The Paranoid Style in American History and Politics: A Psychohistorical Examination

Many Americans became unmoored during the Trump era. Among those with an aversion to this former President, some developed what psychiatrist Steven Buser called “Post-Trumpmatic Stress Disorder” (A Clear and Present Danger, 2017). Yet there was also the flourishing of radical Right hate groups that demonized others. These discontented, often paranoid activists took their cue from a candidate and President who at rallies talked of being violent, found good people among anti-Semites and White supremacists, and described those who invaded the Capitol as special people whom he loved. Courting the ultraright was a staple of the Trump presidency. These phenomena are part of a paranoid style that has been around since the American Revolution. This essay focuses on the psychology and history of this sensibility, which occurs throughout the political spectrum, but those on the political Right will be the focus here.

It was historian Richard Hofstadter who coined the phrase “the paranoid style” in American politics in a 1964 essay in Harper’s Magazine. Others have adapted his assessment. By early 2021, the paranoid style had 24,900,000 hits on Google. In 1962, Hofstadter wrote of the “wildest fancies… the most paranoid suspicions” and “the most bizarre apocalyptic fantasies” present in American politics. He called these phenomena “projective politics” (Radical Right, 2008, 99-100). In 1964, when using the term paranoid style, Hofstadter said he was “not speaking in a clinical sense,” but of “the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or

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less normal people.”  The “paranoid style” is used because it evokes “the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy” that recur in our politics (Richard Hofstadter, Paranoid Style, 1964, 3-4). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) describes paranoia as involving “pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others” and that “their motives are interpreted as malevolent” (2013, 649). Historian David Brion Davis saw “the paranoid style” as “a psychological device for projecting various symbols of evil on an opponent,” which enabled fears and anxieties to be “exorcised through projection to a negative reference group” (The Slave Power Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style, 1969,4, 58-59).

“Projection,” according to psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams, “is the process whereby what is inside is misunderstood as coming from the outside…. In its malignant forms, projection breeds dangerous misunderstanding.”  This is particularly so “when what is projected consists of disowned and highly negative parts of the self.”  She also says that when projection and introjection “work together,” it can be “called projective identification.”  McWilliams saw “similar processes at work” in projection and projective identification (Psychoanalytic Diagnosis, 1994, 107-108). It is a belief in conspiracies, stereotyping and/or demonizing opponents, and projections that characterize the paranoid style.

These phenomena appear in the revolutionary period (1775-1783). A recurring theme in American politics is that unjust authority seeks to impose a tyrannical rule. Historian Bernard Bailyn said “that the fear of a comprehensive conspiracy against liberty… lay at the heart of the Revolutionary movement” (Pamphlets of The American Revolution I, 1965, x). Similarly, another historian, Gordon Wood, found a “prevalence of conspiratorial fears among the Revolutionaries.”  This included a “paranoiac obsession with a diabolical crown conspiracy… in the thinking of Adams and Jefferson themselves” (Gordon Wood, Idea of America,2011, 83, 47). The Declaration of Independence finds a “design to reduce” the American colonists “under absolute despotism,” for the “present King of England” has as a “direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny.”  This quote is characteristic of the paranoid style with its projection of evil onto malevolent political authorities and assigning virtue to the rebels.

American liberals, conservatives, and radicals draw inspiration from the Declaration. Among conservatives, there are at least

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three political traditions, which may or may not have paranoid elements. These three traditions are personal liberty, associating capitalism/freedom, and racism/nativism. In the early 21^st century, conservatives consist of traditional Republicans, libertarians, free-market capitalists, the Tea Party, and White supremacist groups, among others.

Regarding the first of these political traditions, personal liberty, psychoanalyst Erik Erikson claimed that the male “descendants of the Founding Fathers… continued to cultivate the role of freeborn sons.”  They were “in fear of ever again acquiescing to an outer or inner autocracy” (Childhood and Society, 1963, 295-296, 291). Among these freeborn aspirants were libertarians who maintained that the government had little or no right to place restrictions on individual freedoms.

The second conservative variety is the association between capitalism and freedom. What is considered to be free enterprise has become an essential component of the American civic religion. To some conservatives, whatever is seen as restricting economic liberties is un-American. These concerns that business is being unjustly fettered often have paranoid and projecting elements to them. Liberals and leftists are seen as at fault for what may be failures within big business, such as bad investments.

The third conservative tradition involves what Gunnar Myrdal in 1944 called the “American dilemma.”  The Declaration of Independence states “all men are created equal” with natural rights to life and liberty. But there is still much racism and nativism in American history. Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Latinos, and Asians have been stereotyped and targeted.

If we look at our history, it will be evident that there are periods when the paranoid style surges and times when it is less prominent. The surges have occurred following significant recessions and depressions, increased racial and ethnic tensions, radical Left prominence, and when there are changing realities in foreign affairs. The intensity of a paranoid style in White racism, particularly in the South, is persistent, yet does ebb and flow. In 1928, historian Ulrich B. Phillips wrote, “the central theme of southern history” is that “it shall be and remain a white man’s country,” for “the white men’s ways must prevail” (The Slave Economy of the Old South, 274, 276).

Many strands go into preserving White supremacy. Nation-

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al Book Award and Bancroft Prize-winning historian Winthrop D. Jordan found sexual reasons among them. During the slave period, it was common for Southern White men to perceive Black female slaves as passionate and male slaves as sexually potent. These images of the highly sexual “Negro was rooted… firmly in deep strata of irrationality. For it is apparent that White men projected their own desires onto Negroes.”  White male sexual longing for slave women was not acceptable and so it was often turned around and projected onto the enslaved. “Imputing” these sexual desires onto slaves “in some measure” helped to ease the White man’s “anxiety and guilt.”  The “White men” were also “anxious over their own sexual inadequacy.”  Some imagined that “the Negro better performed his nocturnal offices than the white man.”  These anxieties and fears were manifest in the dread of slave conspiracies that would lead to violent revolts. Any slave insurrection “threatened the White man’s dominance, including his valuable sexual dominance.”  It was easier for the White southerner to “impute” his own “sexual aggressiveness” to “others” (Winthrop D. Jordan, White Man’s Burden, 1974, 80-81).

Restricting the access of African American men to White women was a priority. Around 1700, according to Jordan, a Pennsylvania court told a Negro male “‘never more to meddle with any White woman more upon paine of his life’” (White Over Black:American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812, 1968, 139). After Reconstruction, if a southern Black man was thought to desire a White maiden, hanging him from a tree was a common result. Parallel stereotyping and projections are applied to other scapegoated ethnic and religious minorities.

White supremacy groups are increasing in the 21^st century. Changing demographics have added to their worry and surge. According to the United States Census Bureau, in 1970, 16.5% of the population were minorities; by 2010, it was 36.3%, and the projection is that in 2042, 50.1% of us will be minorities (2019). Ezra Klein reports that 2013 was the first year more than half of Americans under a year old were non-White (Why We’re Polarized, 2020, 103-104).

For libertarians, whose prevalence increased after the 1989 end of the Cold War, the focus moved from the dangers of communism to the threats emanating from the powers of the U.S. government. Some individuals of this persuasion believed the state was conspiring to deny them personal choice, and in turn, they

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bought guns or joined militias to protect themselves. Today, many refuse to wear face masks during the pandemic. Malevolent motivations are regularly projected onto authorities perceived as desiring to deny personal choice.

Then there is capitalism. The paranoid style surge here occurs in times of economic troubles. During U.S. industrialization after the Civil War, worship of wealth and an intellectual championing of laissez-faire capitalism emerged. The government could enhance business prospects, but restricting the natural functioning of the free market was un-American. This was a period when prominent Social Darwinists proclaimed that natural selection should not be derailed by government regulation of business.

Something seems to crack in the political psyche of many conservatives following economic catastrophes. Many in this camp displace failures in American capitalism by demonizing liberals and leftists. In our history, stereotyping reformers and radicals targeted the populists following the 1893 depression. During the Great Depression, “un-American” leftists were often blamed rather than the faults within large banks’ corporations. Following the 2008 Great Recession, President Obama was demonized, thus displacing the massive failures of big business. Trump exploited these common political projections. His antics were the most recent manifestations of embracing the paranoid style following severe economic downturns.

Meanwhile, the foreign affairs arena arouses conservative conspiratorial suspicions. As the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR unfolded in the 1940s, the Red Scare of this period, with assertions of a worldwide communist conspiracy became common. The House Un-American Activities Committee became one venue promulgating communism’s ominous threat. In 1950, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy proclaimed that many card-carrying communists held positions in the State Department. While McCarthy never actually exposed any actual communists in the government, he became a media sensation for four years. During his ascendancy, a paranoid style fear of communist subversion in the U.S. became a national political preoccupation.

Following the Great Recession in 2008, another conspiratorial surge emerged. Not surprisingly, biracial President Obama was blamed and caricatured. All sorts of anger and projections were directed at him by paranoid rightists. Martin Parlett documented

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that some media commentators accused Obama of being a Marxist-Leninist and a fascist. Radio host Rush Limbaugh said Obama was like Hitler. TV commentator Glenn Beck used photos to reveal Obama’s communist family tree. In 2008, the year Obama was elected, there were 149 hate groups and armed militias in the U.S. Martin Parlett determined that by 2012 that number had jumped to 1,360 (Demonizing a President:The “Foreignization” of Barack Obama, 2014, 25, 164-169).

