How the FBI targeted Camus, and then Sartre after the JFK assassination (2013)

I think this conflates conspiracy and conspiracy theory: there was a concerted post-reconstruction effort to distort the facts of the civil war. You could even call that a conspiracy. But it lacks the “hidden” narrative of a conspiracy theory: both the Lost Cause and actual civil war history were taught in the open.

I don’t think the 1950s American Dream is a Big Lie. A Big Lie is specifically a gross and intentional, top-down fabrication that displaces truth (because the lie is inconceivable). 1950s America is none of these things: it’s a collective fantasy based on distorted and politicized memories. It’s also not taught as a normative history (although that may unfortunately change).

This is perhaps pedantic, but I think there’s value in splitting these things apart: the US is chock full of rosy lies about its past, actual conspiracies, and conspiracy theories. But the closest thing we’ve had in living memory to a Big Lie is the lie of a stolen 2020 election, which (as of yet) has not achieved the kind of astounding dominance needed to survive as a Big Lie. But we will see.

I read it, but I responded to a comment without taking the article in context.

>I think this conflates conspiracy and conspiracy theory: there was a concerted post-reconstruction effort to distort the facts of the civil war. You could even call that a conspiracy. But it lacks the “hidden” narrative of a conspiracy theory: both the Lost Cause and actual civil war history were taught in the open.

This just exposes your perspective bias. Black families would tell you that it was an obvious lie that was hidden from white America, which was increasingly made up of people with no familial memory of the antebellum period (and even fewer with direct contact to either slavery or the Civil War). To characterize (perhaps liberally): you had white people of influence and a longer-lived ancestral presence in the country, colluding to distort facts about an event that the families of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th generation immigrants were not here to witness. It was not just a Big Lie, it was a Grand Lie, spanning decades and becoming so normalized that its influence on political sentiment remains even after the lie itself has been largely (though not completely) dispelled. You also see echoes, bolstered by the preceding lie, in the "race riots" (more correctly termed "massacres") of the early 1920s.

>1950s America is none of these things: it’s a collective fantasy based on distorted and politicized memories. It’s also not taught as a normative history (although that may unfortunately change).

I don't think this is correct. It was a view of America that was propagandized at the time. It was inconceivable (particularly to industrialists who were relying on a "return to normalcy" to shore up national morale after the nightmare of total war) that America could emerge from WWII, get the Good End, and yet still have all of these problems. So, as instructed by our elites, we pretended they didn't exist, slowly building the powderkeg that exploded in the 60s and 70s. It's a testament to its strength as a Big Lie that it still lives past its nominal reconciliation.

I'll add climate change denial (energy companies) and public health concerns about smoking (cigarette companies) to the list.

>But the closest thing we’ve had in living memory to a Big Lie is the lie of a stolen 2020 election.

Iraq, as it turns out, does not have WMDs, though I imagine that the proportion of American flag kitsch-to-population remains higher than pre-2003.

I'm a little concerned that you're so adamant that we've not experienced this seemingly common phenomenon. Perhaps we need to discuss "American Exceptionalism"?

OK. The only communist "world power" at the time was USSR (Soviet Union) that was factually dominated and controlled by Russia. They had from the very beginning (revolution in Russia) dreamed about the world domination. They tried already right after the revolution to overtake Europe but were stopped by Poland. Next attempt was during WW2 but they were first stopped by Germany and then by US (partially, as even part of Germany was occupied by them).

USSR had very wide spy network and they had considerably infiltrated US.

China was also overtaken by communists and had some influence among some naive Western intellectuals but I don't know about direct influence in US (maybe it existed, I'm just not aware of it).

These days of course both Russia and China are actively attempting to extend their influence through spy networks or by manipulations in social media (and yes, there are also obvious shill accounts here).