Thanks to a timely reminder by The Economist of London, we now return to the seminal work of Richard Hofstadter, the historian whose 1964 book, “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life,” was considered here last fall in the context of the current struggle for New Albany’s future:
Overt anti-intellectualism? Well, that would explain CM (Steve) Price's votes against the interests of his own district.
In this passage, Hofstadter summarized the book’s central thesis:
The common strain that binds together the attitudes and ideas which I call anti-intellectual is a resentment and suspicion of the life of the mind and of those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition constantly to minimize the value of that life.
In the same year as his treatise on anti-intellectualism was released -- the troubled time of Senator Barry Goldwater’s right-wing insurgency and failed campaign for the White House -- a concurrent topic was the subject of a powerful Hofstadter essay in Harper’s Magazine (November 1964, pp. 77-86): The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
Hofstadter’s introduction is reprinted here in its entirety:
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-wind. 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.
Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our political psychology through our political rhetoric. The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent.
Readers are encouraged to use the above link and follow Hofstadter on a masterful grand tour of American paranoia, as directed against a cornucopia of enemies – free masonry, the international gold ring, the Illuminati, Catholics and Communists, among others.
Of course, Hofstadter died many years ago, and it’s highly doubtful that he ever visited New Albany or was even aware of our existence, but with his prescient analyses of anti-intellectualism and the paranoid style, Hofstadter anticipated the existence of the delusional spitwad blogyard known widely as “Speak Out Lout, NA” to such a stunningly accurate degree that it’s as though he were at the keyboard now, reading Laura’s deranged epistles of manic persecution, then audibly cringing … and taking notes for his next expose on unrequited delirium in the local body politic.
In fact, it’s positively uncanny how close Hofstadter’s variations on a theme of paranoia match the antics at the blog formerly known as pink.
Consider the incessant charges of a Machiavellian and malicious City Hall cabal directed against the honest, taxpaying “little people” …
“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.”
… and the knee-jerk tsunami felt across the lower extremities of all dozen disgruntled troglobytes when they are asked to provide something approximating evidence for their incredible conspiratorial claims …
“Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content.”
… and the recurring expressions of impotent rage when presented with alternative, contemporary visions …
“(They feel) 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.”
If these Oatesian examples weren’t enough, there’s the SOLNA companion blog, “Freedom of Bleach,” hosted by the non-existent college professor, “Erik” – but Hofstadter saw that transparent hoax coming, too, and four decades before the downtrodden Luddites thought they were being clever by suddenly “originating” the idea of Harvey the Prof:
“The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry.”
Upset because academic credentials are lacking? Well, just invent ‘em by adopting the trappings of intellectual respectability without the knowledge that accompanies it in the reality-based world.
Confused by terminology that’s far more difficult to grasp than “that’s his house – throw the egg,” simply co-opt buzz words like “citizen’s activism” and create acronyms to mimic ones that already exist.
And definitely – definitely – anoint a savior; if the Coffey's too bitter, the telegenic Price might yet be right.
After all, as Hofstadter concludes, the paranoid denizens of dingy caverns like SOLNA’s need all the help they can get when it comes time to tally the results:
We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.
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Tonight, the city council meets at 7:30 p.m., and tomorrow, on Friday morning, NA Confidential presents the long-awaited in-depth interview with 3rd District councilman Steve Price.
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