12 ms·

The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)

120 points by samclemens 6y ago

heresie-dabord 6y ago
Article written in 1964... It is astonishing. It is not just that the public discourse has worsened: paranoid anti-intellectualism now _dominates_ the discourse in the US.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Sticking with it’s prescience: 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. I’d go as far as to say the protectionism and conspiratorial thinking is the result of an actual betrayal that the larger population have not emotionally reconciled. The right wing, along with the left wing, sold out to corporate interests in a steady manner over decades. Sometimes, it can be difficult to accept betrayal. It’s similar to grief, you can’t believe it’s real - Say it isn’t true, there must be another explanation. Tell me it’s these social welfare programs, and immigrants, say it isn’t the systematic erosion of the working class. My kid? Failed fifth grade? Me? A bad parent? Impossible, the teachers are bad, the education system .... Who is ready to accept this stuff immediately? The American public have been voting against their own interest for a long time. You have shitty healthcare and benefits because you got duped. You spent your tax money on foreign wars because you got duped. Your stock market is an unregulated casino where bankers toy with your money with impunity, and you’ll bail them out, again because you got duped into eating the bullshit. No, not my kid, he’d never murder anyone, the cops must have set him up. This is certainly the denial stage for the right wing. The Left has it’s own grief coming soon enough. Lots of promises, lots of stuff that’s never going to come true. Lots of stuff about the Democrats that’s no different than the Republicans, and one day they’ll have to conjure up some conspiracy to deal with the dupe. Some part of me almost understands the Trump voter. He transparently manipulates you (oxymoron?). If you’ve been lied to for decades, there is some dignity in accepting someone that straight lies to you versus the bells and whistles liars like some Presidents have been.
  - wwweston 6y ago
    > The Left has it’s own grief coming soon enough. Lots of promises, lots of stuff that’s never going to come true. Definitely lots of stuff that already hasn't come true, and the left can't seem to get a plurality in a primary. > Lots of stuff about the Democrats Oh wait I thought we were talking about the left.
    - runawaybottle 6y ago
      I mostly equate the two parties. The “left” as an actual voting block is synonymous with the Democrats, since a third party will never emerge in America, but it is 2020 so who knows.
      - furyg3 6y ago
        Just to be clear, a third party can definitely arise in America (it has happened before), but the FPTP system means that one of the existing parties must die in the process.
        mschuster91 6y ago
        > but the FPTP system means that one of the existing parties must die in the process. 2020 will be really interesting, assumes Trump loses this election... honestly I'd not be surprised when the Republicans break up.
        C1sc0cat 6y ago
        I must admit as an outsider I think that might happen. The GOP needs to do what John Smith, Tony and Gordan did and kick out the entryist faction that is destroying the party but I suspect its to late.
        reducesuffering 6y ago
        Libertarian Party has been historically closer to the Republicans, and is the 3rd most popular, getting up to 5-6% popular vote in some states. If the Republicans really try to contest a Democratic election win, and fail, that could be the devastating blow that would tip Libertarians into assuming the two-party spot.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  There is a ratcheting effect in US conservative politics whereby the social conservative voting bloc needs to be cultivated with ever more extreme positions just to keep them interested enough to vote for the Republican party. This has mostly manifest through increasing racism but is also manifest by increasing hatred towards intellectuals and thinking people in general. The pattern of social conservatives demanding increasingly extreme positions from their leaders is not dissimilar to how addicts become desensitized to their drug of addiction and need increasingly higher doses to get their high. In the 1960s, using dog-whistles to pander to anti-black racism (through the Southern Strategy[0]) was enough to bring out the social conservative vote for the Republican party. Over time, the demands of social conservatives have made the dog-whistles less quiet and the number of targeted groups has expanded from only African-Americans to Hispanics, people who live in urban areas, to scientists and other intellectuals, and now to all Democrats. By 2016, it took Trump's level of vile xenophobia--directed against anyone who wasn't a willfully ignorant racist--to motivate social conservatives to vote in large numbers. In 2020, the social conservatives are demanding fealty to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that is at odds with objective reality. Whatever degree of racist anti-intellectualism social conservatives demand in 2020 and 2024 will be worse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- dalbasal 6y ago
  I think a lot of modern anti-intellectualism is really more of a pseudo-intellectualism. It's anti-intellectual in the sense that it can be disdainful of intellectuals and intellectual institutions like newspapers, universities. But form-wise, it tends to be formulated around alternative facts, studies, experts and whatnot. Flat earth or intelligent design theories are more pseudo-intellectual than anti-intellectual. They have their own studies & citations... mimicking scientific intellectualism rather than dismissing it. The from is of rogue or dissenting intellectuals against the mainstream. If they're in a tussle with Richard Dawkins, the criticism is that he is not really being scientific. It's rarely a criticism of science as an approach.
  - gedy 6y ago
