the paranoid style in american politics explained

The logic was Orwellian, but it played well in academia and in the media. Hofstadter’s opinion of the opponents of big government-whom he called “pseudo-conservatives”-was unmistakable: “Pseudo-conservativism is among other things a disorder in relation to authority, characterized by an inability to find other modes for human relationship than those of more or less complete domination or submission.” (Emphasis added.) He seems to be saying that wishing not to be oppressed by government proves that advocates of a limited state actually want to tyrannize their fellow citizens. He acknowledged that “the term ‘paranoid style’ is pejorative, and it is meant to be the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good.” Hofstadter wrote, “What interests me here is the possibility of using political rhetoric to get at political pathology.” And in his view, distrust of government was among the worst political pathologies imaginable. Hofstadter’s book quickly became sanctified by the academic and political establishment. I am tired of talking.” (Hofstadter left the party in 1939, after the Soviet Union signed the Non-Aggression Pact with Nazi Germany.) When he joined the party in 1938, he wrote to a friend: “My fundamental reason for joining is that I don’t like capitalism and want to get rid of it.

Hofstadter had no such aversion: he was a former member of the Communist Party. His writing on political paranoia-inspired in part by the 1964 presidential campaign of conservative Barry Goldwater (who had been “diagnosed” from afar as mentally ill by a group of psychiatrists)-has encouraged people ever since to equate aversion to government intervention with pathology. One of the twentieth century’s most respected American historians, Hofstadter is an unrecognized early advocate of politically correct thought. It has been the perfect formula to dismiss and deride those who wish to limit government power and expand the sphere of individual liberty.

His widely read book The Paranoid Style in American Politics, first published in 1965, presented a thesis that is routinely invoked to delegitimize any criticism of government that goes beyond whining about the price the Pentagon pays for toilet seats. This “diagnosis” was first popularized by Columbia University professor Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970).

Since the 1960s modern “liberals” have often sought to stigmatize those who distrust government as paranoid.

The paranoid style in american politics explained