Teh Paranoid Style
Above: Ace, Dan Riehl, Confederate Yankee find their métier
TBogg got out of the gate first with this one, curse him. I’ll wait here while you read his glorious thing.
[fadeout of Pat Metheny album track, recorded ‘please stay on the line’ message, leisurely drumming of fingers, opening cadence of Al Jarreau track]
Right. There’s one thing in particular that I’ve been meaning to say about the Jamil Hussein affair, and I’d like to tack it onto TBogg’s somewhat eerie citation of Mark Fenster — eerie because we’ll sometimes cavalierly hike small ideas from each other, as is the way with such things, but in this case we came up with the same large idea independently, and in very similar terms.
This is from Richard Hofstadter’s original Paranoid Style essay, from Harper’s Magazine in 1964. Substitute your terms of choice for ‘Goldwater movement’ and for the other historical actors and conflicts that Hofstadter names, and watch the picture that emerges:
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.
[…]
If, after our historically discontinuous examples of the paranoid style, we now take the long jump to the contemporary right wing, we find some rather important differences from the nineteenth-century movements. The spokesmen of those earlier movements felt that they stood for causes and personal types that were still in possession of their country—that they were fending off threats to a still established way of life. But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
Important changes may also be traced to the effects of the mass media. The villains of the modern right are much more vivid than those of their paranoid predecessors, much better known to the public; the literature of the paranoid style is by the same token richer and more circumstantial in personal description and personal invective. For the vaguely delineated villains of the anti-Masons, for the obscure and disguised Jesuit agents, the little-known papal delegates of the anti-Catholics, for the shadowy international bankers of the monetary conspiracies, we may now substitute eminent public figures like Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower., secretaries of State like Marshall, Acheson, and Dulles, Justices of the Supreme Court like Frankfurter and Warren, and the whole battery of lesser but still famous and vivid alleged conspirators headed by Alger Hiss.
Events since 1939 have given the contemporary right-wing paranoid a vast theatre for his imagination, full of rich and proliferating detail, replete with realistic cues and undeniable proofs of the validity of his suspicions. The theatre of action is now the entire world, and he can draw not only on the events of World War II, but also on those of the Korean War and the Cold War. Any historian of warfare knows it is in good part a comedy of errors and a museum of incompetence; but if for every error and every act of incompetence one can substitute an act of treason, many points of fascinating interpretation are open to the paranoid imagination. In the end, the real mystery, for one who reads the primary works of paranoid scholarship, is not how the United States has been brought to its present dangerous position but how it has managed to survive at all.
The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought can be reduced to three: First, there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism. A great many right-wingers would agree with Frank Chodorov, the author of The Income Tax: The Root of All Evil, that this campaign began with the passage of the income-tax amendment to the Constitution in 1913.
The second contention is that top government officialdom has been so infiltrated by Communists that American policy, at least since the days leading up to Pearl Harbor, has been dominated by men who were shrewdly and consistently selling out American national interests.
Finally, the country is infused with a network of Communist agents, just as in the old days it was infiltrated by Jesuit agents, so that the whole apparatus of education, religion, the press, and the mass media is engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal Americans.
This all sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It’s a near-perfect taxonomy of Wingnuttus americanus, that flourishing contemporary species that we know so well. Their archaeological leavings show that they’ve changed hardly at all since 1964 — and that they seem not to have learned any new ideas or behaviors, nor have needed to.
There’s much more to say, including a point on the venerable phenomenon of libertarian fascism now incarnate in Glenn Reynolds. Here’s F.T. Marinetti providing a perfect Shorter to any of Reynolds’s more demented sci-fi ravings:
“War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamed of metallization of the human body.”
Heh. Indeed.
I need to access my tear duct motherboard to present my sadness to the world. Drat. It crashed.
Additionally, is Libertarian Nanobot Orchestra playing the S,N! New Year’s Bash?
Why would they? “Standing athwart history yelling, ‘Stop!'” is their best-known motto. That it’s also nothing more than a one-sentence temper tantrum doesn’t seem to bother them.