    Frankly, much of the concerning anti-intellectualism is coming from the university in the form of identity politics and stifling of discussion.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - api 6y ago
      A saying I've had for quite a while: the left pioneers really bad ideas, and the right implements them at scale. Identity politics is a great example. Late 20th century leftists brought identity politics into fashion, but it was the right that really took it and ran with it with Bush's politics of the "base" and then Trump's identity politics. A deeper example would be "culture jamming" and the maybe-ironic prankster/trickster political style. That came out of the 60s/70s left with stuff like the Church of the Subgenius, and stuff like alternate reality gaming (ARGs) pioneered in the 90s. The intellectual basis for it ultimately comes from postmodernism. The right is now weaponizing this style and implementing it at scale with Qanon. Edit since it won't let me reply: I'd define identity politics as the idea that your biology or cultural background places you in a group that should define your ideas and political affinities.
      - pjc50 6y ago
- giantg2 6y ago
  I had the check the publication date too. Not due to the content, but because you don't see pieces as well written and constructed in today's press.
  - elliekelly 6y ago
    It makes me wonder how long the authors spent research, writing, and revising. I suspect it took more time than would ever be allocated to crafting an article in 2020.
  - Nimitz14 6y ago
    You do, you probably just aren't willing to pay for them.
    - giantg2 6y ago
      Do you have any examples? I haven't seen newspaper articles, magazine articles, online articles, nor television reports of this quality. Most of these generate revenue through ads, but some are behind a paywall or require purchase.
      - ahartman00 6y ago
        I thought this was pretty good. It's a series. IIRC, the author talked to a pharmacist who was involved, discussed his role in TrueCrypt, and so much more. "He was a brilliant programmer and a vicious cartel boss, who became a prized U.S. government asset. The Atavist Magazine presents a story of an elusive criminal kingpin, told in weekly installments." https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind
        giantg2 6y ago
        It's not my style. It reads like a true crime novel. I like concise and matter-of-fact reporting. This has too much fluff and presumptive adjectives/adverbs for me. It seems like the series would probably make a good Netflix "docuseries" (I use quotes because I feel many of them are over dramatized). This does remind me... the closest articles I've seen to the quality of the OP's posted article I've found on Aeon. It can be hit or miss though.
- disown 6y ago
  Go watch Carlin's old comedy bits. He talks about disinformation, culture wars, etc. You think fake news and misinformation is new? "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day..." https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_sp... Go look up how "conspiracy theories" were used as a weapon by the media/elites to silence those they did not like just a few decades ago. It's all like generational groundhog day. Each generation lives through the same story over and over again.
  - tux1968 6y ago
    And this is why we should not be letting anyone convince us that they know best about which stories should be allowed and which should be suppressed. Those advocating for what amounts to a Ministry of Truth should really know better. We've already learned this lesson. This lever of power should not exist because it is impossible for it not to be abused. For all the downsides of too much information and a torrent of crappy opinions that exist on an open internet, it's still much better than the results you get with authoritarian oversight.
    - mistermann 6y ago
      And yet, observe the lovely greyed out color of the comment to which you are responding, among the large quantity of claims that it's only the right that engages in propaganda and self-serving delusional thinking. It would be quite interesting (but I suspect unpopular) for HN to have an experimental mode where people must give a reason for downvoting. :)
gerland 6y ago
Now look at the comments and you can immediately tell which do not show enough contempt for the right. They will be in light grey colour. Don't forget to give me that colour as well, it's a badge of honour at this point.
- purplecats 6y ago
  can you elaborate? i never understood what it meant when some text bodies are a different color. i assumed it meant it was negative karma, but i can't see comments' karma either.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Comments go increasingly lighter shades of grey when they are downvoted to less than or equal to zero.
- iron0013 6y ago
  They’ll be light grey at first, but if you whine hard enough about your downvotes you might also get the coveted [flagged] or even [dead] badges of honor :)
dalbasal 6y ago
Negative, paranoid narratives and rhetoric are just easy, and water flows downhill. I'm sure that the majority of political "programs or demand" have always been advanced with paranoid rhetoric. These are your enemies. This is how they deceive you. They are motivated by evil. I think the most common mistake to think of the solution as civility and/or facts or evidence based politics. The "paranoid style's" primary (IMO) attribute is presenting the opposition as beyond salvation. They disingenuous, immoral, lying, evil people. Believe nothing they say. Question their motives. etc. The actual opposite of this is broadly "Gandhism." Pared down: Assuming that your opposition is decent, responds to generous gestures, and can be convinced of your position because it is true. That doesn't mean that they aren't your opposition, but the idea is to recruit and oppose simultaneously. You're not trying to defeat anyone. Ultimately, politics is a proxy for conflict. People understand conflict. It's usually about creating a seething solidarity among your side to defeat an opponent. The "paranoid style" is also the rhetoric of generals motivating their troops. Your enemy is cruel and wicked.
