The Paranoid Style in American Politics

This book, which actually consists of several essays written in the 1950s and 60s, deals with the sometimes prevalent phenomena of conspiracy theories in American popular culture, something that has been more prominent in our society than elsewhere. While Hofstadter focuses primarily on Joseph McCarthy and his acolytes in the 1950s and the emergence of the John Birch Society in the late 50s and early 60s and the influence of that milieu in Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, he examines other examples of this paranoid, sometimes almost lynch mob mentality, going back to Know-Nothing campaigns against Roman Catholics and conspiracy hysteria about Masons and "the Illuminati" in the pre-Civil War era and the anti-semitic conspiracism of Henry Ford and Father Coughlin before World War 2 that saw Jews and Bolsheviks as acting in unison behind the scenes. While much of this involves disgruntled ultra-conservative cranks, he sees it not limited to them, discussing at some length aspects of the "free silver" movement around "Coin" Harvey and others which evolved into conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve, embraced by certain extremists on both the Left and the Right.A common feature he sees in this syndrome is a Manichean black and white view of the world coupled with a paranoid mind set, in which nothing of any importance is the result of social and demographic trends with deep historical roots, or the vicissitudes of life or of big events playing out in broad daylight for good or ill, but rather is invariably the product of the secret machinations of some demonic cabal of evil men acting as puppet masters over weak-kneed accomplices and bumbling dupes, a category often including our highest and most respected officials like General Eisenhower, to manipulate a credulous public. And of course any mistake committed by these leaders can not really be a mistake, but an act behind which the spectre of an evil design is always present. Hofstadter sees the material basis of this psychology in what he describes as the social status anxiety or insecurity of certain people and groups, feeling their status and aspirations threatened by a changing society in flux, a situation that to them in reality can only be the result of the secret intrigues of some nefarious cabal that they as the True Believers are alone in heroically opposing; a mentality, naive and credulous in its own way, that a section of the rich elite sometimes unscrupulously exploits to deflect social discontent towards scapegoats and create a faux populism to buttress their privileges and interests, something we see today with the Tea Party. Hofstadter also distinguishes the fascist leaning "psuedo-conservatism" that constitutes the principal iteration of this mentality from traditional conservatism rooted in the tradition of Edmund Burke.

Hofstadter did his homework. If you think those on the far right fringe (and some on the left) are unhinged and unique to the twenty-first century, think again. The crazies have been around since man stopped painting his buttocks blue and swinging from the trees.

