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URI The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)
amadeuspagel wrote 3 hours 4 min ago:
What seems uniquely american is less paranoia but meta-paranoia, a fear
of other people's fear.
DangitBobby wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
Fear of other people's fear is completely rational. The meta fear is
that those with primary fear will allow (call for, even) rights to be
dismantled in the name of security.
y0ned4 wrote 4 hours 5 min ago:
Thanks for sharing this paper
roenxi wrote 4 hours 20 min ago:
The most interesting part of this article is there doesn't seem to be
any strong evidence that the paranoid people were wrong. Europe has
spent most of the last 200 years under the control of a relatively
small number of families and it is just common sense that there would
be conspiracies to seize control of the US government and change its
ideology. People debate which of them should gain the ascendancy every
election.
> John Robison ... saw [the Masons] as a libertine, anti-Christian
movement, given to the corruption of women, the cultivation of sensual
pleasures, and the violation of property rights...
That is a pretty accurate description of where Europe ended up in the
1900s to today, so it seems a unreasonable to dismiss the man out of
hand. 100 years for a big social project isn't that long a time given
how slowly the world moved back then. It is reasonable to say that the
Masons might have been a benign organisation - but they also might not
have been. There is no contest that groups in Europe were trying and
succeeding to push in that direction. The communists had their big
breakout in the 1900s but the personality type always has and will
exist and the intellectual groundwork was being laid at least as early
as the 1850s.
There is this weird social dynamic where people dismiss the idea that
radical change is possible in foresight then shrug it off and basically
don't care in hindsight. It results in remarkably small groups being
able to achieve some incredible things, but it is a bit frustrating an
attitude to argue with.
Duanemclemore wrote 5 hours 23 min ago:
Never going to NOT upvote this. Essential read on the US.
derbOac wrote 7 hours 28 min ago:
There's research pointing out "the paranoid style" is everywhere in the
world, just controlled or checked to various extents in different
places and different times. Still a good read for perspective.
bryanrasmussen wrote 6 hours 14 min ago:
Sure, but the paranoid style in politics will manifest differently in
different cultures. This is about the Paranoid style in American
Politics.
like_any_other wrote 7 hours 29 min ago:
The list of paranoid organizations suffers from survivorship bias -
every "paranoid" John Birch Society has a Ukrainian Insurgent Army or
Blue Shirts Society counterpart. In fact, given the populations of the
USSR and China, one is more likely to find oneself in the latter sort
of organization than the former.
The other problem is special pleading - the author adds more and more
conditions on what constitutes the "paranoid style", until he's able to
isolate the phenomenon to mostly the right half of the political
spectrum. Meanwhile one can make a career of blaming everything on
capitalism, colonialism, racism, or whiteness [1], and remain safely in
the clear. [1] And many have, e.g. [1] or [2] , employed by the very
education system the author claims it is paranoid to believe contains
traitors - sorry, not "contains traitors", the author deftly hedges it
as requiring "the whole apparatus" to have fallen into enemy hands. An
unusually strong condition, given it is applied to something so vague
as a "style". I'd call it a strawman, if it wasn't written by such an
eminent author.
URI [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Ignatiev
URI [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag
aredox wrote 4 hours 37 min ago:
>The other problem is special pleading - the author adds more and
more conditions on what constitutes the "paranoid style", until he's
able to isolate the phenomenon to mostly the right half of the
political spectrum. Meanwhile one can make a career of blaming
everything on capitalism, colonialism, racism, or whiteness [1], and
remain safely in the clear.
The author already answered in the second paragraph:
"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."
Or here:
"In the history of the United States one find it, for example, in the
anti-Masonic movement, the nativist and anti-Catholic movement, in
certain spokesmen of abolitionism who regarded the United States as
being in the grip of a slaveholdersâ conspiracy, in many alarmists
about the Mormons, in some Greenback and Populist writers who
constructed a great conspiracy of international bankers, in the
exposure of a munitions makersâ conspiracy of World War I, in the
popular left-wing press, in the contemporary American right wing, and
on both sides of the race controversy today, among White Citizensâ
Councils and Black Muslims."
>Meanwhile one can make a career of blaming everything on capitalism,
colonialism, racism, or whiteness [1], and remain safely in the
clear.
Yeah, there is a difference between blaming things on a shadowy tiny
hidden cabal of vaguely-defined conspirators whose existence you
don't even attempt to prove, and blaming... you know... the people
actually in charge.
I mean, the people in power during most of the last centuries and
decades have been white, racist, colonialist and capitalists. That's
a fact. That is how they defined themselves openly.
So, you are in effect saying that "reality has a well-known liberal
bias".
rcakebread wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
I first read this after hearing the band, The Paranoid Style.
hotep99 wrote 9 hours 1 min ago:
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
Stratoscope wrote 3 hours 18 min ago:
My dad had a fun twist on this:
"I'm not paranoid, but there's a bunch of paranoid people following
me around."
bitwize wrote 3 hours 12 min ago:
Overheard among insane asylum staff:
"Have you heard about the new guy Joe?"
"Yeah, he's the guy who thinks people are always talking about him,
right?"
"Boy, what a nutcase."
whotheywut1 wrote 8 hours 1 min ago:
Indeed:
URI [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/27/business/job-insecurity-o...
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