- burlesona 6y ago
  I would also argue that the paranoid style is the natural consequence of the fully sorted national two party system competing in a “first past the post” winner take all electoral system. Multi-party democracies with proportional representation tend to be more civil, as the presence of multiple factions to negotiate with means you need allies, and you may find yourself allied with one party on one issue, while you’re aligned with another party on another issue. The requirement to operate by coalition makes demonization of the other party a bad strategy. For a deep dive on this I highly recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44244963-breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44244963-breaking-the...
  - dalbasal 6y ago
    IDK about that. Plenty of multi-party systems get vitriolic. It's true though that the campaign itself, in a two horse race, tends to be more negative.
    - 6y ago
leftyted 6y ago
His conclusion is that this style of paranoia belongs to "the dispossessed" rather than to one political faction. Or at least to those who feel dispossessed. Another data point for that thesis: Arabs are very into what we would call conspiracy theories. A decade ago there were all these polls showing fairly broad approval among Arabs for Osama Bin Laden. That makes sense when you consider other polls showing that most Arabs didn't think Bin Laden was involved in 9/11 [0]. Personally I have a soft spot for conspiracy theorists. At least Alex Jones is thinking for himself. Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are on HN a lot and I feel similarly about them -- which is not to say I put them in the same category as Jones. I think they get some stuff right, I appreciate their fire-and-brimstone approach (at least it's fun to read), but both of them frequently write sentences that cause my eyes to roll back in my head. I think the ultimate source of conspiratorial thinking is linked to reductio ad absurdum. In our minds, we seem drawn to the extremes. Everything reminds everyone of Hitler, Stalin, Maoist struggle sessions, and so on. Trump is a vile white-supremacist-fascist. Biden is kowtowing to critical-theory-reading neo-Marxists. Reducing an argument to the absurd makes sense in logic and math but perhaps not in the real world where there's no guarantee that an argument is based on anything logical. Or maybe it makes sense in the real world too. It seems to me, sometimes, that conspiracy theorists are actually fairly good at identifying the ultimate goal of an ideology. But ultimate goals are ideals, they're never realized and, in practice, they provide a direction rather than a destination. It's one thing to identify the ultimate goal of the ideology animating leftists but are you so sure our society shouldn't be a little more left-wing? Because, in practice, that's what electing the left-wing candidate is likely to accomplish. It's unlikely to recreate The Cultural Revolution. On the other hand, maybe the fact that such ultimate goals came astonishingly close to being realized, on the right and left, in the 20th century, is a good reason to be alarmed. [0] - https://newrepublic.com/article/94546/middle-east-radical-conspiracy-theories https://newrepublic.com/article/94546/middle-east-radical-co...
- roywiggins 6y ago
  > At least Alex Jones is thinking for himself Conspiracy theories are fun and all until stuff like this happens: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/this-sandy-hook-father-lives-in-hiding-because-of-conspiracy-theories-fueled-by-alex-jones/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/this-sandy-hook-f... And the then claimed that actually, he was literally psychotic when he was saying that stuff and blamed "mass group think": https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/alex-jones-psychosis-sandy-hook/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/alex-jones-psychosis-sandy...
zug_zug 6y ago
Well... bad people do conspire (i.e. cooperate)... just as much as good people do. It's not outlandish to worry that say the church is conspiring (e.g. Catholic abuse scandal). Of course solid evidence is always nice, but as with so many things it takes decades of mounting anecdotes and evidence to accumulate formal proof. Perhaps conspiracy theory is just the first stage of hypothesis refinement, and that's where they mostly die. There are many times it's actually a healthy and correct choice to mistrust motives of an institution (e.g. No thanks, I don't need that oxycodone), even if the mainstream consensus is a few years out. The challenge is, as it always was, to figure out which claims of bad-people-conspiring are true and which ones aren't. And when those bad-people-conspiring can taint/hide the information sources themselves (e.g. Nixon trying to withhold Watergate recordings by claiming "National Security", or astroturfing, or settle out of court, or using authority figures, or buying research) it becomes exponentially more complicated and the net gets cast much wider. This piece is a very detailed historical read, but I'm not sure it has any bearing.
Rick1 6y ago
Well the history of humanity is the inspiration for Game of Thrones. People conspire to grab power all the time. That has been the norm and not the exception. The means change but that's about it.
lefrenchy 6y ago
Highly recommend Rick Perlstein's book on Barry Goldwater [0] which recounts the Goldwater run in '64 and feels eerily similar in many ways to where we are today [0]: https://www.rickperlstein.net/before-the-storm/ https://www.rickperlstein.net/before-the-storm/
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/nVtgC https://archive.is/nVtgC
viburnum 6y ago
Hofstadter has been mostly discredited. Jeet Heer recently wrote an appraisal: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/richard-hofstadter-library-america-review/ https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/richard-hofstadter... Tom Frank's new book, "The People, No", is scathing about Hofstadter's elitism and misportrayal of the Populist movement (Hofstadter only used anti-Populist secondary sources).

