A Study in American Agitation: J. Edgar Hoover's Symbolic Construction of the Communist Menace

Abstract

This study is a content analysis of J. Edgar Hoover's Masters of Deceit, a major non-fiction bestseller published in 1958. By using the theoretical insights of the Frankfurt School, Hoover's anti-communist treatise can be thematically analyzedas a specific type of propaganda dissemination: agitation. This study will isolate and explain five agiuuional themes employed to symbolically construct the Communist Menace: 1. The False Religion; 2. The Apocalyptic End; 3. The Dupes; 4. The Communist Conspiracy; and 5. Trust the FBI. By probing beneath the manifest content of Master;) an effort is made to decipher the latent content and discover the implicit mechanisms used to influence public thought.