);38 through Bernays’
public opinion and propaganda theories (1923 and 1928);39 to cultivation theory and other theories by
Gerbner and his fellow thinkers in more recent decades. 40
Much of the newer theorizing is prompted in one way or another by the work of Althusser, which
influences a wide range of authors far beyond the original small audience of theoretical Marxists. 41
Charland writes that central to his analysis of constitutive rhetoric is ‘Althusser’s category of the subject’
in which the collectivized identity of the constituency is actually created through a ‘series of narrative
ideological effects’. 42 Charland’s study concerns the movement for the sovereignty of a Quebec nation.
According to Charland, he draws from Althusser’s work to explain how the ‘subject is not ‘persuaded’ to
support sovereignty’ but the support ‘for sovereignty is inherent in the subject position addressed by ‘the
pro-sovereignty’ movement’s rhetoric. This demonstrates Althusser’s contention that in these situations it
is the members (subjects) of the collectivized constituency are ‘interpellated’ as political subjects through
a process of identification in rhetorical narratives that ‘always already’ presume the constitution of the
subject’. 43
Therefore the assumptions in the text and subtext of a movement leader’s constitutive rhetoric call
into being an actual living constituency made up of the individual ‘subjects’ being addressed. Thus when
Hitler’s favorite journalist Julius Streicher, in his newspaper Der Stürmer, railed against the Jews using a
particular narrative rhetoric, a constituency was created which moved from being individual passive
antisemites into being active Jew haters in a collectivity with a shared identity. Of course, this process of
interpellation is not limited to Nazi rhetoric. Gray notes that ‘Althusser’s theories of ideology and
interpellation may be readily applied to the study of mass communication, in the context of perpetuation
of hegemonic ideology via the mass media’. 44
Movement leaders speak to their followers, but they also speak to different groups of people.
Moving from the center of a movement outwards, leaders speak to their inner circle; staff, loyal members
or cadre, general membership and followers, potential recruits, the general population via mass
communications media; and their opponents. Johnston calls this a ‘micro-frame analysis’. 45 The rhetoric
aimed at each group needs to be analyzed separately or altogether. Journalist frequently report only on the
message aimed at them as media carriers, and not the more vivid rhetoric reserved for loyal followers that
may more accurately reflect the ideological content of the speaker.
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Some skillful rhetoricians can speak to several audiences at the same time using coded language,
known in rude jargon as ‘dog whistles’. For example, in some of his speeches, Pat Buchanan has woven
in coded jargon aimed at Christian evangelicals, anti-immigrant xenophobes, antisemites, militia
supporters, and intellectual neofascists. Meanwhile, many listeners who are not mobilized into a specific
constituency just hear a conservative patriotic speech. Speakers on the ideological Left sometimes do the
same thing.
An example of constitutive rhetoric is explored in a study of e-mail forwarded round online right
wing groups. Duffy, Page, and Young analyzed messages that ‘ranged from anti-liberal or anti-Obama
polemics to blatantly racist communications’. The content of these e-mails ranged from claims that
Obama was ‘incompetent’ to those that claimed ‘he’s plotting the downfall of America’46
Many e-mails recounted events that evidently sought to reveal Obama as un-American, un-
Christian, power-obsessed, weak, or Nazi-like. The dichotomous portrayals of Obama as both
diabolical and incompetent expressed many of the fears of conservative voters: that the United
States would become a socialist nation with government control of all businesses and institutions,
overrun with minorities and immigrants and run by politicians who glad-handed despotic foreign
leaders, particularly those from Muslim nations. In other words, Obama was illustrative of everything
‘anti-American’. 47
The authors argued that this is a ‘form of digital folklore that is politically motivated’, and found that
‘their political dynamics may contribute to constructing not only group identity but also the individuals’
social identity within their e-mail group’. They also argued that these ‘images may amplify the impact
and believability of the messages, especially when they are linked to familiar and sometimes demonized
or beloved cultural references and experiences, at times through a process known as visual appropriation’.
48
Right-wing movements in the United States have long used the rhetoric of fear mongering linked to
scapegoating and conspiracy theories in ways that demonize a subversive ‘Other’ hiding inside
progressive political movements. 49
Scapegoating
In Western culture the term ‘scapegoat’ can be traced to an early Jewish ritual described in the book
of Leviticus in the Bible. 50 As Gordon W. Allport explains:
On the Day of Atonement a live goat was chosen by lot. The high priest, robed in linen garments,
laid both his hands on the goat’s head, and confessed over it the iniquities of the children of Israel.
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The sins of the people thus symbolically transferred to the beast, it was taken out into the wilderness
and let go. The people felt purged, and for the time being, guiltless. 51
The word scapegoat has evolved to mean a person or group wrongfully blamed for some problem,
especially for other people’s misdeeds’. Psychologically’, Richard Landes explains, ‘the tendency to find
scapegoats is a result of the common defense mechanism of denial through projection’. 52 This can
involve guilt over their own misconduct, or a rejection of their own inner thoughts, or a redirection of
their own anxiety or frustration onto the scapegoat. 53
A certain level of scapegoating is endemic in most societies, but it more readily becomes an
important political force in times of social competition or upheaval. At such times, especially,
scapegoating can be an effective way to mobilize mass support and activism during a struggle for power.
