The paranoid style in american politics5/20/2023 ![]() ![]() I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. 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. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. ![]() 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. ![]() American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. It had been around a long time before the Radical Right discovered it-and its targets have ranged from “the international bankers” to Masons, Jesuits, and munitions makers. ![]()
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