A failed superhero

Noel Rooney on the high strangeness of American alt-right conspiracists

American Madness

The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness

Tea Krulos

Feral House 2020

Pb, 281pp, £19.99, ISBN 9781627310963

Tea Krulos is a writer who specialises in exploring the eccentric margins of American life. In this book he recounts the life and times of Richard McCaslin, aka the Phantom Patriot, and his fatal downward spiral into the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory and alt-right rage. McCaslin’s exploits are not well-known; the Phantom Patriot never became, as McCaslin hoped, one of the leading lights of the Real

Life Superhero (RLSH) movement, and his contribution to the “self-investigation” branch of conspiracy theory went largely unacknowledged (and occasionally disowned) by the luminaries of the Conspirasphere.

McCaslin’s story is poignant, eccentric and ultimately tragic. An ex-marine who never quite managed to fit in, he lived a second life through the comic books he avidly read and enthusiastically produced. He turned from amateur comicbook artist to RLSH cosplayer, taking his character, the Phantom Patriot, on a quest to infiltrate and destroy the infamous Bohemian Grove. Caught trying to burn down a building in the secretive complex, he was convicted and served six years in prison.

After his release in 2008 he reprised his superhero alter-ego and invented another, Thoughtcrime, and toured the USA trying to spread the gospel of war against the Deep State. Few listened, and McCaslin became increasingly frustrated, his unrequited love for a small-time country singer adding to his existential misery. Eventually, in 2018, he took himself, in costume, to Washington DC where, in the shadow of a masonic temple, he committed a grisly and inept version of suicide with a bolt gun. His gruesome end went largely unnoticed too.

Krulos first came across the Phantom Patriot while researching his book Heroes in the Night, about the RLSH movement. American Madness

is in part a chronicle of his

– at times friendly, at times contentious and distant – relationship with a man on the fringes of American society, and often on the fringes of sanity.

It is also a meditation on the polarisation of American society and culture, especially since the Internet brought conspiracy theory to the attention of the religious right and created a loose community of belief that has become detached from the mainstream of American culture and, some might argue, from reality too.

The life of this eccentric and tragic individual is framed in a loose (and at times peculiarly shallow) history of modern conspiracy theory and how, as Krulos puts it, conspiracy theories have “hijacked American consciousness”. McCaslin comes across as both an exemplar and a symbol of the high strangeness that passes for politics in the USA, and some of the proponents of alt-right conspiracy theory, such as Alex Jones, are cast as villains, leading the likes of the Phantom Patriot down the rabbit hole and abandoning them there. American Madness

is amiable, and at times lazy, but McCaslin’s story is mordantly compelling. ★★★