54
Fisher explains that ‘the scapegoated group serves more as a metaphor’. Nor does scapegoating by
large groups and social movements indicate mass mental dysfunction. 55 As a social process, the hostility
and grievances of an anxious, angry, or frustrated group are directed away from the most significant
causes of a social problem onto a target group demonized as malevolent wrongdoers. In a book on right-
wing populism several years ago, Lyons and I put it this way:
The scapegoat bears the blame, while the scapegoaters feel a sense of righteousness and
increased unity. The social problem may be real or imaginary, the grievances legitimate or
illegitimate, and members of the targeted group may be wholly innocent or partly culpable. What
matters is that the scapegoats are wrongfully stereotyped as all sharing the same negative trait, or
are singled out for blame while the other major culprits and causes are let off the hook. 56
Benedict writes that desperate people ‘easily seize upon some scapegoat to sacrifice to their
unhappiness; it is a kind of magic by which they feel for the moment that they have laid [down] the
misery that has been tormenting them’. 57 According to Benedict, we all ‘know what the galling frictions
are in the world today: nationalistic rivalries, desperate defense of the status quo by the haves, desperate
attacks by the have-nots, poverty, unemployment, and war’. Benedict also observes that ‘Whenever one
group. . . is discriminated against before the law or in equal claims to life, liberty, and jobs, there will
always be powerful interests to capitalize on this fact and to divert violence from those responsible for
these conditions into channels where it is relatively safe to allow’. 58 In this way, scapegoating feeds on
people’s anger about their own disempowerment, but diverts this anger away from the real systems of
power and oppression.
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While scapegoats are often less powerful and more marginalized than the actual sources of conflict,
this is not always the case. 59 Scapegoating of persons with high status can serve the status quo and
protect those in power from criticism. 60 This can happen when a faction of elites holding political power
targets another elite faction seeking electoral victories. Sometimes scapegoating targets at the same time
both socially disempowered or marginalized groups as well as the powerful or privileged, in a form of
populism called ‘producerism’. 61
Producerism is the idea that a hard-working and ‘productive’ middle class is being robbed by
parasites above and below them on the socio-economic ladder.62 For example, conservative activists Gary
Allen and Larry Abraham used a producerist framework built around a conspiracy theory in None Dare
Call It Conspiracy to explain the success of the communist conspiracy in penetrating America. They
claimed this involved the use of the “Communist tactic of pressure from above and pressure from below”:
The pressure from above comes from secret, ostensible respectable Comrades in the government
and Establishment, forming with the radicalized [leftist] mobs in the streets below, a giant pincer
around middle-class society. The street rioters are pawns, shills, puppets, and dupes for an oligarchy
of elitist conspirators working above to turn America’s limited government into an unlimited
government with total control over our lives and property.63
In their book, Allen and Abraham provide a diagram of the producerist vice. It illustrates how a
conspiracy of the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, and the Council on Foreign Relations applies pressure
from above. Meanwhile a subversive leftist network (including the Students for a Democratic Society,
Black Panther Party, Youth International Party (YIPPIES), Young Socialist Alliance and Common
Cause) applies pressure from below. This creates the vice crushing the middle class.64 Right-wing authors
in the United States have used producerism coupled with a racialized subtext for decades.65
Vilification and Demonization of an ‘Enemy’
Vilification in the societal sense is the use of vicious rhetoric to denounce and portray a target group
as disgusting and to be avoided. Demonization is the process through which a group of people target other
groups of people as the embodiment of evil. 66
The hated target is first denigrated, then vilified, then demonized, and finally dehumanized.
Typically, proponents claim that the target is plotting against the public good. 67 Demonization generally
involves demagogic appeals. The demonization of an adversary involves well-established psychological
processes.68 There are a number of social science experiments with troubling outcomes that demonstrate
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that across many cultures it is relatively easy to turn one group against another. 69 Among the most
famous are the ‘Milgram Experiments’,70 and the ‘Brown Eye Blue Eye Experiments’.71
The demonized scapegoat serves a dual purpose by representing the evil ‘them’ and simultaneously
illuminating, solidifying, and sanctifying the good ‘us’. 72 According to Aho, even when it is unconscious,
the objectification of evil through scapegoating has this wondrous outcome: ‘The casting out of evil onto
you not only renders you my enemy; it also accomplishes my own innocence. To paraphrase
[Nietzsche]. . . In manufacturing an evil one against whom to battle heroically, I fabricate a good one,
myself’. 73
In addition, Girard argues, ‘the effect of the scapegoat is to reverse the relationship between
persecutors and their victims’. 74 When persons in scapegoated groups are attacked, they are often
described as having brought on the attack themselves because of the wretched behaviour ascribed to them
as part of the enemy group. 75 They deserved what they got. Scapegoating evokes hatred rather than
anger. The ‘hater is sure the fault lies in the object of hate’, notes Allport. 76
Fuller, similarly, links scapegoating to Christian apocalyptic millennialism by noting how frequently
throughout U. S. history scapegoated groups have been named as harbouring agents of the Antichrist.
Fuller also sees a psychological dimension:
Many efforts to name the Antichrist appear to be rooted in the psychological need to project one’s
‘unacceptable’ tendencies onto a demonic enemy. It is the Antichrist, not oneself, who must be held
responsible for wayward desires. And with so many aspects of modern American life potentially
luring individuals into nonbiblical thoughts or desires, it is no wonder that many people believe that
the Antichrist has camouflaged himself to better work his conspiracies against the faithful. 77
Apocalyptic Aggression
Apocalypticism involves the sense of expectation by individuals or groups that dramatic events are
about to unfold during which ‘good’ will confront ‘evil’. This confrontation will change the world forever
and reveal hidden truths. 78 Members of apocalyptic movements believe that time is running out. The term
millenarianism describes apocalyptic movements built around a theme involving a one thousand year
span (or some other lengthy period). Robert J. Lifton observes that ‘historically the apocalyptic
imagination has usually been nonviolent in nature’, but such beliefs also can generate indiscriminate
violence. 79 An apocalyptic leader may take on the mantle of the messiah, and in some cases urge forms of
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apocalyptic aggression against the scapegoated enemy. In such cases, the apocalyptic activists often cast a
‘projection of negativity and rejected elements of self onto ideologically designated scapegoats’. 80
Conspiracism
Conspiracist thinking exists around the world and, in some circumstances, can move easily from the
margins to the mainstream, as has happened repeatedly in the United States as mentioned above. 81
Goldberg traces the concept of conspiracy thinking back to the ‘Latin word conspirare—to breathe
together’, which implies some type of dramatic scenario. 82 Conspiracism evolves as a worldview from
roots in dualistic forms of apocalypticism. Fenster argues that persons who embrace conspiracy theories
are simply trying to understand how power is exercised in a society that they feel they have no control
over. Often they have real grievances with the society—sometimes legitimate—sometimes seeking to
defend unfair power and privilege. 83 Nonetheless, Conspiracism can appear as a particular narrative form
of scapegoating that frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good,
while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm. 84
Conspiracist thinking has appeared in mainstream popular discourse as well as in various subcultures
in the United States and Europe. 85 In contemporary examples we can see conspiracy theories built around
fears of liberal subversion by President Obama;86 fears of government attempts to merge the United
States, Canada, and Mexico into a North American Union; 87and fears that Muslims living in the United
States are plotting treachery and terrorism.88
From Paranoid Style to Apocalyptic Frame
Since the 1960’s, numerous scholars have explored the role of conspiracy theories in American life.
