Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax that Duped America and its Sinister Legacy

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

How did America end up trapped in a nightmare of conspiracy theories, in which millions see the government as an evil deep state It didn't begin with Donald Trump, and it wont end with him.

In Ghosts of Iron Mountain, Phil Tinline traces the roots of todays fears back to the years after the Second World War, when America was the most powerful nation the world had ever known. He tells, in vivid, entertaining and brilliant detail, the story of a literary hoax that shocked a nation. Its impact and its astonishing afterlife reveal Americas fears as youve never seen them before.

In 1967, at the height of the war in Vietnam, a group of New York writers cooked up a satirical response to the Dr Strangelove-like thinking prevalent in Washington. They concocted what appeared to be a top-secret government report into what would happen to the USA if permanent global peace broke out.

Report from Iron Mountain claimed that winding down Americas vast war-making machinery would wreck the economy and tear society apart, necessitating draconian controls over the population. It was published as non-fiction and was frighteningly convincing. Journalists tried to find out who had written it. Worried memos reached right up to the president. It became a bestselling cause celebre.

Even when the hoax was revealed, many refused to believe it wasnt real. Denial became proof of truth. The Report was seized on by eager figures on the far right and in the militia movement, who insisted that it revealed terrifying government conspiracies to pollute the environment, enslave Americans and even instigate eugenics. It helped to shape the movie that has done more than any other to revive conspiracy theory: Oliver Stones JFK. And it spawned a second hoax, which has helped sustain its bizarre relevance right up to today.

Ghosts of Iron Mountain traces this story through a gallery of vivid characters, from the radical academic C. Wright Mills and the writers EL Doctorow, Victor Navasky and Leonard Lewin in 1960s New York, to the Hitler-loving far-right impresario Willis Carto, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the conspiracy theorist William Cooper, L. Fletcher Prouty (the Mr X of JFK), and the ranting broadcaster Alex Jones.

This is one of the great stories of our time, and an entertaining, compulsively readable narrative that reveals how nightmares about its own government drove America crazy.

Reviews

I've long admired Phil Tinline's BBC radio documentaries as mini-masterpieces of cultural history. Here comes now his saga about a book with the strangest afterlife in American literary history. It's spellbinding, a profound meditation on a question that America has never figured out quite how to face: can government, for, by, and of the people, ever live comfortably side by side with military empire * Rick Perlstein *
Phil Tinline's startling book about the weird legacy of a brilliant anti-war hoax is not just an illuminating deep dive into offbeat history. It is an essential read for anyone trying to understand the tragicomic nature of contemporary politics. Itself both hilarious and profoundly serious, it helps us grasp how laughter has turned so deadly. * Fintan O'Toole *

Author Bio

Phil Tinline is a freelance writer and documentary-maker. He is the author of the The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares, which was chosen as The Times Politics Book of the Year 2022. Over the course of twenty years working for the BBC, he made and presented many acclaimed documentaries about how political history shapes our lives. He has written for publications including The Times, the Daily Telegraph, Prospect, BBC History Magazine and the New Statesman. He lives in London.