APOCALYPTIC AND PARANOID CULTURES Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

APOCALYPTIC AND PARANOID CULTURES - Assignment Example If Hofstadter was to write today he would easily add quotes from Karl Rove, Dick C, Rummy and George W. among others. It is astonishing to see from Hofstadters essay just how deep the historical roots of American narrow-mindedness and intolerance really are. He records the campaign against the Illuminati (a subsidiary of the Enlightenment movement), the anti-Masonic rhetoric coming from pulpits all over the US in the 18th century, the Jesuit threat that was popular among paranoids from the 1800s to 1850s and the anti-Catholic sentiments that are connected to the 1893 depression. The approach used is always the same, mixing religious fervour with faux patriotism. The 31st July 1964 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle stated that the John Birch Society hated to see United Air Lines Corporation promote the UN emblem on their airplanes (Hall 2000). The John Birch Society felt that the UN was behind the Soviet Communist conspiracy. In 1835, the inventor of the telegraph who is called S.B.F. Morse stated that a conspiracy existed and the US was being attacked in a vulnerable quarter that could not be defended by armies, ships and forts. Morse was not referring to Islamic terrorists but he was talking about the projects by the Jesuits that were aimed at undermining the American way of life. In the 18th century, the Illuminati were accused of making tea that resulted in abortion. In the 1890s the American Protective Association claimed that there was an international Catholic conspiracy and went so far as to circulate bogus papal encyclicals that gave an ultimatum to all American Catholics to eliminate all heretics. This resembled the Protocols of Zion, a different bogus tract that was used to attack another minority using the same paranoid style. Since 1992, over 100,000 lives have been claimed by the civil war ravaging Algeria. Through weekly kidnappings and assassinations, terrorist bombings,