Great quote at the end there. This calls for an Insta-futurist Manifesto. Actually, now that I think about, the original manifesto would suit the putz perfectly well:
Seems ready made for the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, doesn’t it?
Wow–a clear line of political thought, linking the anti-Catholic mobs of colonial America, the anti-Masonic/anti-Mormon movements, through the scare-mongering about anarchists, to the anti-communists and anti-Islamistic(?) movements in modern times. All these movements had some rational basis for concern or suspicion at least, but the hysteria and viciousness of the over-response is characteristic of the fascist who is liberated from moral restraint by the ’emergency’.
If you add to this the fin-de-siecle cultural hysteria we were already going through (Shark attack! Missing intern! Satanism in our preschools!) when 9-11 happened, you have a recipe for another 50 years of empowered paranoia and near-fascism.
As for teh funny, someone should look up some 18th century anti-papist screeds and ask all these Catholic fanatics how they square that (oops, Masonism!) with their worldview.
But everythings good for the Catholics now, because we’ve moved on from hating them. When once my grandmother was told that Catholics drink the blood of children*, now we’re told that Muslims drink the blood of children. It’s all wonderful for Catholics now!
—
*True
Yep, before we needed a police state to protect us Teh Evil Commies, now we need a police state to protect us from Teh Evil Mooslims. Odd how the common feature is the need for a police state… Hmmmm.
These morans have never been especially bright, though. Hell, its been 70 years and they still haven’t figured out that New Deal liberalism was intended to protect capitalism from popular social movements by redirecting just enough wealth to just enough people to keep the Great Unwashed from burning the motherfucker down.
Standing athwart history yelling, ‘Stop!’� is their best-known motto.
Standing athwart history? I thought it was hissing “Tell me, or I will make you do terrible things,” while sitting athwart someone’s chest.
Their archaeological leavings show that they’ve changed hardly at all since 1964
Coprolites! Middens of right-wing coprolites as far as the eye can see.
Additionally, is Libertarian Nanobot Orchestra playing the S,N! New Year’s Bash?
Only if we get to play Renegade. Yes, we are an all-Styx cover band now.
OT, but OMG, OMG, OMG — I hope someone is listening to the priceless Q&A currently skewering the WPE during his press conference. He clearly truly believes the American people are about 6 years old — his tone of voice is that of a parent just on the verge of totally losing patience after explaining something for the 1000th time: “It’s so simple — don’t you understand? THe terrorists are out there and they want to HURT us! C’mon, get with the program!!” His explanation for why he has changed his message from “we’re winning in Iraq” to “we’re neither winning nor losing in Iraq” was priceless. He basically said the first one is based on his belief, while the second one is based on reality.
Ok, back to the topic at hand.
When once my grandmother was told that Catholics drink the blood of children*
Huh. I’m a generation removed from a Catholic great aunt from Lithuania who believed it was the Jews who drank the blood of children (hey, we invented the blood libel, Jeff, so you scapegoater-come-lately Lutherans can just go fly a kike, as they say in the old country.).
Of course, that such absurd historical slanders have become the calling card to scapegoat any menacing, mysterious Other in our midsts seems to be a neat democratic way of completely obliterating the original lie by making it ecumenical and universal.
There’s a small but noisy left wing tinfoil brigade as well, and not just on 9-11. Not a half hour after it was announced that Senator Johnson had a possible stroke the “my God the Republicans poisoned him” threads started on the DU (to be shut down by the admins fortunately). So far the LW tinfoilers seem to be a small brigade compared to the RW armored divisions. but the strain is there on both sides….
Well, I wus sittin’ home alone an’ started to sweat,
Figured they wus in my T.V. set.
Peeked behind the picture frame,
Got a shock from my feet, hittin’ right up in the brain.
Them Reds caused it!
I know they did . . . them hard-core ones.
– Bob Dylan
Just when you thought Virginia was safe from butt-headed racists…
Everlasting fear is the fuel which drives them.
Let’s just run down a quick list of things which frighten these poor bastards:
Blacks
Mexicans
Homosexuals
Catholics who believe in social justice
Women who want control over their own body
Science
Muslims unless they are Saudi princes
Peace
Love
Sex
Single parents
Progressive taxation
Public education
Unions
How can any group live in such constant fear? I think we need to spike their food with Zoloft so they can move beyond all this anxiety.