This 50 year old or more collection of political essays continues to pop up once in a while among liberal intellectuals, so I finally read it. Unfortunately, I can't recover the time I've wasted with this book that is so anti-intellectual and such a failure in its political analysis. If you look at my reviews, you will see I almost never rate a book as poorly as I have rated this one. There are many reasons and I will list a few here.As far as the nuts and bolts, the first half of the book is political essays of the 1950's and 1960's where the author, a card carrying Communist and devotee of far left Marxist theoreticians like Theodor Adorno, attacks tragic patriot Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, and failed 1964 Presidential Candidate, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Basically, the author disagrees with them politically and following the leftist tactics of critical theory attacks them with innuendo, emotional modeling and associative condition. The author uses code phrases like "pseudo-conservative", meaning Conservatives who won't lose politely and then admit they were wrong anyway. He characterizes as "paranoia" political beliefs that oppose his own and how dare anyone accuse the liberals of organizing to get their way.Fascinatingly, in the foreword and introduction, we are never introduced to the very real paranoia of the left - famous statements like ex-first lady Clinton and her fear of the "vast Right Wing Conspiracy". Such one-sided analysis is so ridiculous as to be almost funny as I read through this collection of unsupported statements and vague paranoia. Poor Hofstadter, like true Paranoids, can never quite see that his page after page of fear about evil people like Phyllis Schlafly, Senator George Murphy of California and the dreaded actor Ronald Reagan are clear indications of his own paranoia rather than an indictment of the Republican party. On the first page of his 40 page opening essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", the author, Hofstadter, says "heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy" are the characteristics of the paranoid style of his political opponents. Two pages later, Hofsatdter says, "Of course, the term "paranoid style" is pejorative, and it is meant to be".Such an amazing oversight from someone who is often called a seminal political scientist but can't see that accusing the other side of "heated exaggeration" and then in a heatedly exaggerated manner refers to his opponents Americanist beliefs as "paranoid" could only happen in someone who is so idealogically driven to hate and fear that they are unable to apply logic to their own thinking and writing.This lack of rational thought alone is one reason I strongly recommend that you throw this book in the trash or shred it for kitty litter. It is useful and informative to read books with contrary positions to your own and I strongly suggest doing that to discover new ideas and reflections along with the understanding of those who disagree with you politically, but this book is basically a long list of slurs and deadly boring and repetitive innuendo that doesn't even have the merit of outlining the positions of the opposition.Then there is the tiring guilt by association with vague long-ago political movements. Hofstadter conveniently ignores the conspiratorial fears of the founding fathers that you can read in such noted political scientists as Bailyn and Wood. Rather, Hofstadter quotes anti-Catholic sentiments from a Texas Newspaper of 1855 and Populist fears from the post-civil war on gold and silver monetary policy. The horror! We get puzzling pages about Masons and the Illuminati of Europe. One could as easily cite the marauding of Genghis Khan as influences on the conservatives of 1954 as the list of past American movements like those I have cited.Another almost unbelievable aspect of this first and most famous essay is the list of figures who were accused by the Conservatives of being anti-American. You quickly come to the conclusion that modern day references to the profundity of this book simply demonstrate that its supporters haven't ever bothered to read it! Name after name that Hofstatdter listed as being absurdly accused of anti-Americanism actually have turned up as traitors and spies with recent information from the former Soviet Union like the intercepted Venona transcripts. Strike two against Hofstadter.There are a couple of essays against Senator Goldwater and his supporters. Basically, Hofstadter calls them names, points out they lost, and then, exhibiting further paranoia and poor judgment, predicts the demise of conservatives. While Goldwater did indeed lose, it takes liberals like McGovern and Carter to really demonstrate just what an extreme loss is. Just 4 years after Goldwater, the democrat President fails to even run for re-election seeing his imminent loss to Nixon who runs as a conservative anti-communist - you know, like Senator Barry Goldwater. Such poor future predictions give this book a 3rd strike and make it worthy of being tossed out.The last part of the book is a few long essays on the anti-trust movement, American Imperialism in the Philippines and the monetary policy of silver and gold of the 19th century. I could barely get through them, yawning all the way.At any rate, let me just quote one more sentence showing the vacuousness of this terrible book. Hofstadter is noting his puzzlement that intellectuals and good, solid people support the conservatives whereas a grasping collection of special interests support liberalism. He notes that conservatives "are no longer rubes and hicks". In a short phrase like this, Hofstadter's hate and idiocy become clear. He considered conservatives of the past "rubes and hicks". Nothing about their political beliefs or positions; he just notes that though he would like to call them all "rubes and hicks', many conservatives have left the farm. And honest to God, that is the basic tone of this ridiculous screed for hundreds of pages.One star.

I've read some of Hofstadter's more popular books, and picked this up because it was cited in something else I was reading on the current state of American politics. The historical perspective he weaves is, I'm sure, accurate, but very depressing - nativism and paranoid conspiracy theories seem to be part of the basic tool kit of all aspiring demagogues since time immemorial. By the time you have worked your way from the Illuminati through the Masonic conspiracy, labor unions and communists the pattern is pretty clear, and I'm sure if he was still alive he would be both horrified and a bit pleased to have been so prescient in his predictions.All and all, a very interesting, if not happy, read. Be aware that this is serious slogging - Hofstedter's writing, while clear and well-organized, is dense and full of stuff you actually have to think about.