120 points by samclemens 6y ago

Article written in 1964... It is astonishing. It is not just that the public discourse has worsened: paranoid anti-intellectualism now _dominates_ the discourse in the US.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Sticking with it’s prescience: 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. I’d go as far as to say the protectionism and conspiratorial thinking is the result of an actual betrayal that the larger population have not emotionally reconciled. The right wing, along with the left wing, sold out to corporate interests in a steady manner over decades. Sometimes, it can be difficult to accept betrayal. It’s similar to grief, you can’t believe it’s real - Say it isn’t true, there must be another explanation. Tell me it’s these social welfare programs, and immigrants, say it isn’t the systematic erosion of the working class. My kid? Failed fifth grade? Me? A bad parent? Impossible, the teachers are bad, the education system .... Who is ready to accept this stuff immediately? The American public have been voting against their own interest for a long time. You have shitty healthcare and benefits because you got duped. You spent your tax money on foreign wars because you got duped. Your stock market is an unregulated casino where bankers toy with your money with impunity, and you’ll bail them out, again because you got duped into eating the bullshit. No, not my kid, he’d never murder anyone, the cops must have set him up. This is certainly the denial stage for the right wing. The Left has it’s own grief coming soon enough. Lots of promises, lots of stuff that’s never going to come true. Lots of stuff about the Democrats that’s no different than the Republicans, and one day they’ll have to conjure up some conspiracy to deal with the dupe. Some part of me almost understands the Trump voter. He transparently manipulates you (oxymoron?). If you’ve been lied to for decades, there is some dignity in accepting someone that straight lies to you versus the bells and whistles liars like some Presidents have been.
- wwweston 6y ago
  > The Left has it’s own grief coming soon enough. Lots of promises, lots of stuff that’s never going to come true. Definitely lots of stuff that already hasn't come true, and the left can't seem to get a plurality in a primary. > Lots of stuff about the Democrats Oh wait I thought we were talking about the left.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    I mostly equate the two parties. The “left” as an actual voting block is synonymous with the Democrats, since a third party will never emerge in America, but it is 2020 so who knows.
    - furyg3 6y ago
      Just to be clear, a third party can definitely arise in America (it has happened before), but the FPTP system means that one of the existing parties must die in the process.
      - mschuster91 6y ago
        > but the FPTP system means that one of the existing parties must die in the process. 2020 will be really interesting, assumes Trump loses this election... honestly I'd not be surprised when the Republicans break up.
        C1sc0cat 6y ago
        I must admit as an outsider I think that might happen. The GOP needs to do what John Smith, Tony and Gordan did and kick out the entryist faction that is destroying the party but I suspect its to late.
        reducesuffering 6y ago
        Libertarian Party has been historically closer to the Republicans, and is the 3rd most popular, getting up to 5-6% popular vote in some states. If the Republicans really try to contest a Democratic election win, and fail, that could be the devastating blow that would tip Libertarians into assuming the two-party spot.
bleepblorp 6y ago
There is a ratcheting effect in US conservative politics whereby the social conservative voting bloc needs to be cultivated with ever more extreme positions just to keep them interested enough to vote for the Republican party. This has mostly manifest through increasing racism but is also manifest by increasing hatred towards intellectuals and thinking people in general. The pattern of social conservatives demanding increasingly extreme positions from their leaders is not dissimilar to how addicts become desensitized to their drug of addiction and need increasingly higher doses to get their high. In the 1960s, using dog-whistles to pander to anti-black racism (through the Southern Strategy[0]) was enough to bring out the social conservative vote for the Republican party. Over time, the demands of social conservatives have made the dog-whistles less quiet and the number of targeted groups has expanded from only African-Americans to Hispanics, people who live in urban areas, to scientists and other intellectuals, and now to all Democrats. By 2016, it took Trump's level of vile xenophobia--directed against anyone who wasn't a willfully ignorant racist--to motivate social conservatives to vote in large numbers. In 2020, the social conservatives are demanding fealty to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that is at odds with objective reality. Whatever degree of racist anti-intellectualism social conservatives demand in 2020 and 2024 will be worse. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dalbasal 6y ago
