Library:The Paranoid Style in American Politics
| The Paranoid Style in American Politics | |
|---|---|
| Author | Richard Hofstadter |
| First published | 1965 |
| ISBN | 978-0-307-38844-5 |
| Role | Analysis |
| Domains | Politics & Elections History |
| Tactics | Conspiracy Theory |
The Paranoid Style in American Politics is a 1965 book by Richard Hofstadter.
Summary
Richard Hofstadter, a historian at Columbia University and twice a Pulitzer Prize winner, first presented this argument as a lecture at Oxford in 1963 and published it as an essay in Harper's Magazine in November 1964, during Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. It appeared as the title essay of a collection in 1965. It remains one of the most cited analyses of conspiracy thinking in politics.
What the paranoid style is
Hofstadter describes a mode of political expression marked by heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy. He uses "paranoid" deliberately but not clinically: he is not diagnosing individuals as mentally ill, but describing a way of seeing the world that normal people can adopt.
The pattern in history
Hofstadter shows that the style recurs throughout American history. He traces panic in the 1790s over the supposed Bavarian Illuminati, the anti-Masonic movement of the 1820s and 1830s, anti-Catholic movements that warned of a papal plot against the republic, and the anticommunist crusades of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the John Birch Society.
The features
The essay identifies the style's defining features. Its central image is a vast conspiracy, which the paranoid spokesman sees as the driving force of history. The enemy is portrayed as a perfect model of malice, powerful and cunning. The paranoid spokesman typically presents himself as standing at a turning point, where everything may be lost. Hofstadter notes that the style often relies on an obsessive accumulation of evidence, with heavy documentation leading to wildly implausible conclusions. He also identifies a recurring sense of dispossession: the feeling that the country has been taken away from its rightful owners.
Left and right
Hofstadter's examples in the essay focus mainly on the right of his own day, and critics have noted this emphasis. But he presented the style as one that can appear anywhere on the political spectrum, and his historical examples show it in many movements.
Relevance to Bullshitopedia
The essay is the classic account of the structure of conspiracy thinking and anchors the Conspiracy Theory tactic. Its features, especially the mountain of evidence supporting an impossible conclusion, are directly useful for analysing modern conspiracy movements across the political spectrum.