The Paranoid Style in American Politics: And Other Essays [Paperback]

Richard Hofstadter (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Recent months have witnessed an attack of unprecedented passion and ferocity against the national government. The Republican Party has apparently embarked on a crusade to destroy national standards, national projects, and national regulations and to transfer domestic governing authority from the national government to the states...Unbridled rhetoric is having consequences far beyond anything that antigovernment politicians intend. The flow of angry words seems to have activated and, in a sense, legitimized what the historian Richard Hofstadter called the `paranoid strain' in American politics. (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. Wall Street Journal 19950607)

The crank and his following have attracted a gifted historian in Richard Hofstadter...His account stands as the most balanced and authoritative analysis we have of a formidable and apparently permanent force in American politic. (C. Vann Woodward New York Times Book Review )

Here are a series of episodes in the American imagination--from anti-Masonry and Populism to McCarthyism and the Birch Society--each of them informed with a distinctive intelligence...Hofstadter's status theory helps us understand a political history that goes far beyond the issues of the fifties and sixties which it was invoked to explain. (New Republic )

Professor Hofstadter...casts an incandescent light on the tactics of the Far Right which we crucially need to understand and to counter if we are to debate and formulate foreign policy equal to the needs of the times...Professor Hofstadter's essays...are calm, clear, dispassionate and devastating--a joy to read. (Harper's )

About the Author

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Richard Hofstadter (1916-1970) was De Witt Clinton Professor of American History at Columbia University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 346 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (February 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674654617
• ISBN-13: 978-0674654617
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #350,731 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

120 of 128 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The more things change... March 31, 2009

By Music Fan

Format:Paperback

Don't be put off by the lame cover design. The late Mr. Hofstadter's book deserves your attention, particularly in light of recent American history.

'The Paranoid Style' is in fact a collection of essays, the first four of which are thematically-related studies of American hyper-conservatism. (I won't discuss the other essays in this review.) In the first, Hofstadter brings to light earlier historical avatars of conservative paranoia, reaching back to 18th century fears of 'Illuminati' and Freemasons, and 19th century anti-Catholic sentiment. Hofstadter then contextualizes the then-current anti-communist movement and McCarthyism as the latest examples of a 'style' of American political rhetoric that cannot brook coincidence, and that, in contrast, prefers to see historical events, which are largely beyond our control, as the evidence of a vast and perfect conspiracy to destroy America and its values.

In the next essays, Hofstadter engages with what he calls 'pseudo-conservatism,' a philosophy embodied in those ultra-right wing movements that do not seek to conserve or guide our social institutions at all, but instead wish to tear them out root and branch, on the grounds of their complete and utter corruption. At the time, Hofstadter's targets were right-wing organizations like the John Birch Society, but above all Barry Goldwater and his supporters. These 'pseudo-conservatives' rejected completely the moderate Republican leadership of the time, and sometimes went so far as to accuse them of treason. What the pseudo-cons offered instead of the generally successful continuation of New Deal social policy or the careful stand-off of the Cold War, was the complete reversal of government intervention into social welfare and a hyper-aggressive stance toward communism that did not deem global thermo-nuclear war to be an unacceptable outcome.

The portrait of Barry Goldwater is particularly chilling. Goldwater's instrumentalization of 'moral values' as an electoral wedge, and his Manichean and apocalyptic vision of world politics -- reflected in the title of his book "Why not Victory?" - thankfully did not seduce the American electorate of 1964. But Goldwater's influence on Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush is beyond dispute.

96 of 107 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Differentiating Conservatism from Fringe Lunacy December 5, 2001

By William Hare

Format:Paperback

During the fifties, and up to the time of his death in the sixties, Richard Hofstadter was one of America's most renowned historians with two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit. He was at his intellectual peak when, as one of America's eminent authorities of his country's political ideologies, he tackled the developing phenomenon of the early sixties' right wing extremism under the guise of conservatism. He differentiates between the traditional American conservatism espoused by the likes of President Herbert Hoover and Senator Robert Taft alongside the venom of Robert Welch's John Birch Society, in which, as the group's idea man, Welch referred to Dwight D. Eisenhower as a "dedicated and conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy."

Hoftstadter delineates how fringe rightist elements took over the Republican Party and rallied behind the banner of Arizona's Senator Barry M. Goldwater, resulting in one of the party's most calamitous losses in the 1964 presidential election against incumbent Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson.

The work has a timely ring as an historical analytical measuring rod in comprehending the activities of current right wing movements, such as the Christian Right behind the banners of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and its link to the militant anti-abortion movement, alongside earlier rightist political philosophies and their vigorous adherents such as Welch and television commentator Dan Smoot.

51 of 61 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The More Things Change. . . March 29, 2010

By Jonathan Hoffman

Format:Paperback

I read this book when it was first published in the 1960's. Now, gee, just when I had completely forgotten about it, along comes the Tea Party movement and those wackoes declaring Obama the first Communist president since Eisenhower, and others shouting racial and homophobic epithets at congressmen. As I recall, Prof. Hoffstedter said this kind of uprising occurs about once every 20 years or so (and, here in the Pacific Northwest, I recall the Posse Comitatus crowd in the late 1970's who believed the IRS was illegal because Ohio wasn't a state, or something like that, so this sort of thing seems about as regular as Halley's Comet, just more frequent and less exciting to watch). But I suppose that if the original Tea Party in 1773 had just shortened their slogan to, "No taxation," either we would have begun the American Revolution a little sooner, or (more likely)the American revolutionaries would have been written off as a bunch of nut jobs and all the rest of us would still be singing God Save the Queen.
But Hoffstedter's book really made sense of these periodic paroxysms in our society and, thanks to the wackoes, the book retains its great vitality and relevance. Be sure to buy the book now, though, before the Stamp Act party returns in 2030. And I can't wait for the Know-Nothings (or are they hiding amidst the Tea Party?)