There’s a small but noisy left wing tinfoil brigade as well, and not just on 9-11. Not a half hour after it was announced that Senator Johnson had a possible stroke the “my God the Republicans poisoned him� threads started on the DU (to be shut down by the admins fortunately). So far the LW tinfoilers seem to be a small brigade compared to the RW armored divisions. but the strain is there on both sides….
Yeah, but the leftwing tinfoil brigade isn’t as horribly wrong all the time as the RW. Yeah, okay, ‘9/11 was an inside job’ is a laugher, but ‘The Iraq build-up is based on a huge lie!’, ‘The Bush administration doesn’t give shit one about New Orleans’, ‘The RNC has stolen the past two national elections where the presidency was up for grabs’, ‘The right-wing keeps trying to assasinate leftwing politicians in third-world countries and replace them with fascist dictators favorable to US interests’, ‘America is employing Nazi war criminals for the space race’.
We were kind of right about those ones.
So maybe the reason the ‘tinfoil brigade’ is so small on the left wing is because we’re not so godawful wrong all the time. Just throwing it out there.
re: blood libel, it was actually the Romans who made that one up about that kooky new sect knowns as “Christians” back in the day.
I guess it just goes to show that the Jews are so greedy they even stole that eh?
Patkin, fair enough. But the boundry between “justified suspicion”: and “wack job tin foil” seems to be awfully fuzzy sometimes….
“Important changes may also be traced to the effects of the mass media. The villains of the modern right are much more vivid than those of their paranoid predecessors, much better known to the public; the literature of the paranoid style is by the same token richer and more circumstantial in personal description and personal invective.”
Richard Hofstadter: Genius and Prophet of Doom.
So in another 40 years will the right get that much better at this media manipulation game? For my kids’ sake I hope Richard’s observation has a limited half life.
How many ADHD-addled Malkins does it take to change a light bulb?
Hey look, pie!
I hate American social science.
I think there’s an easier way to talk about this, than with pebbles in your mouth (like Fenster, Jeebus, “as I have argued”).
First, there is The Terror. There’s a sort of paralytic death-spiral in which everybody starts arguing about what precious things we can all give up in order to combat The Terror. They decide our freedoms are the most precious, so they start leveraging The Terror into the most important thing of all time, changed everything, etc., as proven by the fact that we could get you to give up everything else precious by screaming about The Terror.
That’s the first stage. This is accompanied by a furious round of threats against friend and enemy alike, some of which are backed up, because you have the people so absobefuckinbuffaloed.
In the second stage, the handwriting is on the wall, and in a historic switch, the English are thought to be everywhere in France, plotting the downfall of the Directory that was so afraid of The Terror that it changed the names of the MONTHS. And the syntax of academics becomes so fucking garbled that it is impossible to imagine them on a level with the lucidity of their discipline’s founders.
In the third stage, somebody shoots off a really big gun. Let’s try really hard not to go there.
Read also his essay on the Spanish American war. The lie about the sinking of the Main (boiler explosion), the jingoism, the need to “liberate” Cuba from the tyrannical Spanish, all so familiar.
Let’s not bicker and argue over who drank who’s blood.
Boiler explosion.. set by MUSLIMS!!
Did someone mention blood?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hPbYIpSuro&mode=related&search=
future times!
Yes, we are an all-Styx cover band now.
I bet your set-ending performance of “Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto” brings the house down.
grrr… your marinetti quote reminds me of my copy of the futurist cookbook i lost in katrina…
Ginger, if it’s REALLY an Insta-futurist Manifesto, it’s missing one teensy thing:
12. GOTO 1
there, perfect!