Some of the best known early studies of conspiracy theories were penned by noted historian Richard
Hofstadter whose essay on ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ established the leading analytical
framework in the 1960’s for studying conspiracism in public settings. 89
Hofstadter identified ‘the central preconception’ of the paranoid style as a belief in the ‘existence of
a vast, insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts
of the most fiendish character’. According to Hofstadter, this style was common in certain figures in the
US political right, and was accompanied with a ‘sense that his political passions are unselfish and
patriotic’ which ‘goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation’. 90
According to Hofstadter:
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…the feeling of persecution is central, and it is indeed systematized in grandiose theories of
conspiracy. But there is a vital difference between the paranoid spokesman in politics and the clinical
paranoiac: although they both tend to be overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and
apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he
feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him; whereas the spokesman of the paranoid
style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but
millions of others. 91
Damian Thompson, a journalist and scholar of religion, suggests Hofstadter was right to articulate
the ‘startling affinities between the paranoid style and apocalyptic belief’, especially the demonization of
opponents and ‘the sense of time running out’. Thompson, however, argues Hofstadter should have made
a more direct connection by considering ‘the possibility that the paranoia he identified actually derived
from apocalyptic belief; that the people who spread scare stories about Catholics, Masons, Illuminati, and
Communists’ were, in fact, extrapolating from widespread Protestant End Times beliefs. Furthermore, the
persistence of End Times belief ‘in the United States rather than Europe surely explains why the paranoid
style seems so quintessentially American’, concludes Thompson, who has also written extensively on
apocalyptic millennialism. 92
Scripted Violence and the Superhero Complex
Individuals in an elite totalitarian cadre organization can robe themselves in the garb of the elite
warrior defending hearth and home from attack. In contemporary society, people who are fearful and
alienated can adopt the same ideas and actions. They are self-mobilized into the role, and embrace this
superhero persona in which the duties and actions are clearly laid out in popular media from television,
comic books, motion pictures, and the Internet. Popular fictional superheroes are essentially vigilantes
stepping outside the law to ‘do what needs to be done’. Why are we surprised when amateur emulators
attack or execute black people, Mexican immigrants, Muslims, Sikhs, abortion providers, or gay people?
In the United States especially, this Superhero Complex is generated in part by the routine exposure to
images of violence, primarily on television. That television viewing could be associated with violence
was asserted with authority as early as 1972 in an advisory report issued by the US Government. 93
Critics of the connection between viewing of large volume of violent media images and negative
outcomes in children often argue that no direct causal link has been demonstrated. This is true if
misleading. Many studies have shown that in the large population of young people who routinely watch
many hours of televised violence, the percentage of those viewers with negative outcomes of socialization
is higher than the group of young people not exposed to long hours of violent images. 94 Gerbner argues
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that some people exposed to many hours of violent images in the mass media develop what he calls
‘Mean-World Syndrome’ in which they become unrealistically afraid of threats from people outside their
home and direct friendship circle. 95
Many of these theoretical elements of the Superhero persona appear in vivid detail in the 1,500 page
manifesto written by convicted Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. 96 A number of authors have
written about what Mattia Gardell calls ‘Breivik’s Ideology’ of the ‘Romantic Male Warrior Ideal’.
Gardell writes that Breivik saw himself as a ‘self-appointed knight’ who ‘gave himself the stage name [of
the Norwegian King] Sigurd – the Crusader’. 97 Gardell observes of Breivik:
Animated by heroic tales of the crusaders, movie epics such as 300, Lord of the Rings, Passion
Of The Christ, Serbian ultranationalist narratives of Radovan Karadzic’s bloody actions during the
Bosnian civil war, and the exploits he performed in World of Warcraft, Breivik felt equipped for battle’.
98
Breivik’s manifesto correspondingly warns of a ‘deconstruction of European cultures, identities and
the traditional structures’ which he identifies as the ‘nuclear family, traditional morality and patriarchal
structures’. He rejects what he sees as the current ‘pacified/feminized’ culture of Europe. He sees himself
as a heroic warrior standing erect against the onslaught of ‘Cultural Marxism,’99 which is revealed in
Breivik’s manifesto to be a fantastic conspiracy construction that justifies aggression against liberals and
Muslims in defense of Christianity and western culture.100
The role of gender panic in shaping an identity of the Superhero warrior is analyzed by Gibson in his
book Warrior Dreams.101 In a similar line of analysis, Julie Ingersoll found in Breivik’s Manifesto
‘evidence of his profoundly sexist view of the world, where women are naive and lacking in rationality,
but are useful for sex and reproduction’. She called it ‘emasculation paranoia’. Ingersoll also highlighted
Breivik’s claim that ‘feminism is to blame for what he asserts is the success of a supposed Muslim plan
for world domination’. Breivik ‘wants to set the culture clock back ‘to the ‘50s—because we know it
works’. This mythic nostalgia, according to Ingersoll, ‘is a central feature …of how Breivik’s analysis
could well have been lifted from the talking points of the religious right’.102 Behind this is a long history
in the United States of seeing the country being emasculated by liberal treachery. 103
Conclusions
If we assemble the ingredients and processes in this study, we arrive at the following list which
traces the linkages from words to violence:
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•Pre-existing prejudice or tensions in the society that can be tapped into.
