Jews and Muslims in the White Supremacist Conspiratorial Imagination explores how Jews and Muslims are stigmatized and endangered by the same conspiratorial template. Supremacists imagine that Jews and Muslims secretly strive to replace white, European civilization with an unspeakable tyranny. The authors, a Jew and a Muslim, analyze the nature of the conspiracism that targets their communities. They historicize the supremacist conspiratorial imagination, narrating the paranoia on a continuum, from modernity to the postmodern. They begin with the texts of modernity, following them through to the dark areas of the Internet and examining their violent denouement in synagogues and mosques. The book investigates the classic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and neoclassic variations such as QAnon. It turns to Islamophobic responses to 9/11 such as paranoia regarding the Muslim Brotherhood and the doppelganger of The Protocols, namely The Project. The authors conclude by questioning how "ordinary" people, prompted by paranoia and recognition hunger, resort to violence and murder. Admittedly, the authors are not certain-certainty is for conspiracists. But they may have a piece of the puzzle. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of conspiracy theories, antisemitism, Judeophobia, Islamophobia, political science, history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and criminology.

Does it really matter if a voter decides to vote-or, as a significant number of Americans do each election, not vote? Ron Hirschbein explores this issue and shows why enfranchisement cannot be understood unless it is placed in context and history. Clearly, the meaning of a vote depends upon the situation: a vote cast among the 400 of Athens or in the College of Cardinals has one significance; this is considerably different from pulling a lever every four years in a mass society of spectacles and commodities. Hirschbein also examines how voting was transformed from an expression of the political will of the Athenian polity into a sacred natural right-only to be turned to a ritual of mass society.

First, Hirschbein looks at the right to vote as the centerpiece of American civic religion. He contrasts civic myths about enfranchisement with anthropological realities. Specifically he argues that, given the intractable mathematics of mass society, the chances that a single vote will determine the outcome of an election approach the infinitesimal. However, he suggests that voting plays a neglected ritual function by constructing, legitimizing, and celebrating political reality for players and spectators alike. Hirschbein then explicates the origins and evanescent meanings of enfranchisement by examining the theory and practice of voting among the citizenry of ancient Athens, medieval ecclesiastical bureaucrats, Enlightenment natural law thinkers, and the founders of the Virtuous Republic. He concludes with speculation about possible futures. A controversial and important analysis, this will be of interest to the general public as well as scholars, researchers, and policy makers involved with election issues and theories of democracy.

What is terrorism? Academics search in vain for the unholy grail: the definition of terrorism that will exonerate or condemn American officials. There are many vying definitions and no tribunal to resolve the contest. In this unique essay, Ron Hirschbein analyzes conflicts in which officials themselves called their actions "terrorist." He reveals that terrorism didn't always get bad press. In fact, terror bombing was indispensable to winning World War II. Not only did the Allied Forces bombed German cities, but they also used the nuclear bomb in Japan, killing many noncombatant civilians. During the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation became the strategy to deter war between the superpowers. Many ironies are brought to light in revisiting these conflicts, such as the fact that it was accepted that safety depended upon the willingness to detonate weapons of mass destruction. Not even American citizens enjoyed noncombatant immunity during the Cold War as they were held hostage to mutually assured destruction and marked for sacrifice in various strategic scenarios. Indeed, their lives were risked in confronting crises in Berlin and Cuba. Subsequent conflicts in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, as well as the War on Terror itself, are also examined. Like World War II, all involved killing noncombatants by accident or design. Casting these conflicts in an ironic light reveals incongruities in language and situations in which triumphant dreams become self-defeating realities (as with the second Iraq war). The War on Terror, now rebranded as an "Overseas Contingency Plan" seems to be the answer to a Jihadist's prayer. Further, U.S.-led covert attacks and assassinations by drones raise many discussions of legalities. And today the curse of terrorism is fodder for captivating primetime entertainment, enjoyed even by the president of the United States.

If wars are too important to be left to the generals, crises are too dangerous to be left exclusively to the social scientists. Humanistic inquiry has not realized its potential for illuminating these wars of words. Crises occur in a realm foreign to prevailing approaches, but familiar to interpretive approaches to politics. Decision-makers are no longer observers of unmistakable threats: they are interpreters of cryptic texts and symbolic performances. Accordingly, analysts (quite unwittingly) have become interpreters of interpretations--crises inquiry occurs in the archives, not the laboratory. Relying upon a hermeneutic approach used to illuminate crises at other times and places, Hirschbein explores the puzzling aspects of defining Kennedy, Nixon, and Kissinger episodes: Why is Kennedy's joust on the brink enshrined as the unforgettable Cuban missile crises, while Nixon and Kissingers' prudent resolution of a comparable threat is all but forgotten? This novel account of crises construction, management, and remembrance explores how and why these events were handled so differently, and concludes that it is not world that is the source of our crises, but our interpretation of the world.

Questions of crisis construction, management, and remembrance are at the heart of this study. Professor Hirschbein examines why American political figures define an event as a crisis--or not. He then analyzes why some crises are managed prudently, while others are not, despite access to comparable information and resources. Lastly, he tries to determine why some crises are enshrined as templates for future confrontation while others quickly fade into oblivion. Hirschbein argues that it is not the world that is the source of our crises, but our DEGREESIinterpretation DEGREESR of the world. Accordingly, he explicates those official interpretations of the world known as international crises. This fascinating comparative study will be of great interest to students, scholars, and other researchers of American diplomacy and Peace Studies.

At the dawn of the nuclear age, strategist Bernard Brodie recognized our predicament when he said, "Nuclear weapons exist and they are incredibly destructive." Despite the end of the Cold War, thousands of nuclear weapons remain on hair-trigger alert on both sides of the Atlantic. Plans to develop, deploy, and detonate nuclear weapons (for purposes of war prevention or war fighting) are informed by the ambiguous notion that nuclear war can be avoided by maintaining a balance of power. Policy-makers and decision-makers believe that once the balance of power is destroyed, a crisis will ensue, and if this crisis cannot be resolved with words, it is somehow necessary to use weapons. This idea is held as an historic inevitability, but the nuclear subculture is unaware of the highly problematic nature of their fundamental assumptions. Hirschbein entertains the possibility that the theory and practice of these policy-makers and decision-makers are informed by concepts at once ancient and metaphorical. He analyzes the primary and secondary metaphors invoked to conceptualize and manage nuclear weaponry. Hirschbein draws a striking parallel between dramatic changes in the ancient Greek account of conflict and the American conceptualization of nuclear weapons. Facing harrowing times, Thucydides avoided supernatural, Homeric imagery in favor of naturalistic metaphors to account for conflict--an account regarded as "eternal wisdom" by today's realist. Likewise, facing the Soviet challenge, American strategists abandoned supernatural Judeo-Christian accounts of nuclear weapons in favor of Thucydides' naturalistic tropes.