Vervet monkeys share a ‘vocabulary’ of somewhere between a dozen and 20 different calls. Baby vervet monkeys learn these calls from their mothers, and just as small children start by babbling and only gradually become intelligible to adults other than their parents, baby vervets’ early vocalizations are imprecise, and adult members of their troop other than their mothers do not respond to the infant’s ‘words’. Eventually, however, an infant vervet learns the ‘word’ for hawk — the vervets’ most dangerous natural predator — and discovers that any close approximation of the ‘HAWK!’ cry causes every member of the troop to scatter for cover. Some infants become fascinated with the effects of this word and have to be forcibly discouraged by their mothers from screaming ‘HAWK!’ every few minutes, just for the entertainment value of watching their elders cower in terror…
I think we can draw two parallels here between the modern Reichtwing proponents of Hoffman’s Paranoid Style and our humble primate cousins:
1) A certain percentage of the human population never does learn to distinguish between a serious alarm-call (HAWK! COMMANIST! TERR-IST!) and the verbal manipulation of their inbred primate terrors by (infantile?) group members with their own agenda; and
2) Certain conservative pundits should have been smacked more by their mothers, back when they were young enough that it might have taught them something.
liberalrob – some friends of mine are in a crazy techno-ish band here in DC. They have done a high-powered cover of Mr. Roboto, which often does bring down the house. They then use copious amounts of N2O.
How could you not like a band that does that, a song about Giant Robots, and then a “cover” of the “Sanford and Son” theme done to a huge break-dancin’ beat?
“we need to spike their food with Zoloft “
I vote for bootleg quaaludes – big ones, each about the size of a hockey puck.
How could you not like a band that does that, a song about Giant Robots, and then a “cover� of the “Sanford and Son� theme done to a huge break-dancin’ beat?
Sounds great!
I just thought a Styx cover band called Libertarian Nanobot Orchestra would naturally pick Mr. Roboto for their finale. Maybe change the lyrics a bit, “domo arigato Mr. Nanoboto” etc.
I saw this mention of Styx and immediately thought of “Miss America;” a great song, on various levels (Miss USA “scandal” being the most relevant today, I guess).
I vote for bootleg quaaludes – big ones, each about the size of a hockey puck.
Back in the seventies, I once went to a halloween party dressed as a four and a half foot quaalude. I made the costume out of two large cardboard disks (used the top of the dining room table for a template) with an 18″ cardboard strip stapled in between. Spray painted the whole thing white and used a black magic marker to do the split line and the Rohrer 714 text. But the law of unintended consequences kicked in – you can’t spend a whole night with your arms stuck straight out, and it’s hard to really party when you can’t reach your mouth. So the Quaalude costume got tossed in the dustbin of history…
mikey
Damn mikey, great minds think alike.
Those costumes do make fine dorm wall decorations, for those who happen to live in one.
Back in the seventies, I once went to a halloween party dressed as a four and a half foot quaalude.
It must have been you who inspired the Doonesbury cartoon where Zonker is in the kitchen at a party, chatting with a giant tab of acid.
I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that nothing about the wacko far-right has changed in forty-odd years. Don Rumsfeld was 32 (and in his first term in the House) when Goldwater ran for President. W was in his first year of Yale for the election. Cheney was 23 and had just married Lynne. Those guys grew up or came of age during the height of the John Birch/McCarthy era.
I have another book that dates from a couple of years before Hofstadter’s, by Richard Dudman called Men of the Far Right. Barry Goldwater, William Buckley, Everett Dirksen, Strom Thurmond, Robert Welch (candymaker and founder of the Birchers), George Lincoln Rockwell. John Tower! Even a younger Phyllis Schlafly makes an appearance.
Le plus ca change.
who knew 😉
[…] Gavin adds: Check around in the LGF comments to savor some classic Teh Paranoid Style — wheels-within-wheels and secret media conspiracies and the like. Here’s Malkin, plying a similar tack: Update: A hoax. […]
Hurricane Blues by Linton Kwesi Johnson is stupendous song.
John Kpiaye on guitar is astounding.
Just saying …
Ezekiel saw a wheel, way up in the middle of the air.
— Woody Guthrie.
Yep, before we needed a police state to protect us Teh Evil Commies, now we need a police state to protect us from Teh Evil Mooslims. Odd how the common feature is the need for a police state… Hmmmm.
[…] the comments to savor some classic Teh Paranoid Style — sinister metanarratives and wheels-within-wheels and all that timelessly imminent […]