| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Robert Alan Goldberg. Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy of Modern America. New Haven: Yale University Press. 2001. Pp. xiv, 354. $29.95.

Robert Alan Goldberg challenges Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter's contention that we live in "an age of conspiracism," arguing instead that a widespread belief in conspiracies has been "part of a long and central tradition in our nation's history" (p. x). He establishes this first by briefly surveying the history of conspiracy theories, ranging from the Salem witch trials of the colonial era through the World War II internment of Japanese alien residents and citizens and the charge that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had purposefully set up the fleet at Pearl Harbor as a "back door to war." He then focuses on the post-1945 period and recounts in detail five diverse and widespread conspiratorial beliefs: that the nation was the victim of a Communist conspiracy that was covered up by the Roosevelt and Truman administrations (popularized by the House Committee on Un-American-Activities and Senator Joseph McCarthy); that a more liberal secular soceity sanctioned "the rise of the Antichrist" (popularized on the 700 Club and in Hal Lindsey'sbest seller, The Late Great Planet Earth); that black Americans were victims of a Jewish conspiracy (espoused by, among others, Louis Farrakhan); that various sinister groups (whether the Mafia, Cuba, right-wing activists, FBI, CIA) were responsible for President John F. Kennedy's assassination; and that government officials sought to cover up an alien presence, notably the so-called Roswell incident of 1947 or recurring sightings of UFOs. . . .

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