In 1964, Richard Hofstadter wrote a seminal piece in Harper’s, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” (followed by his classic book with the same title), in which he described angry, ignorant, and more or less permanent undercurrents of the American polity that from time to time organize themselves into a tsunami that swamps the mainstream. It starts like this: “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….” Richard Hofstadter@Harper’s Magazine (11/64)