•Intensity of the vilifying language, its distribution to a wide audience, and repetition of message.
•Dualistic division: The world is divided into a good ‘Us’ and a bad ‘Them’.
•Demagoguery. Respected status of speaker or writer, at least within the target audience. A
constituency is molded.
•Vilification and Demonizing rhetoric: Our opponents are dangerous, subversive, probably evil,
maybe even subhuman.
•Targeting scapegoats: ‘They’ are causing all our troubles—we are blameless.
•The employment of conspiracy theories about the ‘Other’.
•Apocalyptic aggression: Time is running out, and we must act immediately to stave off a
cataclysmic event.
•Violence against the named scapegoats by self-invented Superheroes.
Hannah Arendt, in Eichmann in Jerusalem concluded that evil was banal, and that if there was one
clear universal truth, it is that ordinary people have a moral obligation to not look away from individual or
institutional acts of cruelty or oppression. We recognize the processes that lead from words to violence,
they are well-studied, and the theories and proofs are readily available. Silence is consent. Denial is
simply evil.
References follow below
Additional resources can be found at my websites:
Research for Progress:
The Tools of Fear: http://www.tools-of-fear.net/get/index.php
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Addendum
Some problems with using the term
“Stochastic Terrorism”
On 26 January 2011 a clearly well-meaning and literate blogger invented the term “Stochastic
Terrorism” to describe how right-wing pundits were indirectly inciting followers to acts of violence
against scapegoated targets in the United States. See http://stochasticterrorism.blogspot.com/
Unfortunately, the author was also clearly unfamiliar with social science research since the 1950s.
This form of incitement to action through mass media by “demagogues” can and does generate acts of
violence--including, but not limited to, acts of terrorism.
This is a well-studied process of “incitement” based on “prejudice” and “stereotyping” that involves
the “vilification” or “demonization” of a named “Other” who is portrayed as threatening the survival of
the “real people” of the idealized nation.
A compressive study of these processes is found in Gordon W. Allport’s 500-page 1954 masterwork,
The Nature of Prejudice, (Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley). A selected bibliography is provided below.
Much of the scholarly research and writing in the late 1940s and 1950s focused on the demonization
of Jews in Nazi Germany; but attention was also paid over time to the targeting and vilification of
communists, anarchists, homosexuals, the infirm (including those with physical or mental issues); as well
as others including critics who dared to speak out against Hitler’s regime.
While at Political Research Associates in the 1990s I began researching these related processes
involved in incitement to violence and publishing articles in scholarly and popular publications. In 2014 a
study I authored was published as “Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill: How Coded Rhetoric Incites
Scripted Violence,” in Matthew Feldman and Paul Jackson (eds), Doublespeak: Rhetoric of the Far-Right
Since 1945, Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag. In the chapter I noted that the term “scripted violence” was the term
I found the most useful in previous research and publications in the social sciences. I still think that is
true.
===
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Chip Berlet: Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill - 20 - Doublespeak: Rhetoric of the Far-Right Since 1945
References
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1 This story is drawn from Chip Berlet, ‘Hate Groups, Racial Tension and Ethnoviolence in an
Integrating Chicago Neighborhood 1976-1988, in Research in Political Sociology, Vol. 9, The
Politics of Social Inequality, eds. Betty A. Dobratz, Lisa K. Walder, and Timothy Buzzell, 2001,
pp. 117–163.
2 The majority of this study is a literature review and sketch of concepts with an expanded set of
cites devised to support the underlying premise of the conference and the resulting articles.
Portions of this study have been adapted from previously published work as noted in the endnotes
as appropriate.
3 Jack Levin, The Violence of Hate: Confronting Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Other Forms of
Bigotry (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2002),
4 Mark Frohardt and Jonathan Temin, Use and Abuse of Media in Vulnerable Societies, Special
Report 110, Washington, DC, United States Institute of Peace. October 2003, http://permanent.
access. gpo. gov/websites/usip/www. usip. org/pubs/specialreports/sr110.pdf, (accessed
26/9/2012). Although an excellent study, the report is flawed by the failure to include a single
footnote. See also Kofi A. Annan, Allan Thompson, and International Development Research
Centre of Canada, The Media and the Rwanda Genocide (Ottawa: International Development
Research Centre, 2007).
5 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973).
6 Ibid., p. 385.
7 Chip Berlet, ‘Islamophobia, Antisemitism and the Demonized “Other”: Parallels among bigotries
reflect the conspiratorial mindset’, EXTRA! Magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,
August 2012, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4589, (accessed 26/9/2012).
8 Chip Berlet ‘Protocols to the Left, Protocols to the Right: Conspiracism in American Political
Discourse at the Turn of the Second Millennium’, in The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred-year
Retrospective on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, eds. Richard Landes and Steven Katz (New
York: New York Univ. Press, 2011).
9 CBS News, ‘Napolitano: Lone wolf terror threat growing’ (December 2, 2011),
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57336080/napolitano-lone-wolf-terror-threat-growing/,
(accessed 26/9/2012).
10 The “spark” phrase is from an essay by Mao. “Spark” (Iskra in Russian), was the name of a
newspaper paper established by Lenin. The phrase was popularized by the 1960’s Weather
Underground in its revolutionary journal Prairie Fire. The concept originates in the revolutionary
theory known as “propaganda of the deed” which can include acts of violence and terrorism. The
theory was developed in the 1800’s by left revolutionaries and anarchists, notably Carlo Pisacane,
Mikhail Bakunin, and Paul Brousse.
11 Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel J. Levinson, R. Nevitt Sanford, The
Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper & Row: 1950); Bruno Bettelheim and Morris
Janowitz, The Dynamics of Prejudice (New York: Harper & Row, 1950); Norman W. Ackerman
and Marie Jahoda, Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder (New York: Harper & Row, 1950); John
Dollard, L. Doob, N. E. Miller, O. H. Mowrer, and R. R. Sears, Frustration and Aggression, (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1939); Theodor W. Adorno, et al. , The Authoritarian Personality
(New York: Harper & Row, 1950); Gordon W. Allport, Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge, MA:
Addison–Wesley, 1954).
