This is a collection of essays from 1963 by the historian Richard Hofstadter, probably most well know for either this book or for his other well-regarded book Anti-Intellectualism in American History which you can guess what it’s about. This book begins with two essays that lay out a reading of a form of political discourse, especially related to the rise of far right extremism. This is a not a book on paranoia, as he lays out pretty directly, but of a kind of affected paranoiac speech […]
Although American political life has rarely touched on by the most acute varieties of class conflict, it has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds.
The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter