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Highly recommend Rick Perlstein's book on Barry Goldwater [0] which recounts the Goldwater run in '64 and feels eerily similar in many ways to where we are today
His conclusion is that this style of paranoia belongs to "the dispossessed" rather than to one political faction. Or at least to those who feel dispossessed.
Another data point for that thesis: Arabs are very into what we would call conspiracy theories. A decade ago there were all these polls showing fairly broad approval among Arabs for Osama Bin Laden. That makes sense when you consider other polls showing that most Arabs didn't think Bin Laden was involved in 9/11 [0].
Personally I have a soft spot for conspiracy theorists. At least Alex Jones is thinking for himself. Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are on HN a lot and I feel similarly about them -- which is not to say I put them in the same category as Jones. I think they get some stuff right, I appreciate their fire-and-brimstone approach (at least it's fun to read), but both of them frequently write sentences that cause my eyes to roll back in my head.
I think the ultimate source of conspiratorial thinking is linked to reductio ad absurdum. In our minds, we seem drawn to the extremes. Everything reminds everyone of Hitler, Stalin, Maoist struggle sessions, and so on. Trump is a vile white-supremacist-fascist. Biden is kowtowing to critical-theory-reading neo-Marxists. Reducing an argument to the absurd makes sense in logic and math but perhaps not in the real world where there's no guarantee that an argument is based on anything logical.
Or maybe it makes sense in the real world too. It seems to me, sometimes, that conspiracy theorists are actually fairly good at identifying the ultimate goal of an ideology. But ultimate goals are ideals, they're never realized and, in practice, they provide a direction rather than a destination. It's one thing to identify the ultimate goal of the ideology animating leftists but are you so sure our society shouldn't be a little more left-wing? Because, in practice, that's what electing the left-wing candidate is likely to accomplish. It's unlikely to recreate The Cultural Revolution.
On the other hand, maybe the fact that such ultimate goals came astonishingly close to being realized, on the right and left, in the 20th century, is a good reason to be alarmed.
[0] - https://newrepublic.com/article/94546/middle-east-radical-co...
> At least Alex Jones is thinking for himself
Conspiracy theories are fun and all until stuff like this happens:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/this-sandy-hook-f...
And the then claimed that actually, he was literally psychotic when he was saying that stuff and blamed "mass group think":
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/30/us/alex-jones-psychosis-sandy...
> Conspiracy theories are fun and all until stuff like this happens:
A refusal to consider conspiracy theories is also all fun and all until stuff like this happens:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War#Casualty_estimates
(Death estimates range from 150,000 to 1,000,000).
> And the then claimed that actually, he was literally psychotic when he was saying that stuff and blamed "mass group think"
Did anyone responsible for the war have to atone for their error?
I happen to think total body count is a perfectly reasonable metric (one of many) for evaluating the risks inherent in various styles of thinking (or not thinking, as the case may be) - I'm curious if you agree or disagree?
There's conspiracy theories and conspiracy theories.
When someone targets random people like, I don't know, parents of murdered children, when it turns out they're wrong, the failure case is absolutely devastating. The failure case when the conspiracy is "George W Bush did 9/11" is going to involve a whole lot fewer death threats to random private people.
Telling stories about powerful people matters a lot less because even if they're lies, powerful people will go along with their day. They'll be fine. So, sure, entertain stories about powerful and possibly malevolent public figures. It's when people with significant power like Jones take to telling stories about random parents of murdered children that they do serious damage.
> The failure case when the conspiracy is "George W Bush did 9/11" is going to involve a whole lot fewer death threats to random private people.
This is a rather interesting detour. How about when the conspiracy is "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction"? Did that result in any deaths? Like, oh I don't know, many many hundreds of thousands? Was that "failure case" devastating, or is there some sort of a conversion factor between brown skinned Middle Easterners and Righteous Pale Westerners that I should be aware of?
> It's when people with significant power like Jones take to telling stories about random parents of murdered children that they do serious damage.
In the range of multiple hundreds of thousands of innocent dead people?
I would enjoy reading any serious reasoning for why Alex Jones' Sandy Hook rantings are more serious than the innocent civilians killed in Iraq. Is that not what multiple people here are asserting? If you have no regret (as a taxpayer who funds the war machine) about the situation, I wonder if any of you people have any sympathy?
My son was learning in school last year about the Holocaust, and part of the curriculum was how it was possible that the German public could go along with something that was so obviously wrong. I am going to show him this thread when he gets home from school today, so he can get a real world, firsthand, modern day impression of how human psychology can so easily find a way to justify war crimes.
You misunderstand me. I'm saying: just because Bush did lie America into Iraq doesn't mean that we should shrug our shoulders at people like Jones who prey on random parents of murdered children for personal fame and money.
Yes, government conspiracies exist. That doesn't mean we should take every ranting of publicity-addled nutcases seriously. People like Jones are not performing a public service, and aren't going to actually uncover future real conspiracies. That's not the business they're in. They're in the business of making shit up for money.
