Secret Societies and American Democracy with Colin Dickey

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sharon is joined today by cultural historian and author Colin Dickey, to discuss America’s fascination with conspiracies, and fear of secret societies. In his new book, Under the Eye of Power, Colin walks through the history of how paranoia is woven into the very fabric of The United States from its inception, and how conspiratorial thinking and even the most irrational beliefs reach the mainstream. From the Salem Witch Trials to Freemasonry to the Satanic Panic, the Illuminati, and QAnon, Colin breaks down this cycle in history and explains why people of all walks of life subscribe to conspiracy theories, and what can be done to break the cycle.

Special thanks to our guest, Colin Dickey, for joining us today.

Host/Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon

Guest: Colin Dickey

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends welcome gosh today's episode hmm so good if you love things that are mysterious
0:13.2	my conversation with author Colin Dickie is going to be right up your alley
0:18.8	he's written a book called Under the Eye of Power and this is a study of America's fear of
0:26.9	secret societies so let's dive in I'm Sharon McMahon and here's where it gets interesting
0:37.6	I am very excited to be chatting today with Colin Dickie thank you so much for being here
0:41.4	oh thanks so much for me on your book immediately intrigued me I think most people are inherently
0:47.6	interested in anything that is secret right like we're inherently like tell me the secrets
0:52.8	I need to know them yeah totally yeah and I think that's like the thing that keeps connecting the
0:57.2	books that I've been writing you know this one is on secret societies the one before that was on
1:01.5	UFOs and big foot the one before that was on ghosts so I'm always interested in these like
1:06.6	things that are kind of hidden at the margins but are still kind of have an effect on culture or
1:11.8	people believe they're you know influence us in various ways so it was kind of a natural trajectory
1:16.4	to move to secret societies from here totally and so your book is called Under the Eye of Power
1:22.3	how fear of secret societies shapes American democracy and I love how you started the book with
1:31.7	talking about how paranoia is kind of in America's DNA it's a little bit who we are yeah I mean it's
1:39.5	it was sort of strange and interesting to look back at the American Revolution and like the kind
1:44.7	of founding of the country and also the French Revolution and the effect it had on American politics
1:50.7	and to remember that from the very beginning this whole question of democracy was so brand new
1:57.3	and and everybody was very nervous about it it seemed very vulnerable this idea that they were
2:01.6	doing something that people really hadn't done before and there was this kind of open question
2:06.0	is this going to work maybe it's going to be undermined from saboteurs from foreign countries
2:13.4	that nervousness and anxiety about the project of democracy led almost immediately to
	...

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