Never going to NOT upvote this. Essential read on the US.
derbOac · 2h ago
There's research pointing out "the paranoid style" is everywhere in the world, just controlled or checked to various extents in different places and different times. Still a good read for perspective.
bryanrasmussen · 1h ago
Sure, but the paranoid style in politics will manifest differently in different cultures. This is about the Paranoid style in American Politics.
like_any_other · 2h ago
The list of paranoid organizations suffers from survivorship bias - every "paranoid" John Birch Society has a Ukrainian Insurgent Army or Blue Shirts Society counterpart. In fact, given the populations of the USSR and China, one is more likely to find oneself in the latter sort of organization than the former.
The other problem is special pleading - the author adds more and more conditions on what constitutes the "paranoid style", until he's able to isolate the phenomenon to mostly the right half of the political spectrum. Meanwhile one can make a career of blaming everything on capitalism, colonialism, racism, or whiteness [1], and remain safely in the clear.
[1] And many have, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Ignatiev or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag, employed by the very education system the author claims it is paranoid to believe contains traitors - sorry, not "contains traitors", the author deftly hedges it as requiring "the whole apparatus" to have fallen into enemy hands. An unusually strong condition, given it is applied to something so vague as a "style". I'd call it a strawman, if it wasn't written by such an eminent author.
rcakebread · 3h ago
I first read this after hearing the band, The Paranoid Style.
hotep99 · 4h ago
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
The other problem is special pleading - the author adds more and more conditions on what constitutes the "paranoid style", until he's able to isolate the phenomenon to mostly the right half of the political spectrum. Meanwhile one can make a career of blaming everything on capitalism, colonialism, racism, or whiteness [1], and remain safely in the clear.
[1] And many have, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noel_Ignatiev or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Sontag, employed by the very education system the author claims it is paranoid to believe contains traitors - sorry, not "contains traitors", the author deftly hedges it as requiring "the whole apparatus" to have fallen into enemy hands. An unusually strong condition, given it is applied to something so vague as a "style". I'd call it a strawman, if it wasn't written by such an eminent author.