The Triumph of Fear: Domestic Surveillance and Political Repression from McKinley to Eisenhower

by Patrick G Eddington

Overview

A history with surprising new revelations about the depths of government surveillance and constitutional rights abuses

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, anarchist and socialist political movements spurred the expansion of nascent US federal surveillance capabilities. But it was the ensuing, decades-long persistent exaggerations of domestic political threats that drove an exponential increase in the size and scope of unlawful government surveillance and related political repression, which continue to the present.

The Triumph of Fear is a history of the rise and expansion of surveillance-enabled political repression in the United States from the 1890s to 1961. Drawing on declassified government documents and other primary sources, many obtained via dozens of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and analyzed for the first time, Eddington offers historians, legal scholars, and general readers surprising new revelations about the depths of government surveillance programs and how this domestic spying helped fuel federal assaults on free speech and association.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647125455
Publisher:	Georgetown University Press
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Pages:	408
Product dimensions:	6.19(w) x 8.94(h) x 1.05(d)

About the Author

Patrick G. Eddington is a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute. He was formerly a CIA analyst and a senior policy adviser to Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ).

Table of Contents

List of Photographs Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations and Acronyms Introduction 1: 1893-1914 "With Care, Secrecy, and Dispatch" 2: 1914-1932 "Disloyal Utterances" 3: 1933-40 "The Spirit of the Concentration Camp" 4: 1941-45: "We are developing a Gestapo in this country and it frightens me."" 5: 1945-52: "One nation divided, with fear and insecurity for all"" 6: 1953-61 "Is this idolatry of security?" Conclusion Bibliography Index About the Author

What People are Saying About This

Mike German

The Triumph of Fear challenges our concept of the United States of America as the land of the free and the home of the brave. His deep research and focus on primary sources reveal that for more than a hundred years, unreasonable fears drove presidents of both parties to unleash secret surveillance operations by an assortment of law enforcement, military, and intelligence agencies against their political opponents, government dissidents, journalists, and anyone they just didn't like—too often with the cooperation of Congress and the courts. This history is essential to understanding the nature of domestic surveillance operations today, and the need to tightly control them.

Bob Goodlatte

Patrick Eddington offers a historical page-turner that traces the deep roots of government surveillance in American life. He shows how the early twentieth century's cauldron of anarchism and violence—including a presidential assassination, terrorism, and bombings—gave birth to a fear-based mentality to justify political surveillance. From the prosecution of Americans making 'disloyal utterances' in the Wilson era, to the interference of the FBI in the 1924 presidential election, to the bureau's early persecution of Martin Luther King Jr., Eddington explains how the surveillance state grew and why it lives on today.

Sascha Meinrath

Laying bare 75 years of abuses of power, The Triumph of Fear is a precursor and cautionary tale foreshadowing the rampant surveillance of contemporary presidential administrations and underscoring the sordid history of politicians wantonly ignoring the US Constitution, violating their oaths of office, and eroding the very foundations of the country they purport to serve.

Aaron Ross Powell

The Triumph of Fear is simultaneously enriching and anxiety inducing, fascinating and terrifying. Eddington tells well—with authority, insight, passion, and lived experience—a story as relevant and pressing now as it ever has been, and brings the rigor and urgency needed to get across just how deeply Americans should care about how the state uses its power to see as a means to oppress. Much of what I learned from the book it would be more comfortable not to know, but Eddington makes a strong case that knowing these uncomfortable truths about our government's abuse of surveillance in the service of political repression is necessary to prevent from happening, again and again, the damaging activities he so thoroughly chronicles. Eddington's book is a triumph that, one hopes, will play an important role in undoing that of its title.

Sue Udry

The Triumph of Fear is a captivating narrative that explores the history and depth of government surveillance and repression and sharply elucidates the damage done to individuals, civil society, and our democracy. Eddington's prose is elegant and engaging, his research exhaustive, and his analysis spot-on. It's critical reading for anyone who cares about our democracy and their own constitutional rights.