I think a lot of modern anti-intellectualism is really more of a pseudo-intellectualism. It's anti-intellectual in the sense that it can be disdainful of intellectuals and intellectual institutions like newspapers, universities. But form-wise, it tends to be formulated around alternative facts, studies, experts and whatnot. Flat earth or intelligent design theories are more pseudo-intellectual than anti-intellectual. They have their own studies & citations... mimicking scientific intellectualism rather than dismissing it. The from is of rogue or dissenting intellectuals against the mainstream. If they're in a tussle with Richard Dawkins, the criticism is that he is not really being scientific. It's rarely a criticism of science as an approach.
- gedy 6y ago
  Frankly, much of the concerning anti-intellectualism is coming from the university in the form of identity politics and stifling of discussion.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - api 6y ago
    A saying I've had for quite a while: the left pioneers really bad ideas, and the right implements them at scale. Identity politics is a great example. Late 20th century leftists brought identity politics into fashion, but it was the right that really took it and ran with it with Bush's politics of the "base" and then Trump's identity politics. A deeper example would be "culture jamming" and the maybe-ironic prankster/trickster political style. That came out of the 60s/70s left with stuff like the Church of the Subgenius, and stuff like alternate reality gaming (ARGs) pioneered in the 90s. The intellectual basis for it ultimately comes from postmodernism. The right is now weaponizing this style and implementing it at scale with Qanon. Edit since it won't let me reply: I'd define identity politics as the idea that your biology or cultural background places you in a group that should define your ideas and political affinities.
    - pjc50 6y ago
giantg2 6y ago
I had the check the publication date too. Not due to the content, but because you don't see pieces as well written and constructed in today's press.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  It makes me wonder how long the authors spent research, writing, and revising. I suspect it took more time than would ever be allocated to crafting an article in 2020.
- Nimitz14 6y ago
  You do, you probably just aren't willing to pay for them.
  - giantg2 6y ago
    Do you have any examples? I haven't seen newspaper articles, magazine articles, online articles, nor television reports of this quality. Most of these generate revenue through ads, but some are behind a paywall or require purchase.
    - ahartman00 6y ago
      I thought this was pretty good. It's a series. IIRC, the author talked to a pharmacist who was involved, discussed his role in TrueCrypt, and so much more. "He was a brilliant programmer and a vicious cartel boss, who became a prized U.S. government asset. The Atavist Magazine presents a story of an elusive criminal kingpin, told in weekly installments." https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind https://magazine.atavist.com/the-mastermind
      - giantg2 6y ago
        It's not my style. It reads like a true crime novel. I like concise and matter-of-fact reporting. This has too much fluff and presumptive adjectives/adverbs for me. It seems like the series would probably make a good Netflix "docuseries" (I use quotes because I feel many of them are over dramatized). This does remind me... the closest articles I've seen to the quality of the OP's posted article I've found on Aeon. It can be hit or miss though.
disown 6y ago
Go watch Carlin's old comedy bits. He talks about disinformation, culture wars, etc. You think fake news and misinformation is new? "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day..." https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_sp... Go look up how "conspiracy theories" were used as a weapon by the media/elites to silence those they did not like just a few decades ago. It's all like generational groundhog day. Each generation lives through the same story over and over again.
- tux1968 6y ago
  And this is why we should not be letting anyone convince us that they know best about which stories should be allowed and which should be suppressed. Those advocating for what amounts to a Ministry of Truth should really know better. We've already learned this lesson. This lever of power should not exist because it is impossible for it not to be abused. For all the downsides of too much information and a torrent of crappy opinions that exist on an open internet, it's still much better than the results you get with authoritarian oversight.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    And yet, observe the lovely greyed out color of the comment to which you are responding, among the large quantity of claims that it's only the right that engages in propaganda and self-serving delusional thinking. It would be quite interesting (but I suspect unpopular) for HN to have an experimental mode where people must give a reason for downvoting. :)