12 Naturally there are critics of this argument, but many of the contentions remain valid. Other

contentions have been challenged or remain unproven in social science research studies. An
exemplary review of this is found in Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, The Anatomy of Prejudices
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
13 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, republished in three volumes: Hannah Arendt,
Antisemitism: Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,
1968);Hannah Arendt, Imperialism: Part Two of The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York:
Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968); Hannah Arendt, Totalitarianism: Part Three of The Origins of
Totalitarianism. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968).
14 Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, (Harper and Row,
New York: 1951); Milton Rokeach, The Open and Closed Mind, (New York: Basic Books, 1960).
15 See for example, William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (Glencoe: The Free Press,
1959); Hans Toch, The Social Psychology of Social Movements (London: Methuen, 1966); Gustave
Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of Popular Mind (New York: Viking Press, 1960); Herbert Blumer,
‘Social Movements’, in Barry McLaughlin ed. Studies in Social Movements: A Social
Psychological Perspective (New York: Free Press, 1969); Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social
Action, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1967); Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel, (Princeton, N J:
Princeton University Press: 1970); Daniel Bell, ed., The Radical Right: The New American Right,
Expanded And Updated, (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, 1964);
Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason: Right–Wing Extremism in
America, 1790–1970 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); and Arnold Forster and Benjamin R.
Epstein, Danger on the Right (New York: Random House, 1964).
16 Richard Hofstadter, ’The Paranoid Style in American Politics’, in The Paranoid Style in American
Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965); Richard Hofstadter, Anti–
Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963); Richard Hofstadter, The Age
of Reform: From Bryan to FDR (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955).
17 An excellent overview of these newer theories is Evan R. Harrington, ‘The Social Psychology of
Hatred’, Journal of Hate Studies, 2003/04, 3/1, Journal of Hate Studies (Institute for Action
against Hate, Gonzaga University Law School), 3/1 (2004), pp. 49-82, online at http://guweb2.
Gonzaga.edu/againsthate/journal3/GHS110.pdf, (accessed 26/9/2012).
18 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1951);
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem; A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Viking
Press, 1963).
19 Jeane J. Kirkpatrick made the claim that Arendt had indicted all Marxists in Dictatorships and
Double Standards: Rationalism and Reason in Politics (New York: Simon and Schuster: 1982).
For a critique of Kirkpatrick’s claims, see Sara Diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right-Wing
Movements and Political Power in the United States (New York: Guilford Press: 1995), pp. 198,
216-217. For Arendt’s actual thesis, see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, [1951] 1973), especially pp. 468-474.
20 Michael Rogin, The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (MIT Press, Cambridge,
MA: 1967), especially pp. 261–282.
21 Richard O. Curry and Thomas M. Brown, eds., ‘Introduction’, in Conspiracy: The Fear Of
Subversion In American History, edited by the authors, (Holt, Rinehart And Winston, New York:
1972), pp. xii–xi; Leo Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great
Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 237–257; Margaret

Canovan, Populism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1981), pp. 46–51, 179–190; Jerome
L. Himmelstein, To The Right: The Transformation Of American Conservatism, (Berkeley: Univ.
Of California Press: 1990), pp. 1–5, 72–76, 152–164; Sara Diamond, Roads To Dominion: Right–
Wing Movements And Political Power In The United States (New York: The Guilford Press: 1995),
pp. 5–6, 40–41; Sara Diamond, ‘How “Radical” Is the Christian Right?’ The Humanist,
March/April 1994; Michael Kazin, The Populist Persuasion: An American History. (New York:
Basic Books: 1995), pp. 190–193; Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie Shanks–Meile, The White
Separatist Movement in the United States: “White Power, White Pride!” (New York: Twayne
Publishers, 1997); Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, “One Key to Litigating Against Government
Prosecution of Dissidents: Understanding the Underlying Assumptions”, Police Misconduct and
Civil Rights Law Report, West Group, in two parts, 5/13, January-February 1998, and 5/14, March-
April: 1998; William B. Hixson, Jr. , Search for the American Right Wing: An Analysis of the
Social Science Record: 1955–1987 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1992). For statistical data
that refutes claims made by centrist/extremist theory about the social base of the ‘radical right’, see
Rogin, Intellectuals and McCarthy; Fred W. Grupp, Jr. , ‘The Political Perspectives of Birch
Society Members’, in The American Right Wing: Readings in Political Behavior, ed. Robert A.
Schoenberger (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969); James McEvoy, III, ‘Conservatism or
Extremism: Goldwater Supporters in the 1964 Presidential Election’ in Schoenberger ed. American
Right Wing; Charles Jeffrey Kraft, A Preliminary Socio-Economic & State Demographic Profile of
the John Birch Society (Cambridge, MA: Political Research Associates, 1992).
22 This section is borrowed from Chip Berlet, ‘Reframing Populist Resentments in the Tea Party
Movement’, in Steep: The Precipitous Rise of the Tea Party, eds. Lawrence Rosenthal and
Christine Trost (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 2012).
23 John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, ‘Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial
Theory’, American Journal of Sociology, 82/6 (May 1977), pp. 1212–1241; Doug McAdam, John
D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political
Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings (London and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
24 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959);
Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1974); McCarthy and Zald, ‘Resource Mobilization’; David A. Snow, E.
Burke Rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford, ‘Frame Alignment Process,
Micromobilization, and Movement Participation’, American Sociological Review 51 (1986) pp.
464–481; David A. Snowand Robert D. Benford, ‘Master Frames and Cycles of Protest’, in
Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, eds. Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (Yale
University Press, New Haven: 1992).
