Collective Paranoia: A Study in American Politics

757 Words2 Pages

2.2.Ideological reason There is also another explanatory model, it was thought up by the American historian Richard Hofstadter. He has written the book "Paranoid style in the American policy" where says that there is some energy of collective paranoia which at the crisis moments concentrates and splashed out in the conspiracy theory that leads to quite noticeable political consequences. Richard Hofstadter, one of the founders of the school of consensus, investigated the subconscious motives of political behavior, connecting the conflicts in the history with changes in social psychology. In His work “The paranoid Style of American politics“ gave the definition of a conspiracy theory as a belief in the existence of a ‘vast, insidious, preternaturally effective international conspiratorial network designed to perpetrate acts of the most fiendish character’ (p.14)Realizing offensive character of a "paranoid" label, Hofstadter emphasizes that he …show more content…

To find universal characteristics of style, Hofstadter goes to "paranoid classics": anti-Masonic literature of the 1820th and promotion of anti-Catholicism in the 19th century. Hofstadter allocates several signs of the paranoid style. The central image — a great conspiracy, the huge, but "silent" machine of influence which is directed to blast and destruct the habitual conduct of life. Consequences of a conspiracy seem apocalyptical: the crash of the whole worlds, political orders, systems of human values. People who have a paranoid style not just see plot signs in these or those historical plots, they consider a grandiose plot as the motivating force of events. Disability to a compromise, but readiness to fight up to the end is crucial. Paranoids agree only to an unconditional victory. The existence of so powerful and dangerous enemy is absolutely unacceptable therefore he has to be eliminated. Similar irreconcilability forces to set the unattainable

Open Document