Being on the other side of the political divide, I would probably put the emphasis on this differently, but Lexington has a point (sorry, premium content, but you might be able to watch an ad like I did):
RICHARD HOFSTADTER’S classic essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”, was aimed at the American right (it was published in November 1964 in the wake of the Goldwater insurgency). But it is hard to read it these days without first thinking of the other side of the political divide….
Hofstadter argued that the politics of paranoia is fuelled by a sense of dispossession—by fury at your loss of relative power to rising groups. In the 1960s, the right was driven by a sense that it was being eclipsed by cosmopolitans and intellectuals. Now the left thinks it is losing power to businessmen and suburbanites. It cannot believe that the north-east—the vortex of civilised America—is losing influence to the South and the West, to people who believe in God and guns, to Mr Bush.
Actually, I think it’s a demonstrable fact that the Northeast has lost influence to the South and West. What Lexington stops just short of doing - and what I think would be really interesting - is the class genesis of the left’s new paranoid style. Not genesis in the sense of a "we’re losing power, let’s blame someone" dynamic that’s fairly conscious and on the surface. But a deeper class reading; after all, Hofstadter’s thesis wasn’t that the American right bristled at being powerless, it’s that class ressentiment feuled an anxiety erupting into witchhunts, fluoride scares and other diversions that exceeded the issue of control of political power. I suspect that a similar dynamic may be at play today, with those who are more invested in cultural capital than economic (academics, knowledge workers, the culturally aspiring fraction of the petit bourgeoisie) feeling eclipsed by an economic boom and bust that has left their credentials unsure, their status disputed. Just a hypothesis.
Of course, let’s not forget that the right has its paranoid style still - many conservatives imagine themselves victims of a nefarious Hollywood elite, even though the GOP firmly controls the government. And I see absolutely no evidence for Lexington’s assumption that a paranoid style keeps a political point of view from influence: people use lefty paranoia to dismiss liberals primarily because by and large the country leans rightward on the political spectrum. Still, we on the left side of the political spectrum shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss Lexington.
No comments have been added to this post yet.