25 Joseph E. Davis, ed., Stories of Change Narrative and Social Movements (State University of New
York Press, Albany: 2002); Francesca Polletta, ‘Contending Stories: Narrative in Social
Movements’, Qualitative Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 4,1998, pp. 419-446.
26 Patricia Ewick and Susan S. Silbey, ‘Subversive Stories and Hegemonic Tales: Toward a
Sociology of Narrative’, Law & Society Review Vol. 29, No. 2, 1995, pp. 197-226.
27 Robert (Bob) Altemeyer, ‘Highly Dominating, Highly Authoritarian Personalities,’ in Journal of
Social Psychology, Vol. 14: 2004, pp. 421-447. See also Robert (Bob) Altemeyer, Right-wing
authoritarianism (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1981); Robert (Bob) Altemeyer,

Enemies of freedom: Understanding Right-wing Authoritarianism (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1988); Robert (Bob) Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1996).
28 Robert (Bob) Altemeyer, ‘Comment on the Tea Party Movement,’ personal website, April 20,
2010, http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/drbob/Comment%20on%20the%20Tea%20Party.pdf
(Accessed 5/10/2012).
29 Hans-Georg Betz, ‘The Two Faces of Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe,’ The
Review of Politics, Autumn 1993, Vol. 55, No. 4, pp. 663-685, quote from abstract, p. 663.
30 Ray Taras, Europe Old and New: Transnationalism, Belonging, Xenophobia, (Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield), pp. 83-172, quote from p. 93.
31 Drew Westen, The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (New
York: Public Affairs, 2007); George Lakoff, The Political Mind: A Cognitive Scientist’s Guide to
your Brain and its Politics (New York: Viking Penguin, 2008); Chris Mooney, The Republican
Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science and Reality (Hoboken, NJ; Chichester/Wiley2012).
32 This section is adapted from Chip Berlet, ‘The United States: Messianism, Apocalypticism, and
Political Religion’, in The Sacred in Twentieth Century Politics: Essays in Honour of Professor
Stanley G. Payne, eds. Roger Griffin, Matthew Feldman, and John Tortice (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008). pp. 221-257; Chip Berlet, ‘Christian Identity: The Apocalyptic Style, Political
Religion, Palingenesis and Neo-Fascism’ in Fascism, Totalitarianism, and Political Religion, ed.
Roger Griffin (Routledge, London: 2005) pp. 175-212; Chip Berlet, ‘When Alienation Turns
Right: Populist Conspiracism, the Apocalyptic Style, and Neofascist Movements’, in Trauma,
Promise, and the Millennium: The Evolution of Alienation, eds. Lauren Langman and Devorah
Kalekin Fishman (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005) pp. 115-144; Chip Berlet,
‘Protocols to the Left, Protocols to the Right’; Chip Berlet, Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracy
Theories, Demonization, & Scapegoating (Somerville, MA: Political Research Associates, 2009),
http://www. publiceye. org/conspire/toxic2democracy/index. html , (accessed 26/9/2012). Chip
Berlet, ‘Fears of Fédéralisme in the United States: The Case of the “North American Union”
Conspiracy Theory’, Fédéralisme Régionalisme, Vol. 9, No.1, 2009, special issue on ‘Le
Fédéralisme Américain’, http://popups. ulg. ac. be/federalisme/document. php?id=786, (accessed
26/9/2012).
33 Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins, ‘Religious Totalism, Exemplary Dualism, and The Waco
Tragedy’, in Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem, eds. Robbins and Palmer (New York: Routledge:
1997) pp. 261-84, quotes from pp. 264, 269.
34 Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins, ‘Religious Totalism, Violence and Exemplary Dualism:
Beyond the Extrinsic Model’, in Millennialism and Violence, ed. Michael Barkun, Cass Series on
Political Violence (London: Frank Cass, 1996) pp. 10–50.
35 Hofstadter, Anti–Intellectualism, p. 135.
36 Michelle Goldberg, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (New York: W. W.
Norton, 2006); William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in
America (New York: Broadway Books: 1996).
37 Gordon W. Allport, ‘Demagogy’, in Conspiracy: The Fear of Subversion in American History,
eds. Richard O. Curry and Thomas M. Brown (New York, N.Y: Holt, Rinehart and Winston:
1972), pp. 263–76.
38 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, New York: 1922).

39 Edward L. Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (New York: Liveright, 1923); Edward L.
Bernays, Propaganda (New York: Liveright, 1928). In an interview I conducted with the late
Bernays, he quiped that rhetoric of persuasion that used “propaganda techniques not in accordance
with good sense, good faith, or good morals” should be called “impropaganda;” Logic & Credible
Journalism, http://www. researchforprogress. us/media/training/logic. html, (accessed 26/9/2012).
40 George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan, and Nancy Signorielli, ‘Growing up with
Television: The Cultivation Perspective’, in Against the Mainstream: The Selected Works of
George Gerbner, ed. Michael Morgan (New York: Peter Lang, 2002) pp. 193-213;James Shanahan
and Michael Morgan, Television and Its Viewers: Cultivation Theory and Research (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press: 1999).
41 Louis Althusser, For Marx (Pantheon, New York: 1965; Louis Althusser, Reading Capital.
London: NLB: 1970. Louis Althusser, ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses’, in Lenin and
Philosophy (New York: Monthly Review: 1971.
42 Maurice Charland, “Constitutive rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois, in Quarterly
Journal of Speech, Vol. 73, No.2, 1987, pp. 133-150.
43 Ibid.
44 Jennifer B. Gray, ‘Althusser, Ideology, and Theoretical Foundations: Theory and
Communication’, in NMEDIACm: Journal of New Media & Culture, 3/1 Winter 2006), online at
http://www. ibiblio. org/nmediac/winter2004/gray. html, (accessed 26/9/2012).
45 Hank Johnston, ‘A Methodology for Frame Analysis: From Discourse to Cognitive Schemata’, in
Social Movements and Culture, Social Movements, Protest, and Contention vol. 4, eds. Hank
Johnston and Bert Klandermans (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN: 1995), pp.
217–246.
