The security state formally recruited fiction writers to imagine threats
Evidence
In the month before the United States entered the war, tales poured into the War and Justice Departments, often from highly responsible people, about secret organizations which were planning an earthquake of explosions under the direction of the German General Staff once hostilities commenced. Army commanders, especially in the Middle West, braced themselves to suppress insurrections that never materialized. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1224 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: The War on Terror formally recruited Hollywood into the national security state — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 753; US national security policy turned to Hollywood and fiction to imagine terror threats — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 753; The war on terror institutionalized fiction writers as national-security imaginers. (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- US national security policy recruited fiction writers to imagine threats
#corroborates(0.95) - Popular fiction like Homeland shaped real counterterrorism policy
#expands(0.80) - Threat narratives flourished in official channels despite being wholly unfounded
#expands(0.78) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 1224 - Fiction can function as moral motivation for real-world military participation.
#expands(0.75) — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 238 - Security-service narratives are constructed to serve political neatness rather than accuracy
#complicates(0.72) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 334