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From “Free speech versus fear: How the Wilson administration targeted civil liberties”:
Governmental repression is only one of the subjects of Capozzola’s broader but more academic study. Wartime mobilization, he argues, redefined the citizen’s relationship to the state. A Selective Service Act touched unprecedented numbers of American men; federal officials scrutinized conscientious objectors and registered German aliens; and agencies issued vast streams of pro-war propaganda. Yet “Americans consistently needed less outright repression than the wartime alarmists claimed,” for countless people eagerly volunteered to police themselves and their communities by physically attacking strikers, burning books, and even lynching suspected traitors. During the war, the “actions of repressive state institutions, private organizations, and spontaneous crowds left more than seventy Americans dead and thousands terrorized by tar, flame, or the noose,” Capozzola writes. Uncle Sam “invoked a culture of obligation,” and many Americans readily complied.