46 Margaret Duffy, Janice Teruggi Page, and Rachel Young, ‘Obama as Anti-American: Visual
Folklore in Right-wing Forwarded E-mails and Construction of Conservative Social Identity’,
Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 125, No. 496, 2012, pp. 177-203.
47 Ibid.,
48 Ibid.,
49 David Neiwert, The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right (Sausalito,
CA: PoliPointPress, 2009); John Amato and David Neiwert, Over the Cliff: How Obama’s
Election Drove the American Right Insane (Sausalito, CA: PoliPointPress, 2010); Alexander
Zaitchik, Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley,
2010); Will Bunch, The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid
Politics in the Age of Obama (New York: Harper, 2010).
50 This text is borrowed from Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right–Wing Populism in America:
Too Close for Comfort (New York: Guilford Press: 2000), pp. 7-9.
51 Allport, Nature of Prejudice, p. 244. On the ritualized transference and expulsion of evil in a
variety of cultures, see Frazier, Golden Bough, pp. 624–686. On the process and social function of
scapegoating in historic persecution texts of myth and religion, see Girard, Scapegoat.
52 Richard Allen Landes, ‘Scapegoating’ in Encyclopedia of Social History ed. Peter N. Stearn (New York: Garland,
1994), p. 659.
53 Allport, Nature of Prejudice, p. 350.
54 Berlet and Lyons, Right–Wing Populism, pp. 7-9.

55 Conversation with Susan M. Fisher, MD (clinical professor of psychiatry at University of Chicago
Medical School and Faculty, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis): 1997.
56 See Allport, Nature of Prejudice, pp. 243–260; Girard, Scapegoat.
57 Ruth Benedict, Race: Science and Politics (The New York: Viking Press, 1961), p. 151.
58 Ibid., pp. 150-151, 153.
59 Allport, Nature of Prejudice, p. 351.
60 Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt, Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed (New York: Plenum Press: 1996), pp. 234-235.
61 Kazin, The Populist Persuasion; Berlet and Lyons, Right–Wing Populism, especially p. 6.
62 Ibid.
63 Gary Allen with Larry Abraham, None Dare Call It Conspiracy (Rossmoor/Seal Beach, CA:
Concord Press, [1971] 1972), p. 24.
64 Ibid., an image of the graphic is at http://www.researchforprogress.us/producerism/, (Accessed
5/10/2012).
65 Kazin, The Populist Persuasion; and Berlet and Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America.
66 James A. Aho, This Thing of Darkness: A Sociology of the Enemy (Univ. of Washington Press,
Seattle: 1994), pp. 107–21; Elaine H , Pagels, The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House,
1995); David Norman Smith, ‘The Social Construction of Enemies: Jews and the Representation of
Evil’, Sociological Theory: 1996, 14/3; Lise Noël, Intolerance, A General Survey, translated by
Arnold Bennett (McGill–Queen’s University Press, Montreal:1994).
67 Robert Solomon Wistrich, Demonizing the Other (Amsterdam: Published for the Vidal Sassoon
International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by
Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999)
68 Robert J. Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, [1961] 1989); Robert Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press).
69 Evan R. Harrington, ‘The Social Psychology of Hatred’.
70 Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York: Harper & Row,
1974).
71 Public Broadcasting System, ‘Brown Eye Blue Eye Experiment’ devised by schoolteacher Jane
Elliott, ‘A Class Divided’, Public Broadcasting System, original airdate March 26, 1985,
http://www. pbs. org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/divided/ , (accessed 26/9/2012).
72 René Girard, The Scapegoat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) pp. 43–44, 49–56,
66–73, 84–87, 100–101, 177–178.
73 Aho, This Thing of Darkness, pp. 115–116.
74 Girard, Scapegoat, p. 44.
75 Noël, Intolerance, pp. 129–144.
76 Allport, Nature of Prejudice, pp. 363–364.
77 Robert C. Fuller, Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 168).
78 Fuller, Naming the Antichrist; Norman Cohn, Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come: The
Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Norman Cohn The

Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle
Ages, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, [1957] 1970), especially the Introduction;
Stephen D. O'Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994); Paul S. Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in
Modern American Culture (Belknap/Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1992); Charles B.
Strozier, Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America (Beacon Press, Boston:
1994); Damian Thompson, The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium
(Univ. Press of New England, Hanover, NH: 1998); Richard K. Fenn, The End of Time: Religion,
Ritual, and the Forging of the Soul (Pilgrim Press, Cleveland: 1997); David G. Bromley,
‘Constructing Apocalypticism’, in Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary
Apocalyptic Movements, eds. Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer (New York: Routledge, 1997)
pp. 31–45; Catherine Wessinger, ‘Millennialism With and Without the Mayhem’, in Robbins and
Palmer, Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem, pp. 47–59; Joel Kovel, Red Hunting in the Promised
Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Pagels,
Origin of Satan.
79 Robert Jay, Lifton, Superpower Syndrome: America's Apocalyptic Confrontation with the World
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003) p. 21; Catherine Wessinger, ed.,
Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases (Syracuse: Syracuse Univ. Press,
2000).
80 Anthony and Robbins, ‘Religious Totalism’, p. 269.
81 David Brion Davis, ed.,The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un–American Subversion from the
Revolution to the Present (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY: 1972); Frank P. Mintz, The
Liberty Lobby and the American Right: Race, Conspiracy, and Culture (Greenwood Press,
Westport, CT: 1985); Robert Alan, Goldberg, Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in
Modern America (New Haven: Yale University, 2001); Michael Barkun, ‘Conspiracy theories as
stigmatized knowledge: The basis for a new age racism’? In Nation and race: The developing euro-
American racist subculture, eds. J. Kaplan and T. Bjørgo (Boston: Northeastern Univ. Press, 1998)
pp. 58-72; Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary
America, Univ. of California; Berkeley: 2003); Michael Barkun, ‘Anti-Semitism from Outer
Space: The Protocols in the UFO Subculture’, in The Paranoid Apocalypse: A Hundred-year
Retrospective on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, eds. Richard Landes and Steven Katz (New
York: published for the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies Series [Boston] by New York Univ.
