Whether in imagining a “vast right-wing conspiracy” out to destroy her philandering husband, or in claiming she lost the 2016 election because Vladimir Putin had been conspiring with Donald Trump for five or more years to deliver the vote to the Republican, Hillary Clinton demonstrated the left was every bit as capable of divining conspiracies as the right. But she has earned the right to garble Hofstadter’s core principle: After all, she has done more than anyone in half a century to demonstrate that Hofstadter, at least as he is exalted in the left’s popular imagination, was wrong. “There’s always been a kind of paranoid streak in American politics,” Clinton replied in a slight misquote. Delivered first as a lecture in 1963 and then published as an essay in 1964, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” made the case that conservatives were prone to kooky conspiracies.įirearms and Ammunition on sale now: $150 off $1,000+ (use code: APRIL150) The woke feel unsafe and look to government to protect them, whether with anti-COVID mask mandates or a federal presence at local school board meetings.Ītlantic staff writer Jennifer Senior recently asked Hillary Clinton whether her critics evinced a persistent “paranoid style.” Senior was clearly referencing the famous evisceration of the right by historian Richard Hofstadter.

The Constitution is in crisis, threatened by white supremacists whose systemic racism has turned the parents of grade-schoolers into domestic terrorists. Traitors conspire with the nation’s enemies, foreign and domestic. Not that it necessarily matters: As environmental activists assure us, imminent cataclysm threatens the very survival of life on this planet. Capitol, the left warns that the institutions of government are under assault by shadowy, treasonous forces. Subscribe for free to the America First Report newsletter.

Hofstadter the paranoid style