In the 1950s, American historian Richard Hofstadter noticed a distinct socio-political trend which he outlined in a landmark essay. As the titular piece, it is included in The Paranoid Style in American Politics. In this essay, and in the others that accompany it, he details a particular world view; for the most part, he was right on the mark because it is easy to see how this faulty political paradigm has survived up until our present day.
The first section of this book is titled “Studies In the American Right”. It opens with “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” and this theme is carried on throughout three other essays, two about “pseudoconservatism” and one about the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign. The paranoid style he describes is more of a tendency then a pathological mental illness. It involves moral panics and conspiracy theories, underlined by the belief that American has been taken over by a secret cabal that strives to enslave Americans. This tendency is traced back to the foundation of America and the usual suspects include the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Jews, the Catholics, and the Communists You can easily extend this belief up to our present day and the lunacy about the “Deep State” that the Trump administration claimed to be fighting. Hofstadter shows how this paranoid style is rooted in Puritanism and fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. This is a black and white view of the world, without any nuance, and politics are framed as a final battle between ultimate good and ultimate evil. Sound familiar?
The essays on pseudoconservatism identify a political class in America. Its members are primarily white, Protestant, middle-class, and uneducated. They are the least politically engaged members of society because their political views are largely based on conservative Christian morality which does not, in any logical way, translate easily into financial management poilicies or legislation. So they become outsiders to the political establishment. But these people are not really conservatives because “conservative” means to adhere to tradition, to submit to authority, and to maintain the status quo. They are pseudoconservatives because they believe in overthrowing the established order and dictating their unwanted minority views on the rest of us. Manifestations of this pseudoconservatism can be seen in the rise of the anti-Semite Father Coughlin and Joseph McCarthy as well as authoritarian organizations like the John Birch Society. All of these tendencies coalesced in the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign.
Although these four essays were written at separate times with the intention of addressing separate issues, it is easy to see how they all fit together. When read alongside each other, they serve as a warning because Hofstadter saw these trends as a rising force for the future. In fact, as he states, the real significance of the Goldwater campaign was not the landslide victory that Lyndon B. Johnson achieved at his opponent’s expense, but the way in which Goldwater brought this politically ignorant and ignored class of American citizens out of the woodworks as a presence in the American mainstream. These four essays are prophetic and if Hofstadter had been around to see the Republican party from the Reagan administration to the disastrous Trump years, he would probably say little more than “I told you so”.
IN the second section, “Some Problems Of the Modern Era”, other issues are addressed. One essay demonstrates how the religious and right wing belief in Manifest Destiny made American imperialist wars against Spain in Cuba and the Philippines a possibility. The second essay explains why the Antitrust movement of the early 20th century died out with the rise of the big corporations and the political influence they began to exert over the American people. The third essay is about William Hope Harvey and the role his political tract played in the radical Populist Party and the Free Silver movement.
This second section of essays are a strange addition to this collection. Their connection to the first section is tenuous and arbitrary. The first two essays do have some connection to the paranoid style and pseudoconservatism because the expansionists and anti-monopolists they describe relate back to those themes but you need to do some second-order thinking to see these interconnections. The section on Harvey and the Populist Party is more directly related to the first half of the book because it puts the Free Silver movement into the context of conspiracy theories and outsider political movements. As far as essays go, it is not an easy read. That is not to say it is a bad essay. Hofstadter knew what he was talking about but it is full of technical jargon about economics and finance that are not so accessible to the layman. This whole second section of the book appears to be filler and could have been entirely left out. You may even want to skip it entirely.
Hofstadter starts out by identifying a political trend in his time. Now it is 2021 and we have seen the rise of the Religious Right, Newt Gingrich, right wing talk radio cranks, climate change deniers, paranoid anti-communists, a resurgence of nativism and white supremacist movements, the Trump administration and his coterie of paramilitary cults like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, a treasonous riot in the Capitol, and a whole lot of people who believe, without evidence, that the 2020 election was stolen. A lot of these people think America will collapse if the Democrats are allowed to govern. Some of them want America to collapse. A lot of Trump supporters are people who had never voted before and have minimal knowledge as to how legislation is accomplished. They are mostly white, uneducated, middle-class, anti-intellectual, Christian, paranoid, and extremely gullible. You might feel inclined to quibble with Hofstadter over some of his details, but one thing he got right was that there is a sector of American society that represents a clear danger to our democracy. After reading The Paranoid Style in American Politics, you can almost hear this mid-century Cassandra screaming at us from the grave, “I told you so. Goddamn it, I told you you so”.
Hofstadter, Richard. The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. Vintage Books/Random House Inc., New York: 2008.
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