Friedman argues, “The scattershot nature of Cold War repression had unintended effects, not only limiting the possibilities for dissent – although that certainly was its impact at many moments and in many settings – but also sometimes opening them up” (4). This system of repression, based in the national security state, “ironically created opportunities for interrogating the very meanings of U.S. citizenship” (4). Discussing how Fredric Wertham’s work fits into this framework, Friedman writes,
For Wertham, living the life of a civilized being included being protected from the violence of poverty, racism, and incarceration, as well as from physical violence and what we might call a violence of the imagination that bred authoritarian rather than democratic citizens. His understanding of national security predicated individual security on the social security of a state committed to combating structural violence in all its forms (158).
According to Friedman, Wertham attributed murder to the social inequalities of society, writing, “these inequalities included the ‘masculine’ leanings of both psychiatry and law that forced women into acts of infanticide” (165). Discussing Seduction of the Innocent, Friedman writes, “Comic books, he argued, taught children that men’s brutality toward women was at once normal and desirable, presenting a masculine ideal that put women and girls at risk” (169). To Wertham, this led to authoritarianism. Wertham pins much of the blame for the actions of the Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang on comics while the press described them in terms that implied homosexuality. Discussing Wertham’s ineffectiveness in helping Frank Santana during his crusade against comic books, Friedman writes, “…His emphasis on social responsibility was so far out of sync with the individualist currents of Col War-era American social and political discourse” (183). Seduction of the Innocent served as the beginning to a grassroots campaign and “Wertham provided information and advice when he could, sending other Lafargue doctors to speak to local women’s clubs and PTA’s, mailing out statistics and reprints, or suggesting legal language” (185). Writes Friedman, “Wertham’s relationships with women activists in particular were likely facilitated by his willingness to defend mothers from critics who blamed them for children gone wrong” (185-186). Friedman states that this “stood in stark contrast to more widespread sentiments that deemed bad mothering itself a danger to the nation” (186). ( )