gerland 6y ago

Now look at the comments and you can immediately tell which do not show enough contempt for the right. They will be in light grey colour. Don't forget to give me that colour as well, it's a badge of honour at this point.

purplecats 6y ago
can you elaborate? i never understood what it meant when some text bodies are a different color. i assumed it meant it was negative karma, but i can't see comments' karma either.
- arethuza 6y ago
  Comments go increasingly lighter shades of grey when they are downvoted to less than or equal to zero.
iron0013 6y ago
They’ll be light grey at first, but if you whine hard enough about your downvotes you might also get the coveted [flagged] or even [dead] badges of honor :)

dalbasal 6y ago

Negative, paranoid narratives and rhetoric are just easy, and water flows downhill. I'm sure that the majority of political "programs or demand" have always been advanced with paranoid rhetoric. These are your enemies. This is how they deceive you. They are motivated by evil. I think the most common mistake to think of the solution as civility and/or facts or evidence based politics. The "paranoid style's" primary (IMO) attribute is presenting the opposition as beyond salvation. They disingenuous, immoral, lying, evil people. Believe nothing they say. Question their motives. etc. The actual opposite of this is broadly "Gandhism." Pared down: Assuming that your opposition is decent, responds to generous gestures, and can be convinced of your position because it is true. That doesn't mean that they aren't your opposition, but the idea is to recruit and oppose simultaneously. You're not trying to defeat anyone. Ultimately, politics is a proxy for conflict. People understand conflict. It's usually about creating a seething solidarity among your side to defeat an opponent. The "paranoid style" is also the rhetoric of generals motivating their troops. Your enemy is cruel and wicked.

burlesona 6y ago
I would also argue that the paranoid style is the natural consequence of the fully sorted national two party system competing in a “first past the post” winner take all electoral system. Multi-party democracies with proportional representation tend to be more civil, as the presence of multiple factions to negotiate with means you need allies, and you may find yourself allied with one party on one issue, while you’re aligned with another party on another issue. The requirement to operate by coalition makes demonization of the other party a bad strategy. For a deep dive on this I highly recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44244963-breaking-the-two-party-doom-loop https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44244963-breaking-the...
- dalbasal 6y ago
  IDK about that. Plenty of multi-party systems get vitriolic. It's true though that the campaign itself, in a two horse race, tends to be more negative.
  - 6y ago

