THE PARANOID STYLE in AMERICAN POLITICS and OTHER ESSAYS by Richard Hofstadter
-Originally published by Harper's Magazine in 1964 and in book form by Alfred A. Knopf in 1965.
-Audiobook published in 2018 by Tantor Audio.
-Read by Keith Sellon-Wright.
-Duration: 10 hours, 44 minutes.
-Unabridged.
Award-winning historian Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970) wrote these essays over a series of years and compiled them into a collection with a loose theme of how American politics is affected by paranoid conspiracies.
He starts with the presidential candidacy of Barry Goldwater and the political commentary of groups like the John Birch Society. His descriptions of the Goldwater campaign sound so much like the Trump campaign of 2016 that a reader can almost replace the name Goldwater with the name Trump. The details are, of course, different, but the tone is practically the same.
The ideological framework of the John Birch Society is replaced with QAnon, the fear of communism is replaced with the fear of immigrants but the tone is practically the same.
That is the main theme of the first half of the book - the near-constant presence of a paranoid fear that some group is trying to overthrow the American way of life.
"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)..."
-Audiobook published in 2018 by Tantor Audio.
-Read by Keith Sellon-Wright.
-Duration: 10 hours, 44 minutes.
-Unabridged.
Award-winning historian Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970) wrote these essays over a series of years and compiled them into a collection with a loose theme of how American politics is affected by paranoid conspiracies.
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| Barry Goldwater (1909-1998) |
The ideological framework of the John Birch Society is replaced with QAnon, the fear of communism is replaced with the fear of immigrants but the tone is practically the same.
That is the main theme of the first half of the book - the near-constant presence of a paranoid fear that some group is trying to overthrow the American way of life.
"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)..."
This paranoid strain is not unique to America, of course. For example, the fear of the Illuminati and English fears of a Catholic revolution.
The fears of a Catholic revolution spread to America as well, but that was just a part of a whole series of paranoid conspiracies that Hofstadter points out. I decided to come up with my own list. Hofstadter passed away in 1970 so he never heard of the paranoid conspiracy theories that I remember being actively discussed (some quite seriously) in my lifetime.
Here is a list of all paranoid conspiracies that I remember (starting from the early 1980's):
The fears of a Catholic revolution spread to America as well, but that was just a part of a whole series of paranoid conspiracies that Hofstadter points out. I decided to come up with my own list. Hofstadter passed away in 1970 so he never heard of the paranoid conspiracy theories that I remember being actively discussed (some quite seriously) in my lifetime.
Here is a list of all paranoid conspiracies that I remember (starting from the early 1980's):
-Satan worshipers were killing thousands of children in day cares across the country;
-back masked lyrics were brainwashing people that listened to rock music and making them kill themselves;
-Dungeons and Dragons was causing kids to go crazy (Tom Hanks made a movie about it!);
-the New World Order was taking over America and flying black helicopters all over America and leaving secret messages for soldiers on the back of interstate road signs;
-FEMA camps. This is one of my personal favorites because the AMTRAK train yard in Beach Grove, Indiana was to be converted into a secret government concentration camp (Beach Grove is a neighborhood in Indianapolis, where I live);
-FEMA camps. This is one of my personal favorites because the AMTRAK train yard in Beach Grove, Indiana was to be converted into a secret government concentration camp (Beach Grove is a neighborhood in Indianapolis, where I live);
-President Obama was a secret gay Muslim who was selling out America;
-QAnon with all of its weirdness (including a resurgence of the lizard people in some strains);
-crisis actors creating all of the school shootings (Alex Jones);
-Former President Trump's Stop the Steal movement with Italian satellites and Venezuelan vote tabulators conspiring to steal an election.
The rest of the book is not nearly as interesting. It has rather lengthy essays on the Spanish-American War, the Anti-Trust movement and the Free Silver movement. They made the point that the earlier essays did, but not nearly as directly and they weren't nearly as interesting.
The entire collection is written in an academic style that is not particularly welcoming to the reader. The author makes a point that the paranoid style of politics is not exclusively a feature of the Right, but he provides no examples of it from the Left, except maybe with the Free Silver movement. The politics of that movement are convoluted enough that you can't really get a good feel if it is a movement of the Left or the Right.
To sum up, the part of the book that discusses the 1950's and 1960's is great. The rest of rather tedious. The first part is worth listening to if for no other reason than to get the reference when you hear it in a political discussion.
I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE PARANOID STYLE in AMERICAN POLITICS and OTHER ESSAYS by Richard Hofstadter.
The rest of the book is not nearly as interesting. It has rather lengthy essays on the Spanish-American War, the Anti-Trust movement and the Free Silver movement. They made the point that the earlier essays did, but not nearly as directly and they weren't nearly as interesting.
The entire collection is written in an academic style that is not particularly welcoming to the reader. The author makes a point that the paranoid style of politics is not exclusively a feature of the Right, but he provides no examples of it from the Left, except maybe with the Free Silver movement. The politics of that movement are convoluted enough that you can't really get a good feel if it is a movement of the Left or the Right.
To sum up, the part of the book that discusses the 1950's and 1960's is great. The rest of rather tedious. The first part is worth listening to if for no other reason than to get the reference when you hear it in a political discussion.
I rate this book 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: THE PARANOID STYLE in AMERICAN POLITICS and OTHER ESSAYS by Richard Hofstadter.
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