On a dusty main street, a sheriff backed by townspeople faced down a gang of heavily armed hired gunslingers. Tension rose, hard words were exchanged, and someone drew first. A few minutes later 10 men were dead or dying, and several more suffered gunshot wounds. In the era of the post-Civil War Wild West, it can be argued that the most dangerous place to be was in the East. It was the inevitably violent outcome of massive social upheaval: race wars with lynchings and massacres, heavily armed confrontation between infant trade unionism and the forces of capitalism, murderous feuds between corrupt lawmen and the early Mafia. These were confrontations in which the US government bombed and marginalised their own citizens, the law was twisted for private ends, and ‘fake news’ became the norm.