The Merchants of Fear: Why They Want Us to Be Afraid...

by Christopher Catherwood and Joe DiVanna

This bracing expose by best-selling historian Christopher Catherwood and economist Joseph DiVanna looks at the ways in which fear is put to use by the American government and large corporations to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1599212811
• ISBN13: 9781599212814
• Release Date: January 2008
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 4.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Insightful and thought-provoking

The election may be over but don't relax just yet. I was initially attracted to the book by the scary images of GWB and `Bush's brain' Carl Rove juxtaposed on the cover and was expecting some delicious dirt on the Bush regime and the 2001 Patriot act. The book does not disappoint here but turns out to be far more worrisome and current than that. This is a chilling book that everyone with an interest in US policies and economy should read. We are all familiar with the CIA doing covert operations in foreign parts, but what, this book asks, is covertly being done to Americans themselves, and why? What the book exposes through a historical and economic analysis is a US political culture of manipulation through fear that goes back generations and is endemic through different administrations, good times and bad. As the authors point out, this is not a republican-democrats thing, Woodrow Wilson who put through some of the most draconian loss of liberties in his 1918 Sedition Act was a democrat. And its not about who is in power; McCarthy was in opposition at the time of his house committee for unamerican activities. But the really chilling part is that while many of us might have thought that the dark days in which your typical American feared communist spies in every neighbourhood were a thing of the past, in fact manipulation by fear has simply transmuted and adapted to more current issues such as Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Anyone who saw Colin Powell lamely parading flimsy information as proof of WMDs in Iraq to the UN will be wondering what was really really going on. This book helps to put it all in perspective with a strong, coherent and well-argued thesis. It provides an insight both into the past and into the ongoing macro-economic imperatives driving the treatment of these issues. If you want to Understand, read this book. The book is divided into four parts. The first part provides the historical perspective going right back to John Adam's Sedition Act of 1798 which, we learn provided a $2000 fine and up to two years imprisonment for "false, scandalous and malicious" accusations against the president, Congress, OR the government. One of the first imprisonments was congressman Matthew Lyon for political opposition to the Federalists. There are plenty of similarities between the vague way the act was worded in the broadest possible terms and the 2001 act. There are chapters on the Cold War, on McCarthyism, right up to the present day. This part of the book is packed with historical detail and insights. Part II of the book uses a variety of primary sources, including NSC planning documents, to discuss how a cycle of fear has been used as an integral part of the US economic engine. Now that the engine has stalled there will be all the more pressure on Obama to use such policies behind the scenes. Part III looks at the interaction of fear with US culture and in particular the long term "decay in the American social fabric" that follows on the heels