Threat narratives flourished in official channels despite being wholly unfounded

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

Categorization

• XREF: Evidence of manufactured threat with official credibility but zero material basis — directly relevant to whether correction can dislodge such a hardened belief. — connects to: Security-service narratives are constructed to serve political neatness rather than accuracy — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 334; Novel bipartisan threats are the sole driver of conspiracy talk surges — Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent, American Conspiracy Theories, 584; The security state formally recruited fiction writers to imagine threats

Broader Connections

• Security-service narratives are constructed to serve political neatness rather than accuracy #expands (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 334