In the Trump era, the Democratic Party remained the venue for the projection of anxieties and fears of many conservatives while President Trump often characterized the opposing party as radical, socialist, and a danger to American values. According to Gary Wills, in our history, we have often created “two classes of citizens – those loyal and pure in doctrine, and those who, without actually breaking any law, are considered un-American” (Scoundrel Time, 2000, 18-19). On December 11, 2020, Democrat Chris Murphy said on the Senate floor, “The majority of Republicans in the House of Representatives apparently believe that if a Democrat wins an election, it’s illegitimate by definition.”  Given this, it was not surprising to Murphy that “Republicans, including the President, have just come to the conclusion that Democrats must have cheated because Democrats are evil.”  The prevalence of this paranoid assessment of Democrats by many, though not all, Republicans, has contributed to the significant political divisions in the United States. From 2009 through early 2021, the U.S. has witnessed a political polarization that is only rivaled by the period before the Civil War.

Contributing to these divisions are the resentments and discontent of White supremacists and many among the radical Right. Starting in 1968, every successful Republican presidential candidate, except the second George Bush, followed a southern strategy of playing the race card during their campaigns. In both the Obama and Trump years, the number of White supremacist and radical Right groups grew substantially. The number of U.S. hate crimes also jumped 31% from the year before Trump announced his run for the presidency through his first year in the White House. This is the largest four-year increase since the FBI started posting hate crime reports in 1996 (FBI, “Hate Crime Statistics,” 2018).

Domestic terrorism in the U.S. was also on the rise. Wesley Lowery, Kimberly Kindy, and Andrew Ba Tran reported that of the politically motivated terrorist attacks in this country between 2010

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and 2017, 92 were perpetrated by Right-wing individuals, Islamic terrorists committed 38 attacks, and Left-wingers 34 (“In the United States, right-wing violence is on the rise,” Washington Post,
November 25, 2018). Seth G. Jones, Catrina Doxsee, and Nicholas Harrington found that “Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020” (“The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States,” CSIS Briefs, June 17, 2020).

Much of this conspiratorial activity developed following the severity of the 2008 Great Recession. Robert D. Atkinson reported that 33% of U.S. manufacturing jobs were lost in the first decade of the 21^st century; this percentage was higher than in the 1930s depression (“Magical Manufacturing Thinking: Manufacturing NOT the Bright Spot in the U.S. Economy,” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, January 6, 2012). Eduardo Porter found that during this recession, Whites ages 25 to 54 lost 6.5 million jobs more than they gained (“Where Were Trump’s Votes? Where the Jobs Weren’t,” New York Times, December 13, 2016). It was less educated males who were most vulnerable to layoffs (Laurent Belsie, “Explaining the Growth of the Alternative Workforce,” National Bureau of Economic Research, No. 12, December 2016). Many of these displaced White men voted for Trump in 2016.

A rightist political movement with tinges of the paranoid style also appeared, which displaced blame from capitalism’s flaws to big government. The Tea Party movement also emerged during Obama’s first term. While this loose set of groups was initially critical of both major political parties, they ended up being part of the Republican Party (GOP). Later, Donald Trump put together a coalition that drew in discontented Whites from the manufacturing sector, Tea Partiers, and many traditional Republicans, White supremacists, and other radical rightists. The paranoid style found a home in the resentful and rage-filled New York businessman. He mesmerized the American public as hardly any other political figure has. He intensified the polarization that had been plaguing the nation. With the possible exception of Nixon, no other American president has been as susceptible to suspecting plots against him and the country as Trump.

Trump also has long had an affinity for each of the three components of American conservatism described in this paper. First, Trump distrusts the authorities in Washington. In his own

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business career, he resented the ways governments and banks have restricted him. He had an ideological disdain for mobilizing the federal government in economic matters. This became quite clear during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis. Trump could have mobilized federal resources under existing statutes to combat the pandemic, but he did not. In March 2020, Trump said he resisted a coordinated national plan and was reluctant to utilize the Defense Production Act because “We’re a country not based on nationalizing our business…. The concept of nationalizing our business is not a good concept” (Ayesha Rascoe, “Trump Resists Using Wartime Law To Get, Distribute Coronavirus Supplies,” NPR, March 25, 2020). Trump confused having the government direct the coronavirus fight with nationalizing the means of production. Given this refusal, the U.S. ended up having 20% of the world’s COVID-19 cases with just 4% of its population. Capitalist ideology trumped public health.

