And a hearty thanks back to Bev and our hosts at FDL.

Folks, we are getting close to the 7:00pm EST mark–the point at which the discussion is set to close. I’m sure FDL will leave this thread open for at least a little while longer. So, if you have more questions/comments for Jay, please continue to post them.

Jay: Thank you so much for your work and your time this evening. You are, of course, welcome to stick around as long as you like.

FDLers! Stay positive and keep fighting! And don’t forget that Jay’s book is available for PURCHASE. I have it in hardcover and electronic formats. So, don’t be shy. Authors need to eat and, incidentally, to drink.

Speaking of which…

Jay: I was left intrigued by the figure of USAG Edward Levi who, in a sense, rides in to save the day with his 1976 guidelines near the end of your book. Am I right in assuming you have much more to say about him that just didn’t all fit into the book?

The framing seems fine, here. But I think this goes back to a theme underling this discussion: what’s the purpose or goal of these surveillance/suppression episodes? Wealth? Political power? Personal power? It’s a tricky question, because in any given situation there are going to be several factors.

I want to again recommend Chapter 12 in this regard “A Neurotic Nightmare”–Jay’s chapter on McCarthy. Reading this chapter, it’s really hard to figure out what McCarthy wants besides just…attention. Does he think he’s building something? Does he think he’ll get something at the end? I mean, does he think he can ride this all the way to the White House? Does he think he’s clearing the ground to eventually seize power and cleanse the globe of Communists? Who knows. These episodes seem to take on an internal life of their own. What we do know is that results. Unlike motives, the destruction they leave is very concrete and specific. Beyond that, wealth, power, and ego are probably always hand in hand for each of these crises.

Jay, I want to ask a question about American anarchists because your book does a nice job weaving those personalities (e.g. Goldman) back into the fold. Is it fair to say that one of the unfortunate successes of 20c efforts to suppress the Left has been the near elimination of anarchist political thought from American consciousness–a political current that has ultimately proved extremely helpful, today, viz helping people think/see past our current dilemmas?

And this experience is “out there” in popular literature, albeit sparsely. Steinbeck, for example, in East of Eden depicts a family of local merchants of German ethnicity who become the objects of suspicion as WWI approaches. And that’s probably based on his personal experience growing up in the Salinas Valley. So, it’s out there and can be recovered. The question is getting the public to the point where these stories are seen as important again.

As a New Yorker, I can certify that we have a “Please turn in your foreign-looking neighbor” program called “If you see something, say something.” My guess is that most of these reports are protected within sealed police files and that most urban centers in the US have tons of files of this kind.

One of the things that happened in WW II under fascist regimes in Europe was that citizenship privileges were revoked through legislation, and then mass arrest actions took place. So, when historians talk about neighbors turning in neighbors in that context, they are referring to moments with a very different script than we have had here…so far (at least not since WWII).

Thanks so much for this comment.

One of the things that struck me about Jay’s book is how it frames the entire discussion around re-seating our current concerns over civil liberties in a broader swath of history. And by doing this, we are able to see exactly how large the gaps are in the historiography. Literally, there are huge tracts of history that are still trapped in memory–have never been recorded and translated beyond family stories. This is definitely one of the great points of shame in our national education since WWII. We have spent so much time and resources teaching ourselves that we were good and the Germans were bad, that we have barely taken the time to remember how we acted in the episodes like the one that your family experienced. Or Manzanar: the number of people who even know what that word means is shamefully low.

So, I think Jay’s book–in addition to bringing together a series of chapters–also, implicitly, calls for another project a la Studs Terkel, where we can once again reclaim the vast diversity of voices that were on the receiving end of these bouts of hysteria.

Jay’s book has a good bibliography for anyone who wants to get started in this direction.

I wonder if part of the problem is what I think of as the “Cheney effect”–meaning: we now have people in office who look at episodes like the Huston Plan and, rather than avoiding it, task a team of lawyers to do it again so that nobody gets caught this time. So we end up with a Bush Administration that doesn’t just violate civil liberties, but creates these new legal packagings for the whole affair. And then the next administration comes along and says, well…maybe we don’t want to violate civil liberties, but can we really afford to abandon this form of power crafted by the last administration? How would that hurt us politically if we do, etc. So, getting back on firm footing where government actually protects civil liberties again means dealing with political and legal impasses in addition to just dealing with situational ethics. The task seems insurmountable.

I’d like to go back for a moment to the question of internment, because I think many Americans just assume this could never happen again, here. Which is to say–the public education about the nature of America during WWII etc. has led people to believe that internments are, somehow, against American character (as opposed to being intrinsic). So, what was, in your opinion, the point-of-no-return that turned this country from a place that feared Japanese living among us to a country that confiscated property and shipped people off to Manzanar? And did you seen that point-of-no-return come and go anytime, say, since 9/11?

I wonder if the nature of the radical left over the past 50 years is an issue at all, here, too? I mean, it’s only been 6 months or so since a left remembered that direct action is actually a legitimate part of politics. My guess is that the return of direct action as a widely embraced tool of the Left will also mean that we’re likely to see more and more calls for the kind of broad sweeping powers to control “dangerous types” that the book chronicles.

Just going to add to Jim and EW’s question: “What has worked in the past” …besides going through one of these epidemics of hysteria and only doing something after coming out the other end beaten and bruised.

Putting in my request right now that the second edition of your book should DEFINITELY be illustrated by Crumb.

Jay: I want to ask you specifically about the rhetorical techniques we now call McCarthyism. From your chapter, I was amazed to learn exactly how well other Senators/Congressmen understood what McCarthy was doing with his language to generate fear and chaos–vagueness, innuendo, etc. But still they seemed unable to figure out how to stop it. So, my first question is: Where did McCarthy learn to do what he did? It’s never been clear to me how he got so good at it–because…basically…he was not a mental giant. Second question: Why were other Senators so helpless against these techniques?

My first question, Jay: I’m curious to hear your take on the most salient–and most disturbing–connections between the 20th Century episodes of civil liberties trampling you chronicle and the examples we already see in this nascent 21st Century. What are, for you, the strongest connections? What should we be following very, very closely given the historical record you bring together so well?

Hello, FDL! It’s been too long. Glad to be back.

A hearty welcome to our author, Jay Feldman, thanks so much for being with us, today. And congratulations on Manufacturing Hysteria. Fantastic book, amazing resource. It’s been at the top of my reading list on my iPad and iPhone Kindle app for some time. I’ll give everyone a minute to file in and then kick off with a first question in my next comment.