leftyted 6y ago

His conclusion is that this style of paranoia belongs to "the dispossessed" rather than to one political faction. Or at least to those who feel dispossessed. Another data point for that thesis: Arabs are very into what we would call conspiracy theories. A decade ago there were all these polls showing fairly broad approval among Arabs for Osama Bin Laden. That makes sense when you consider other polls showing that most Arabs didn't think Bin Laden was involved in 9/11 [0]. Personally I have a soft spot for conspiracy theorists. At least Alex Jones is thinking for himself. Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are on HN a lot and I feel similarly about them -- which is not to say I put them in the same category as Jones. I think they get some stuff right, I appreciate their fire-and-brimstone approach (at least it's fun to read), but both of them frequently write sentences that cause my eyes to roll back in my head. I think the ultimate source of conspiratorial thinking is linked to reductio ad absurdum. In our minds, we seem drawn to the extremes. Everything reminds everyone of Hitler, Stalin, Maoist struggle sessions, and so on. Trump is a vile white-supremacist-fascist. Biden is kowtowing to critical-theory-reading neo-Marxists. Reducing an argument to the absurd makes sense in logic and math but perhaps not in the real world where there's no guarantee that an argument is based on anything logical. Or maybe it makes sense in the real world too. It seems to me, sometimes, that conspiracy theorists are actually fairly good at identifying the ultimate goal of an ideology. But ultimate goals are ideals, they're never realized and, in practice, they provide a direction rather than a destination. It's one thing to identify the ultimate goal of the ideology animating leftists but are you so sure our society shouldn't be a little more left-wing? Because, in practice, that's what electing the left-wing candidate is likely to accomplish. It's unlikely to recreate The Cultural Revolution. On the other hand, maybe the fact that such ultimate goals came astonishingly close to being realized, on the right and left, in the 20th century, is a good reason to be alarmed. [0] - https://newrepublic.com/article/94546/middle-east-radical-conspiracy-theories https://newrepublic.com/article/94546/middle-east-radical-co...

roywiggins 6y ago
> At least Alex Jones is thinking for himself Conspiracy theories are fun and all until stuff like this happens: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/this-sandy-hook-father-lives-in-hiding-because-of-conspiracy-theories-fueled-by-alex-jones/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/this-sandy-hook-f... And the then claimed that actually, he was literally psychotic when he was saying that stuff and blamed "mass group think": https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/alex-jones-psychosis-sandy-hook/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/alex-jones-psychosis-sandy...

zug_zug 6y ago

Well... bad people do conspire (i.e. cooperate)... just as much as good people do. It's not outlandish to worry that say the church is conspiring (e.g. Catholic abuse scandal). Of course solid evidence is always nice, but as with so many things it takes decades of mounting anecdotes and evidence to accumulate formal proof. Perhaps conspiracy theory is just the first stage of hypothesis refinement, and that's where they mostly die. There are many times it's actually a healthy and correct choice to mistrust motives of an institution (e.g. No thanks, I don't need that oxycodone), even if the mainstream consensus is a few years out. The challenge is, as it always was, to figure out which claims of bad-people-conspiring are true and which ones aren't. And when those bad-people-conspiring can taint/hide the information sources themselves (e.g. Nixon trying to withhold Watergate recordings by claiming "National Security", or astroturfing, or settle out of court, or using authority figures, or buying research) it becomes exponentially more complicated and the net gets cast much wider. This piece is a very detailed historical read, but I'm not sure it has any bearing.

Rick1 6y ago

Well the history of humanity is the inspiration for Game of Thrones. People conspire to grab power all the time. That has been the norm and not the exception. The means change but that's about it.

lefrenchy 6y ago

Highly recommend Rick Perlstein's book on Barry Goldwater [0] which recounts the Goldwater run in '64 and feels eerily similar in many ways to where we are today [0]: https://www.rickperlstein.net/before-the-storm/ https://www.rickperlstein.net/before-the-storm/

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/nVtgC https://archive.is/nVtgC

viburnum 6y ago

Hofstadter has been mostly discredited. Jeet Heer recently wrote an appraisal: https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/richard-hofstadter-library-america-review/ https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/richard-hofstadter... Tom Frank's new book, "The People, No", is scathing about Hofstadter's elitism and misportrayal of the Populist movement (Hofstadter only used anti-Populist secondary sources).