The A.P.A. founder blamed personal setbacks on a Jesuit school conspiracy.

Evidence

The A.P.A. came out of the fevered imagination of Henry F. Bowers, who directed it for six years. Bowers, a deeply pious, slightly paranoid, middle-aged widower, saw Catholic conspiracies everywhere. A self-taught lawyer, he blamed his own educational deficiencies on a subversive Jesuit conspiracy against the public schools of Baltimore during his youth. Consequently he had the school question uppermost in mind. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 375

Categorization

• QUESTION: A personal grievance biography fueling a mass movement echoes the manufactured-menace dynamic central to the reader’s project.