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9. American Political Demonology: A Retrospective
- University of California Press
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C H A P T E R IX American Political Demonology A Retrospective I The countersubversive imagination is not a new subject in American historiography. But efforts to comprehend the meaning of American political demonology suffer from a split that echoes the splitting mechanism in countersubvcrsion itself, namely the bifurcation between the symbol and the real. There are two schools of thought about American political demonology. Realist scholars point to the rational purposes or descriptive accuracy of demonological images. They view such images as ways either of mobilizing support against political enemies or of focusing attention on the genuinely threatening character of the targeted group. American anti-Communism, for example, is reduced (from one political perspective) to a method of protecting dominant social interests and (from another) to a realistic depiction of the actual character of international Communism. Neither of these views is wholly false. But scholars in the realist tradition, having satisfied themselves that an image has a purpose or referent, avoid investigating its internal meaning and distorting power. By contrast, symbolists, as I shall call the second group of scholars, rightly see the fantastic character of the demons, but they avert their eyes from the material sources of political demonology in genuine social conflicts and deeply opposed world views. Both realists and symbolists distance themselves from the countersubversive imagination , the former by minimizing its symbolic power, the latter by 272 American Political Demonology 273 sundering countersubvcrsion from dominant American interests and values.1 The realist, instrumental approach is logically compatible with both radical and conservative politics. But for historical reasons it was originally employed by Progressive scholars like Charles Beard who were critical of dominant elites, scholars who uncovered buried special interests beneath claims to national virtue. The symbolist approach developed in reaction to interest-oriented exposes of the American political tradition. It shifted attention not only away from reason and interest and toward symbol and myth but also away from dominant American institutions and toward oppositional, fringe, and mass movements. This division in perspective split an American political tradition in two. Realists saw political repression when they examined countersubvcrsion; symbolists saw paranoia. Realists studied the suppression of political dissent and of movements for social change. Symbolists investigated the fear of conspiracy (to cite the title of a David Brion Davis volume) or the paranoid style in American politics (to name Richard Hofstadter's collection of essays). Political repression, as the realists examined it, ultimately served capitalism, the state, or other powerful institutions. The paranoid style, for the symbolists, was directed against such institutions. Political repression was carried out by ruling classes or elites; the paranoid style mobilized outsiders or extremists. Realists analyzed a repressive politics that moved out into the countryside from Washington, Wall Street, and the center's outposts in the hinterlands. Symbolists pointed to provincials from the hinterlands attacking cosmopolitan values and groups. Symbolists examined resentments against dominant forces in American life felt by politically marginal or culturally provincial populist groups or by once-dominant elites who faced dispossession. Realists addressed interests and conscious political manipulation; symbolists addressed anxiety and unconscious grievances. Studies of political repression looked at economic and political power; studies of the paranoid style investigated symbols, subcultures, and status anxieties. The American political system narrows debate and excludes radical alternatives , for those studying repression. In the alternative view, an intolerance of diversity threatens the stability of a pluralist politics. Consider the two classic volumes that seek to explain the prominence of alcohol in American political history. Pressure Politics, Peter Odegard 's study of the Anti-Saloon League, exemplifies the realist position; Joseph Gusfield's book on the temperance movement, Symbolic Cru- [44.212.50.220] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 11:09 GMT) 274 Ronald Reagan,the Movie sade, shows the influence of attention to paranoid style. Odegard interprets Prohibition as the triumph of special interest politics and organizational tactics. Gusfield attributes the temperance crusade to declining, provincial Protestant elites who sought to maintain their status by stigmatizing and controlling immigrants. Analyses of cold war antiCommunism in the mode of political repression emphasize the recurrence of Red scares in American history and their manipulation by political and business elites. Paranoid-style interpretations, by contrast, ignore the historic fear of radical politics in America to root McCarthyism in radicalism itself, in nativist, provincial assaults on cosmopolitan centers of power. In the realist view, the Anti-Saloon League and the anti-Communists knew and got what they wanted. In the symbolist view, eliminating alcohol...