Twice Pulitzer-Prize winner Richard Hofstadter was Professor of American History at Columbia University and a radical independent thinker on the liberal-left, whose incisive analyses of the American political landscape were expounded in several essays. This book collects together seven, including possibly the most enduring and prophetic of them all `The Paranoid Style in American Politics' originally delivered as a lecture at Oxford University in November 1963, and then published in a slightly modified form in Harper's Magazine a year later.Hofstadter uses the phrase `the paranoid style' advisedly. Commonly observable characteristics make the style instantly recognisable in the same way (for example) you might recognise art painted in the cubist style, or rock music made in the style of the `punk' movement. A ubiquitous narrative component of `the paranoid style' is the casting of some scheming and secretive `elite' planning to do the nation down for their own ends, to seize the reins of power by subterfuge and deceit, to demolish `hard-won freedoms' to satisfy their own cravings for wealth, power and control:"The enemy is clearly delineated: a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman -- sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed, he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid's interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone's will. Very often, the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional)..."Hofstadter describes a long history of the paranoid style before it became a defining characteristic of what he terms the "pseudo-conservatives" in the 1950s and early 1960s. Back in the 1700s there were waves of paranoia about the Bavarian Illuminati taking over America, similar paranoia in the early 1800s about the Masons, then "a sinister conspiracy by Roman Catholics" to covertly take over Protestant America spearheaded by Irish immigrants whose evil plan was to "deliver the Republic to papal tyranny". Later the bogey-man transmuted into the imagined `slaveholders' conspiracy' promoted by some abolitionists, then `international bankers', then the Jews, then the Rothschild family, then communists (Senator Joe McCarthy actually proclaimed President Dwight Eisenhower to be an "agent of the international communist conspiracy"). No matter the identity of the chosen villain of the day, the narrative style never varies:"It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is, on many counts, the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him"Other trademark indicators of the style include the amassing of (often fraudulent) `evidence' to persuade a skeptical public that the secret super-conspiracy is real - what Daniel Pipes later referred to as "a deluge of overabundant learned factoids & pedantic references" - and parading supposed `whistleblowers' or `insiders' to confirm the dastardly conspiracy to be true (Hofstadter cites the famous `convent escapee' Maria Monk who claimed to have witnessed alleged sexual debauchery and child murder in Roman Catholic convents; when the fraud was revealed, Monk turned out to be a hooker and petty thief, who had never seen the inside of a convent but was paid to play the role).If you're interested in the origin of right-wing political conspiracy theories in America, how and why and by whom they are manufactured and want to understand the essential components of the style, then getting to know Hofstadter's classic work is a must. The essay explains such modern phenomena as the so-called `9/11 Truth Movement' precisely and with a level of detail that is almost spooky, 40 years before it appeared as a cultural artifact. Although he died in 1970 aged only 54, Richard Hofstadter's enlightening analysis seems prophetic in its description of the shrillness and apocalyptic ranting characteristic of the Tea Baggers and other extremist pseudo-right-wing movements of the 21st century.The remaining essays in this collection examine the `pseudo-conservative revolt' up to 1965, and its catastrophic effect on the Goldwater campaign against LBJ in the 1964 Presidential election.This excellent writer was one of the great intellects of the 20th century, whose lucid and engaging prose never fails to enlighten and entertain.

I've read a lot of books on conspiracy theories recently, this particular one was very helpful in comprehending how the modern conspiracy landscape was constructed. This work has certainly stood the test of time, whilst it was written over half a century ago the hallmarks of "the paranoid style" are just as clearly identifiable in modern culture as they were in 1963; his commentary on Goldwater's campaign is particularly relevant at a time when Donald Trump is running for the US presidency!

Der Essay zum Paranoid Style in American Politics liest sich, als wäre er erst kürzlich verfasst worden. Sehr interessant und bezogen auf die USA - leider - aktueller denn je.

Fabulous and terrifying. Everyone shouuld read this.

Classic work. See Trump.