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.
Ben Carson, Paranoid
Carson is a black representative and standard-bearer, not for conservatives but for paranoid Americans.
.. The most relevant comparison for Carson isn’t to Cain but to Michele Bachmann, the last Presidential aspirant who, despite membership in a group with a history as targets of discrimination, came to represent the twitchy ideals of American panic.
The Paranoid Style of Ted Cruz
It’s easy to dismiss the exchange between Cruz and his three-year-old supporter as sensationalism. But the interaction also highlights Cruz’s ability to rally support by using apocalyptic or even conspiratorial language. Although many in the media find Cruz’s use of such hyperbolic language alienating, there’s strong reason to believe that it actually has the opposite effect on his audience. In fact, throughout his career Cruz has relied on fire and brimstone rhetoric to create a world that trades ambiguity for absolutes.
.. Historian Richard Hofstadter described the use of “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” in American political life. Hofstadter called this phenomenon “the American paranoid style,” built on the perpetuation of conspiracy theories and the use of apocalyptic prose. “[The] demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals,” Hofstadter wrote. “Since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration.”
.. Senator Cruz has also followed another tenet of Hofstadter’s paranoid style with his use of selective evidence and subtle innuendo to insinuate possible widespread liberal—and often foreign—conspiracies. “One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the concern with factuality it shows,” Hofstadter writes. “It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed.”
.. These intricate conspiracies avoid the ambiguity of reality in exchange for simple and easy to understand narratives. Instead of wading into complex issues and weighing ramifications, Cruz sets up straw men, which are easy—indeed, necessary—to oppose.
.. By creating a world that deals in black and white, the Texas freshman provides his supporters with a comforting degree of clarity amid the bewildering complexities of reality.
The Paranoid Style of Rudy Giuliani
At one level, one could see Giuliani’s statements as simply incorrect. Obama does love America; he does work hard for his country; he did not say everybody should hate the police. But Giuliani’s attacks on the President are not principally meant as assertions of fact. They are meant to tap into a deep wellspring of American political thought, one defined by the Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter five decades ago. In an article in Harper’s, Hofstadter described “the paranoid style in American politics,” which he said was characterized by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.”
.. With his cosmopolitan background, Obama makes an especially tempting target for the paranoid style. He is so easy to portray as foreign, as other, as an emissary from alien civilizations who has managed to insinuate himself into the center of American power.