Second, Trump rebels against any attempt to restrain personal choice. During the pandemic, for instance, he usually refused to wear a mask. At the height of the epidemic, he called on states to be liberated from COVID-19 restrictions. Liberty over lives.

Third, his racist history dates back at least to the 1970s when the federal government sued him and his father for refusing to rent to African Americans in Trump properties. His acts as President reflect his racial preferences. He played the race card in response to the racist Charlotte Unite the Right Rally in 2017, and once again in response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. His first appointees to the Cabinet were Whiter and more male than any President since Reagan (Jasmine E. Lee, “Trump’s Cabinet So Far Is More White and Male Than Any First Cabinet,” New York Times, January 13, 2017, updated March 10, 2017). Trump was the first President since Nixon to make no appointment in the first term of a Black judge to the federal appeals court (Madison Alder and Jasmine Ye Han, “Trump Nears Post-Nixon First: No Black Circuit Judges [Corrected],” Bloomberg News, June 24, 2020, updated June 25, 2020).

Trump has also stereotyped and demonized other minorities. During his June 2015 announcement of his presidential candidacy, he talked of Mexico sending their rapists and criminals to the U.S. Later, during the 2016 campaign, he proposed a Muslim immigration ban. Trump’s racist and nativist allegations are a prime example of the American paranoid style.

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Trump’s conspiratorial sensibility is evident in his attributing fraud in American presidential elections. After Obama was re-elected in 2012, Trump tweeted that the results were “a total sham,” and “We should march on Washington and stop this travesty.”  In October 2016, he proclaimed the election was being “rigged” for Hillary Clinton (Terrance Smith, “Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results,” ABC News Radio, November 11, 2020). Following his defeat by Biden in 2020, Trump often repeated that the election was stolen from him.

In 2021, Trump called for flocking to Washington to prevent the results, and at the January 6, 2021 rally, he proclaimed that we won’t have a country anymore if the stolen election results were not overturned. He directed the crowd to march on the Capitol. Trump sees plots whenever he perceives things not going his way. Others with similar mindsets stormed the Capitol that day and wreaked havoc. During the Capitol invasion, there were chants to hang Vice President Mike Pence. There was also the hunting of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, bringing the Confederate flag into the halls of Congress, and a man wearing a Camp Auschwitz shirt. Organized members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were no longer standing by but taking action. It was as if the Capitol insurrection was a convention of the conspiratorial Right.

But Trump loyalists go beyond the ultraright. On January 6, 2021, 65% of House Republicans voted to decertify the 2020 Pennsylvania election tally (Andrew Solender, “Majority Of House Republicans Vote To Reject Pennsylvania, Arizona Electors,” Forbes, January 7, 2021). As late as February 2021, 67% of Republicans thought the 2020 election results were invalid (Jonathan Easley, “Majority of Republicans say 2020 election was invalid: poll,” The Hill, February 25, 2021). These actions and sentiments are consistent with a 2016 poll that found that 72% of registered Republican voters doubted Obama’s U.S. citizenship (Josh Clinton and Carrie Roush, “Poll: Persistent Partisan Divide Over ‘Birther’ Question,” NBC News, August 10, 2016). Despite the decisions of 60 court cases and declarations by Trump’s Attorney General that there was no significant election fraud, these widespread Republican tendencies to believe false statements remain. They recall Senator Chris Murphy’s statements that Republicans doubt the legitimacy of any actual Democratic presidential victory. Many Republicans cannot handle uncomfortable truths and embrace conspirato-

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rial fiction. These Republican beliefs are reflections of how many rightists have become unmoored and removed from factual realities since the Great Recession. There is a widespread Republican and ultraright susceptibility to believe dire things about the opposition, including that domestic conspiracies are corrupting our nation. Politics has become even more of a venue for projections. That these paranoid political fears have engulfed so many is worrisome.

Again, it is following economic catastrophes and significant foreign affairs alterations that the paranoid style flourishes. Attacks on Democrats as un-American occurred in the late 1930s, then again during the McCarthy era. They faded some in the late 1950s and came back in full force after the 2008 economic collapse.

American political life has often been characterized by cycles. The paranoid style has had its ebbs and flows. The Obama and Trump years witnessed a flourishing of often vile and malevolent mental paranoid states. Hofstadter said American politics have been characterized by uncommonly angry minds (Paranoid Style, 3). Anger is one thing; threats, violence, domestic terrorism, and storming the U.S. Capitol is another.

Examining the paranoid style and its history gives us some understanding of how we arrived at this contemporary state of polarization. Beyond these unsettling phenomena are questions: To what extent is this partisanship a reflection of serious erosion of faith in republicanism? To what extent is there a residual belief in a government of, by, and for the people? Subsequent papers will explore this crucial topic.

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