Press, 2012) pp. 163-171.
82 Goldberg, Enemies Within, p. 1.
83 Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture (Minneapolis: Univ.
of Minnesota Press, 1999).
84 Berlet and Lyons, Right–Wing Populism, p. 9.
85 Chip Berlet ‘Protocols to the Left’.
86 Chip Berlet, “Collectivists, Communists, Labor Bosses, and Treason: The Tea Parties as Right–
Wing Populist Countersubversion Panic’, in Critical Sociology, July 2012; 38 (4) pp. 565-587;
Berlet, ‘Reframing Populist Resentments in the Tea Party Movement.’.
87 Berlet, ‘Fears of Fédéralisme in the United States’.
88 Brigitte Nacos and Oscar Torres-Reyna, Fueling Our Fears: Stereotyping, Media Coverage, and
Public Opinion of Muslim Americans (Lanham, MD: Rowman& Littlefield, 2007); Center for Race

& Gender and Council on American-Islamic Relations, Same Hate, New Target: Islamophobia and
its Impact in the United States; January 2009—December 2010 (Berkeley: University of
California, Center for Race & Gender, and Washington, DC: Council on American-Islamic
Relations, 2011).
89 Hofstadter, ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics.’
90 Ibid., p. 4.
91 Ibid., emphasis in the original.
92 Thompson, The End of Time, pp. 307–308.
93 United States Surgeon General’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Television and Social
Behavior and United States Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General, Television and
Growing Up: The Impact of Television Violence; Report to the Surgeon General. (Washington: US
Govt. Printing Office, 1972).
94 W. James Potter, Ten Myths of Media Violence (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2003).
95 George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan, and Nancy Signorielli, ‘The “mainstreaming” of
America: Violence’, profile no. 11. Journal of Communication, Vol. 30, No. 3, 1980, pp. 10-29;
George Gerbner, ‘Reclaiming our cultural mythology: Television’s global marketing strategy
creates a damaging and alienated window on the world,’ The Ecology of Justice, Vol. 38, Spring
1994, pp. 40-44; George Gerbner, Larry Gross, Michael Morgan, Nancy Signorielli, and James
Shanahan, ‘Growing up with television: Cultivation processes’, in Media Effects: Advances in
Theory and Research, eds. Jennings Bryant and Dolf Zillmann (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, 1994). An extensive and excellent overview of Gerbner’s theories is Scott Stossel, ‘The
Man Who Counts the Killing,’ The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 279, No. 5, May 1997, pp. 86-104,
http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97may/gerbner.htm (Accessed 5/10/2012).
96 Anders Behring Breivik (writing as Andrew Berwick), ‘2083: A European Declaration of
Independence,’ self-published, July 2011. A copy of the Breivik manifesto in PDF format is
archived at http://www.researchforprogress.us/dox/europe/norway/breivik/manifesto.pdf (Accessed
5/10/2012).
97 Mattia Gardell, ‘Roots of Breivik's Ideology: Where Does the Romantic Male Warrior Ideal Come
From Today?’, OpenDemocracy.net, January 8, 2012, http://www.opendemocracy.net/mattias-
gardell/roots-of-breiviks-ideology-where-does-romantic-male-warrior-ideal-come-from-today
(accessed 27 January 2012).
98 Ibid.
99 David Neiwert, ‘Norway terrorist Breivik was an ardent subscriber to theories of “Cultural
Marxism”’,Crooks and Liars, July 23, 2011, http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/norway-
terrorist-breivik-was-ardent- (Accessed 5/10/2012) ; based in part on the program ‘Political
Correctness Is Cultural Marxism,’ March 25, 2009, Fox News, Andrew Breitbart appearance on the
March 25 edition of the Sean Hannity program, ‘The Obama Lexicon’ segment. See also Media
Matters, ‘Breitbart: "Cultural Marxism is political correctness, it's multiculturalism, and it's a war
on Judeo-Christianty”’, Mediamatters.org, 18/12/2009,
http://mediamatters.org/video/2009/12/18/breitbart-cultural-marxism-is-political-correct/158346
(Accessed 5/10/2012), where the Andrew Breitbart appearance on the Sean Hannity program is
also preserved as online video .
100 Bill Berkowitz: ‘Nightmare in Norway and the Threat of Fundamentalist Christian, Blonde, Blue-

eyed Terrorists in Our Midst’, Buzzflash, http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/12881 (accessed
27/1/2012); Sarah Posner, ‘How Breivik’s “Cultural Analysis” is Drawn from the “Christian
Worldview”’, Religion Dispatches,
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/sarahposner/4934/ (accessed 27 January 2012; Henry
A. Giroux, ‘Breivik's fundamentalist war on politics, and ours,’ 3 August 2011, http://www.truth-
out.org/breiviks-fundamentalist-war-politics-and-ours/1312390288 (accessed 27 January 2012).
101 James William Gibson, Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Viet Nam America (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1994).
102 Julie Ingersoll, ‘Breivik’s Emasculation Paranoia Fueled Vision for Patriarchal “Reforms”’,
Religion Dispatches, 29 July 2011,
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/julieingersoll/4944/ (accessed 27 January 2012). See
also Julie Ingersoll, ‘Breivik’s Christianity About Culture Not Piety,’ Religion Dispatches, 25 July
2011, http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/julieingersoll/4913/ (accessed 27 January
2012); Julie Ingersoll, ‘What’s Actually in Breivik’s “Declaration of Independence”’, Religion
Dispatches, 26 July 2011, http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/julieingersoll/4931/
(accessed 27 January 2012).
103 Jerry Lembke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York: New
York Univ. Press, 2000); Jerry Lembke, CNN’s Tailwind Tale: Inside Vietnam’s Last Great Myth
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003); Jerry Lembke, Hanoi Jane: War, Sex, and Fantasies
of Betrayal (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2010).