The Paranoid Style in American Politics PDF

Richard Hofstadter THE Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Masrlldmsms This book bas been digitally reprioled. The coo"",. temaios ideotical.o thaI of previous printings. Copyrigh. '95', , Z23· 81bi.cL. P....

Richard Hofstadter THE Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Masrlldmsms This book bas been digitally reprioled. The coo"",. temaios ideotical.o thaI of previous printings. Copyrigh. '95', , Z23· 81bi.cL. P. 111. 34  The PllrlZ1loid Style in AmericlZ1l Politic. times to be the creation of ex-Masons; it certainly attached the highest significance and gave the most nnqualified credu­ lity to their revelations. Similarly anti-Catholicism used the nmaway nnn and the apostate priest, anti-Mormonism the ex­ wife from the harem of polygamy; the avant-garde anti­ Commanist movements of oar time use the ex-Commanist. In some part the special authority accorded the renegade derives from the obsession with secrecy so characteristic of such movements: the renegade is the man or woman who has been in the secret world of the enemy, and brings forth with him or her the fiaal verification of saspicions which might other­ wise have been doabted by a skeptical world. But I think there is a deeper eschatological significance attached to the person of the renegade: in the spiritaal wrestling match between good and evil which is the paranoid's archetypal model of the world straggle, the renegade is living proof that all the conversions are not made by the wrong side. He brings with him the prOllilie of redemption and victory. In contemporary right-wing movements a particula.rly im­ portant part has been played by ex-Commnnists who have moved rapidly, thoagh not without anguish, from the para­ noid left to the paranoid right, clinging all the while to the fundamentally Manichean psychology that nnderlies both. Such authorities on communism remind one of those ancient converts from paganism to Christianity of whom it is told that upon their conversion they did not entirely cease to believe in their old gods but converted them into demons. A final aspect of the paranoid style is related to that quality of pedantry to which I have already referred. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is precisely the elaborate concern with demonstration it almost invariably shows. One should not be misled by the fantastic conclusions that are so characteristic of this political style into imagining that it is nOt, so to speak, argued out along factaa1 lines. The 35  PAD I: StJulies in tbe if"",""" lOgin very fantastic character of its conclllSioDs leads to heroic striv­ ings for "evidence" to prove that the unbelievable is the only thiug that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency, and paranoid movements from the Middle Ages onward have had a magnetic attraction for demi­ intellectuals. Bnt respectable paranoid lireramre nor only starts from certain moral commitments that can be justified to many non-paranoids but also carefn1ly and all but obsessively accumulateS "evidence." Paranoid writing begins with certain defensible judgments. There 'lIIo1S something to be said for the anti-Masons. After all, a secret society composed of influential men bound by special obligations conld conceivably pose some kind of threat to the civil order in which they were suspended. There was also something to be said for the Prot­ estaDt principles of individuality and freedom, as well as for the nativist desire to develop in North America a homoge­ neons civilization. Again, in our time innumerable decisions of the Second World War and the cold war can be fanlted, and it is easy for the suspicious to believe that such decisions are nor simply the mistakes of well-meaning men but the plans of traitors. The typical procedure of the higber paranoid scholarship is to start with such defensible assumptions and with a carefnl accumulation of fllClS, or at least of what appear to be faets, and to marshal these facts toward an overwhelming "proof' of the particulat conspiracy that is to be established. It is nothing if DOt coherent-m fact, the paranoid mentality is fat more coherent than the real world, since it leaves DO room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities. It is, if not wholly rational, at least inteusely rationalistic; it believes that it is up against an enemy who is as infallibly rational as he is totally evil, and it seeks to match·his imputed total competence with its own, leaving nothing unexplained and comprehending all of reality 36  Tbe P/trlJfttJid Style m Ammctm Politi.. in one overxeaching, consistent theory. It is nothing if not "scholaxly" in technique. McCarthy's 96-page pamphlet Mc­ Cmbyimt contains no less than 313 footnote references, and Mr. Welch's fantastic assault on Eisenhowex, Tbe Politician, is weighed down by a hundred pages of bibliogxaphy and notes. The entire right-wing mOVeDlent of our time is a pa­ rade of experts, study groups, monogxaphs, footnotes, and bibliogxaphies. Sometimes the right-wing striving for schol­ arly depth and an inclusive woxld view has startling CODSC­ quences: Mr. Welch, for eumple, has charged that the popu­ larity of Arnold Toynbee's historical work is the consequence of a plot on the part of Fabims, "Labour Party bosses in Englmd," and various membets of the Anglo-American "lib­ eral establishment" to overshadow the much more tnlthfuI and illuminating woxk of Oswald Spengler! What distinguishes the paxmoid style is not, then, the ab­ sence of verifiable facts (thongh it is occasionally tnle that in his extravagant passion for facts the paxmoid occasionally maxmfaetures them), but rather the curious leap in imagina­ tion that is always made at some critical point in the recital of events. John Robison's tract on the illuminati followed a pat­ tern that has been repeated for over a century and a half. Fox page after page he patiendy records the detaiIs he has been able to aCCtlIlluIate about the history of the IlItuninati. Then, suddenly, the French Revolution has taken place, and the illuminati have bronght it about. What is missing is not vera­ cious infoxmation about the organization, bat sensible judg­ ment about what can cause a revolution. The plausibility the paxmoid style has for those who find it plausible lies, in good measure, in this appearance of the most careful, conscientious, and seemingly coherent application to detail, the laborious accumulation of what can be taken as convincing evidence for the most fantastic conclusions, the careful preparation for the Tho Blue Book of rbe John BiFeb Sode