Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture [Hardcover]

Jack Cashill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 14, 2005

For a century, "progressive" writers and filmmakers-multiculturalists like Ward Churchill and Alex Haley, sexual revolutionaries like Kinsey and Margaret Mead, quasi-Marxists like Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore, and radical naturalists like Paul Ehrlich and Rachel Carson-have been using falsehood and fraud as their principal weapons in their assault on traditional American culture. For years, an unconnected squad of literary detectives, anthropologists, scientists, and historians, has been picking off the frauds and their enablers one by one. Taken together, the work of these critics is devastating. Jack Cashill's Hoodwinked synthesizes their dogged research and reveals the depth and breadth of the corruption at the very foundation of contemporary intellectual culture.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson; 1St Edition edition (June 14, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595550119
• ISBN-13: 978-1595550118
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #567,914 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, if you don't care for Alfred Kinsey and Ward Churchill., July 20, 2005

By 

Mark Mogler (Ames, IA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture (Hardcover)

A solid book that may or may not shock the reader. If you are unfamiliar with eugenics, for example, some of the "revelations" may sicken you. Much of the material in the book is known to those who follow religious, political and scientific issues closely, but it is a nice compilation of closeted skeletons to have on hand. The writing style makes long and tangled personal histories brief, yet does them enough justice to see the virtue in people where they did good. With a few exceptions, Cashill allows his subjects some wiggle room, even after he rips apart their motivations and desires. It is unavoidably a political text, so read at your own risk.
I am a conservative with libertarian leanings, and I enjoyed the book. Liberals may not be so enthusiastic. I had known about most of these subjects beforehand, but Cashill provides a good summary of the lesser known sins of the left's saints.

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly and broad expose of the intellectual deceptions which form the cornerstones of much of contemporary culture, January 21, 2006

By 

Cato Sapiens (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture (Hardcover)

We've heard the "facts" so often that they have become the mantra's of the contemporary world--from the noble intentions of "premature antifascists" who bravely fought for a noble cause, to the handful of visionary Americans who challenged fundamental beliefs about sexuality, the environment, cultural anthropology, race, and the progress of the Soviet Union, to name just a few. With clear, incisive prose, Cashill reveals the long-simmering debates over truth and trust in a dozen different arcane-sounding fields from the epidemiology of AIDS(was there EVER a threat that AIDS was about to become a heterosexual disease?) to biochemistry (was it ever actually demonstrated that DDT posed a major threat to the environment? or was the elimination of DDT the first step in unleashing an ecological menace that now moves toward us all like a silent tsunami?).

Above all, this is simply a wickedly delicious book stripping away both clothes and supposed halo's from a pantheon of our cultures' god-like heros. It is a disturbing and compelling read.

There are critics posting reviews here who focus entirely on Mr. (Cashill's coverage of the debate over and against Darwinism, which is one small portion of the book. Some critics here reflect the defensiveness and intellectual insecurity that Cashill is prompting us to question. There should be no fear among thinking people in reading a concise and lively synopsis of the debates over Darwinism, any more than one should fear or be repelled by Cashill's brilliant dissection of what is accurate and what is historically falacious in the famous film Inherit the Wind, a work which probably did as much to establish the images of rigid/bigotted/fanatical creationists versus open-minded/fair/courageous/humanist evolutionists. Cashill's surgical knife and passion for the truth are at their best in these ten or twelve pages.)

Cashill's book should be required reading in universities. It is certainly essential for anyone who wants to critically understand the intellectual foundations of our times.

(One critical note to the publisher: the lack of a full-fledged bibliography is a significant flaw in the publication of this book. It is now time that publishers who have discovered the vitality and intelligence of more conservative readers ratchet up their assumptions about intellectual standards. While the information is in the book, the informal footnotes are no substitute for devoting the few pages it would take for an actual bibliography.)

219 of 258 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A lie repeated often enough becomes the "truth", July 5, 2005

By 

Michael Erisman (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture (Hardcover)

In his book "Hoodwinked" Jack Cashill has developed an alarming thesis, and provides clear evidence that much of what passes for "progressive" beliefs of the cultural elite in the West, are actually based on foundations of pure fraud. There are countless examples provided, and while some are seemingly harmless ramblings of lost souls trying to gain glory, others depict a more savage and harmful intent.

First, my criticisms of the book are as follows. I felt the author could have improved his prose greatly by including his source material more readily in the text. While well documented in the back, the book reads too much like an essay, and less like the researched prose it is intended to be. Second, there were several examples in the book that were stretches at best. He would have been better off taking a half dozen of his points and expounding in more detail than filling in with examples not as relevant or as strong.

That said, the book is quite strong. Jack spends the first few chapters delving into the origins of "progressive" thought. There are several stories of well documented frauds that were trotted out to serve political interests. Of the most alarming is the work of one Walter Duranty who falsified the horrors of Stalin and legitimized the Soviet Union in the West. (Page 32). This gave rise to many of the liberals that still sympathize with Castro today for example, for much of the same reasons. Of course these lies come out in time, yet surprisingly as the book depicts, they are ignored by the cultural elite who continue to trot out time and time again philosophical "truths" long since exposed as frauds. The exploits of John Kerry (Page 91) who falsely staged his own Viet Nam "protests" in the 1970's for political gain only to have the truth hurt him 30 years later in his run for the Presidency, shows that this tactic is alive and well in the academic and left elite.

There are simply too many examples of these frauds and deliberate deceptions to count, but here are a few highlights:

A movement by some leftist academia to try and give Africa claim to the intellectual powers of the Greeks rested on the supposed plunder by Aristotle of an Egyptian library built "25 years after he died" (Page 108);

Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado comically claims to be a Native American (which he isn't) and fabricates stories which have been totally shown to be false. One for example, was about US Soldiers deliberately giving the Native Americans smallpox (Page 139), which has no basis in any facts at all. In a move which simply captures the academia mindset, CU makes him the Chairmen of their Ethics Committee!;

The acclaimed work of Rigoberta Menchu, her supposed autobiography: "I, Rigoberta Menchu: An Indian Woman in Guatemala", is shown to be totally fabricated, yet the cultural elite ignore the facts, and "The Chronicle of Higher Education" even states: "It doesn't matter if the facts in the book are wrong" (Page 147) and allow it retain its heralded status as non-fiction and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize!

The origins of Planned Parenthood are nothing less than eugenics and racism. Margaret Sanger, the founder of the group was famous for her work "The Pivot of Civilization" written in 1922, in which she based the organizations foundation on; "the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective". (Page 222) As hard to believe as this is, it gets far worse than this. Remember this when you hear the shrill marketing slogans about "choice".

The sections on the personal habits and pedophile supporting Alfred Kinsley are too horrific to print here. Yet this hasn't stopped Hollywood from depicting him sympathetically. So desperate for a justification of their lifestyle, the obvious lack of reliability of his methods and the illegal activities he fostered and encouraged towards abusing children, are left ignored.

Overall, this is a fascinating look behind the scenes of so many well documented frauds which continue to be propagated even today. The book is well written and interesting, but has its flaws as I noted. You will never view the academia and cultural elite of the left the same way again after reading though, so if the truth doesn't matter to you, then skip this book.