The Paranoid Style in American Politics

The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral supermansinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid's interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone's will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction (the Catholic confessional).

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship, even of pedantry....

On the other hand, the sexual freedom often attributed to the enemy, his lack of moral inhibition, his possession of especially effective techniques for fulfilling his desires, give exponents of the paranoid style an opportunity to project and express unacknowledgeable aspects of their own psychological concerns[through] a preoccupation with illicit sex. Very often the fantasies of true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed

Renegades and Pedants

A special significance attaches to the figure of the renegade from the enemy cause....In some part, the special authority accorded the renegade derives from the obsession with secrecy so characteristics of such movements: the renegade is the man or woman who has been in the Arcanum, and brings forth with him or her the final verification of suspicions which might otherwise have been doubted by a skeptical world. But I think there is a deeper eschatological significance that attaches to the person of the renegade: in the spiritual wrestling match between good and evil which is the paranoid's archetypal model of the world, the renegade is living proof that all the conversions are not made by the wrong side. He brings with him the promise of redemption and victory.

A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates :evidence." The difference between this "evidence" and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it....

The Double Sufferer

The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon. Studying the millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been consideringa style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: "the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable propheciessystematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque."

This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to make the conjectureit is no more than thatthat a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties. In American experience ethnic and religious conflict have plainly been a major focus for militant and suspicious minds of this sort, but class conflicts also can mobilize such energies. Perhaps the central situation conducive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency is a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular social interestperhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demandsare shut out of the political process. Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of powerand this through distorting lensesand have no chance to observe its actual machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might enlighten himand in any case he resists enlightenment.

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.
karws.gso.uri.edu

WOW then I thought I had problems. Whewwwwww thanks righties for making me feel a whole lot better. WOWZER

Larry

Doc, I'm curious about why you cut out the part about the masonic and illuminati involvements. this is actually the most important part.

I am a 32nd mason myself and I can tell you not to believe all the conspiracy stuff. But on the other hand I will tell you to be afraid, be very afraid.

I will also tell you there is not a god damned thing you can do about it. So kiss you children everyday and tell them you love them. And let the non-illuminated judeo-christians and arabs be happy in their ignorant paranoia.

Everything you read will tell you that the illuminati died in the late 1700's (coincidentally around the time of the american and french revolutions). They only went undergroud, having become too visible. You have to remember that these guys planned the new world order in the days when a majority of people couldn't even read or write and were still animalistic in nature.

All the 'founding fathers' were masons, as well as every president, except kennedy. He was still a mason, he just didn't know it.

Can you imagine how a fellow living in the days of the new american government felt as these things, war and planning a civilization, were unfolding. Now, we have a new unfolding.

During the last unfolding (the great depression) FDR put the marks of the illuminati right on our money for all to see. Now america has served it's purpose and that purpose is to provide a seat and a capitol (and capital) for the new world order.

There will be death and destruction. The greatest curse of americanism is our own success in business, law, science and medicine. There are too many people and most of those people are scheduled for extermination because the earth cannot sustain them. Please don't minimize this point. Because of our success, we have become fat, lazy, unintelligent and ultimately useless in the grand scheme of things. I am talking about all countries no, not just america.

The illuminati is alive and well. They hold no political idealology. Pick a name you want to call them and you will be right. The trilateral Commission, the elders of zion, the new world order, Skull and bones, hundreds of others. I only offer one piece of evidence.

Notice your politicians will always agree on points important to the illuminated ones, even though they hold opposite political views, they still agree on essential points. so you may as well pick the best looking one, it's as good a barometer as any.

The paranoia is real, the arrogance is real, as is the ignorance and the lack of depth. So, since the fix is already in, you may as well enjoy it.

and don't forget to kiss your children.

BTW, great article, thanks.

"Doc, I'm curious about why you cut out the part about the masonic and illuminati involvements. this is actually the most important part."

It's a very important part of the argument, I agree. However, I thought I'd get hammerned aplenty with the length of the excerpts as it was.

I'd encourage anyone with whom these excerpts resonate to check out the entire piece (linked above). Hofsteadter broke the essay into these pieces of real meat: "Illuminism and Masonry," "The Jesuit Threat," and then wheels on Joe McCarthy.

Lip,

Are the Masons going to be riding those go-karts and mini-bikes and wearing those red fezzes when they take over the world?

The Masons I know are all Methodists or Baptists. They get together to enjoy 'secret' symbols and rites that tie them together in fraternity while funding children's hospitals.

Are these the guys you are talking about?

"He was still a mason, he just didn't know it."

Interesting observation, Lipzoidial.

I thought those were Shriners. Not Masons Silver Ironist

Larry

Larry, Shriners are Masons.

Are these the guys you are talking about?

#7 | Posted by silver_ironist

Shriners are the public face of masons. some people call them 'drunk masons'. As an organization, masonic lodge cannot have any moral vices while lodge is in session, smoking, drinking, dishonor, discorn, that kind of thing.

To be a shriner, you have to be a 3rd degree mason and then a 32nd degree mason, then you can be a shriner. Some masons, being religious men, have aproblem with the shriners, but the work they do overrides that.

Their only purpose is to raise money for the burn and orthopedic hospitals. You don't get the kind of money they need from praying, you have to rub elbows with the people that have that kind of money. Do you realize that they have 22 hospitals and they have never charged a patient one red cent? They run all these hospitals off the interest of their bequests. My estate is going there when i keel over.

that means over the top behavior and yes, even a little debauchery. but the hospitals offer all their care for free and is still the greatest philnathropic operation on the planet.

But the other part of all this is that the 3rd degree masons and the 32nd degree masons and the shriners are only proving grounds for the higher level activities that common masons know nothing about. Kind of a wheel within a wheel or an inner circle.

Many people have joined the masons, thinking they were gonna learn the secrets of the universe in 2 weeks (it takes on year to get the third degree), only to find out that the masons have one goal in life.

To help men become better men morally in their church of their choice, in their schools and governments and to help the friends and neighbors of men be better humans and citizens and to try to ease suffering all the while avoiding doing these things for self aggrandizement. That's all. Since it is an organization with secrets, it is looked at as an evil conspiracy when in fact it is the only thing i can think of that has not been evilized and tainted by post-modernism.