ABSTRACT
The history of demonology in American politics comprises three major moments. The first is racial. “History begins for us with murder and enslavement, not with discovery,” wrote William Carlos Williams. 1 He was calling attention to the historical origins of the United States in violence against peoples of color. The expropriation of Indian land and exploitation of black labor lie at the root not only of America’s economic development, but of its political conflicts and cultural identity as well. A distinctive American political tradition, fearful of primitivism, disorder, and conspiracy, developed in response to peoples of color. That tradition draws its energy from alien threats to the American way of life, and sanctions violent and exclusionary responses to them.
