In a classic article by Richard Hofstadter entitled
The Paranoid Style in American Politics written in 1964, Hofstadter writes:
American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression "paranoid style" I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.
Hofstadter's article focuses on the extreme right during a period in which liberalism was ascendent. But reading the board here it is quite easy to find present day analogs on the left. See if you don't hear echos of Hofstadter in today's postings about the elites that are out to destroy what is good and decent in society as they pursue their decadent and corrupt special interests.
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms--he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse. ("Time is running out," said Welch in 1951. "Evidence is piling up on many sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin will attack.")
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated--if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid's sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.
The enemy is clearly delineated: he is 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).
The left finds itself in a position not unlike that facing the right in the 1950s and 1960s. A significant fraction of the population (including me) finds itself feeling disenfranchised by the current political order. That feeling of disenfranchisement and alienation is fertile ground for paranoid thinking. I am confident that many of us will read Hofstedter's article and easily see the pathology within the right during the 1960s. Indeed, the paranoid style has not disappeared on the right to this day. But we would do well to be on guard for such thinking here and to criticize it when it occurs.
For example, claims that Dean's campaign has been systematically undermined by media elites, by the Democratic Party establishment or by the Clintons are illustrative of the paranoid style. It ignores all the endorsements of major party officials, unions the 24/7 coverage Dean enjoyed as front-runner while others struggled in obscurity.
Indeed, the paranoid style of politics has somewhat infected all the Democratic candidates as they point to "special interests" and "two Americas" in which the elites get everything they desire while the outsiders-us-get nothing.
As should be clear to all of us from reading Hofstadter, the paranoid style of politics is pathological in that those under its spell will miss opportunities to cooperate with others and in so doing miss opportunities to make themselves and everyone else better off. Even worse, those who are not so alienated will perceive the paranoid style and avoid electing our candidates out of a concern that they are unhinged. Hopefully, some will read Hofstedter and find a way to recognize the signs of paranoid politics and step back enough to join with others and get about the business of electing a Democrat who can beat Bush.