The Paranoid Style in American Politics

How can a country be captured by rumours, surreal conspiracy theories and the most brazen of conmen? The historian Richard Hofstadter asked these questions in the 1960s, amid fears of rising extremism in America. Yet his dazzling dissection of the paranoid worldview – a brew of overheated exaggeration, suspicion and perceived victimhood that can derail entire nations – is a lesson for the ages in the seductive politics of the irrational.

In an era where we ourselves feel assailed by endless paranoid public statements it is comforting to read Hofstadter’s incisive refusal to see these as something new. In his discussion of famous and obscure untruths, some of which have profoundly impacted American domestic and foreign policy, he provides the antidote for the present day.

‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’ was first published as an essay in Harper’s Magazine in late 1964 and has been argued over ever since.