Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965);
Thumbnail critique: Not a bad analysis, but over-reliance on psychological theories and "pluralist" school theories that the proto-neoconservatives used to bash the left and dissent in general as "extremist."
Damian Thompson: the conspiracy theories Richard Hofstadter described as the "paranoid style" are really derived from apocalyptic beliefs. [Thompson, Damian. 1996. The End of Time: Faith and Fear in the Shadow of the Millennium. London: Sinclair-Stevenson.]
Mark Fenster: conspiracy theories are a misdirected attempt to figure out how power is exercised in a society.
Michael Barkun:
===Conspiracism is, first and foremost, an explanation of politics. It purports to locate and identify the true loci of power and thereby illuminate previously hidden decision making. The conspirators, often referred to as a shadow government, operate a concealed political system behind the visible one, whose functionaries are either ciphers or puppets.
This is just a tiny survey of post-Hofstadter texts:
David Brion Davis, ed., The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the Present (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972);
Richard O. Curry and Thomas M. Brown (eds.), 'Introduction', Conspiracy: The Fear of Subversion in American History (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972);
George Johnson, Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics (Los Angeles: Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin, 1983);
Frank P. Mintz, The Liberty Lobby and the American Right: Race, Conspiracy, and Culture (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985);
David H. Bennett, The Party of Fear: The American Far Right from Nativism to the Militia Movement, (New York: Vintage Books, revised [1988] 1995);
Patricia A. Turner, I Heard it Through the Grapevine, Rumor in African-American Culture, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993
Joel Kovel, Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America, (New York, Basic Books, 1994).
Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes, and Where It Comes From (New York: Free Press, 1997).
Daniel Pipes, The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy, (New York: St. Martins, 1998);
Mark Fenster, Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999;
Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort, (New York: Guiford, 2000);
Robert Alan Goldberg, Enemies Within: The Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001);
Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (Berkeley: 2003)
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From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org on behalf of Doug Henwood Sent: Thu 3/9/2006 3:45 PM To: lbo-talk Subject: [lbo-talk] Hofstadter
Speaking of Hofstadter, what is his reputation these days? It's amazing how fresh so much of the paranoid style seems today.
Doug ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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