Well, this is literally true. I don't know if people don't want to remember, but people saying that there was no evidence of WMD and that the Iraq War shouldn't happen was a conspiracy theory have, in a very real sense, blood on their hands.
"Conspiracy theory" is a category with a high false positive ratio. It's better for all of us to at least entertain them and give them a fair shot before dismissing them.
Unfortunately, that's susceptible to a sort of Pascal's mugging. People can come up with new conspiracy theories faster than you can give them a fair shot, because they're very easy to generate.
> I happen to think total body count is a perfectly reasonable metric (one of many) for evaluating the risks inherent in various styles of thinking (or not thinking, as the case may be)
No. It cannot be used to evaluate "risk", without quantifying what you mean by "risk" or even having something like full information. How much was (bad)luck? How much was inevitable, regardless if it was March 20 or 21 where the SEALs had cameras on the beach, waiting for them to appear? We will never have full information to understand what was going on, but the stated reasonings behind the Iraq War, outside of the shoot-first Bush Doctrine^, were lies of convenience^^, at best. The thinking was not simple, nor were the initial motivations strictly good or bad. I would argue the outcome was bad.
^ If you don't help us find the terrorists that ran into your country, you're against US
^^ Knowing Iraq has used chemical weapons in the past, it was a bet that old weapons or evidence of them could be found...making a claim of WMDs convenient.
> It cannot be used to evaluate "risk", without quantifying what you mean by "risk"
Dead bodies laying around on the ground is usually considered a sign that some sort of risk was in play, but I'm clearly not as well versed in the field as you. Your absolutely flawless logic has certainly changed my mind.
I wonder if the relatives of the dead are as as easily convinced as me. What's your intuition on that (if you care enough to bother generating an opinion that is)?
What is an example of an eye-rolling claim from Taibbi?
Negative, paranoid narratives and rhetoric are just easy, and water flows downhill. I'm sure that the majority of political "programs or demand" have always been advanced with paranoid rhetoric. These are your enemies. This is how they deceive you. They are motivated by evil.
I think the most common mistake to think of the solution as civility and/or facts or evidence based politics. The "paranoid style's" primary (IMO) attribute is presenting the opposition as beyond salvation. They disingenuous, immoral, lying, evil people. Believe nothing they say. Question their motives. etc.
The actual opposite of this is broadly "Gandhism." Pared down: Assuming that your opposition is decent, responds to generous gestures, and can be convinced of your position because it is true. That doesn't mean that they aren't your opposition, but the idea is to recruit and oppose simultaneously. You're not trying to defeat anyone.
Ultimately, politics is a proxy for conflict. People understand conflict. It's usually about creating a seething solidarity among your side to defeat an opponent. The "paranoid style" is also the rhetoric of generals motivating their troops. Your enemy is cruel and wicked.
I would also argue that the paranoid style is the natural consequence of the fully sorted national two party system competing in a “first past the post” winner take all electoral system.
Multi-party democracies with proportional representation tend to be more civil, as the presence of multiple factions to negotiate with means you need allies, and you may find yourself allied with one party on one issue, while you’re aligned with another party on another issue. The requirement to operate by coalition makes demonization of the other party a bad strategy.
For a deep dive on this I highly recommend this book: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/44244963-breaking-the...
IDK about that. Plenty of multi-party systems get vitriolic.
It's true though that the campaign itself, in a two horse race, tends to be more negative.
Not just muliti-party, but also with proportional representation. I listened to the author in an interview[1] and he claimed there is less conflict on average in countries that use such systems. New Zealand was one example the author gave. I assume the book has citations.
1. https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/the-ezra-klein-show/e/7...
What characterizes the US is that whoever wins gets a LOT of power for 4 years. Especially if god willing someone on the Supreme Court dies.
> "Gandhism." Pared down: Assuming that your opposition is decent, responds to generous gestures, and can be convinced
That's quite an oversimplification of Gandhi's philosophy, which evolved quite a bit over his lifetime, starting from the position of trust and assumption of good faith that you describe (and indeed even a deference to India's colonial rulers), but later evolving into the less dependent philosophy of satyagraha, which makes no assumptions of the decency of one's opponent, nor holds any expectation of benevolence from an oppressive power, but relies solely on one's own rigorous and unflagging dedication to non-violent resistance to achieve change. It is the latter philosophy which formed the substance of his life's work and moved the needle on India's independence struggle.
Hence "paired down." BTW, I take my definition of ghandism form george orwell.. he was not at all a ghandist.
The paranoid style is also self-reinforcing. The more you present your opponents as dangerous, the more people are encouraged to amp up the rhetoric. Compromises have to be presented as impossible -- if you compromise with them they can't be all that bad.
After a while, it becomes self-fulfilling. If your opponents are your enemies, then you act like their enemy, and they have to perceive you as one. Fringe elements of your own side will eventually escalate to violence. And you won't discourage them too much -- if you've ceded the middle, you need to keep your extremes.
It's not clear to me that Gandhism will succeed as a policy. Sometimes it works; sometimes you get bowled over. Gandhism requires a charismatic leader who can focus attention. Without that, you just seem boring and ineffective. It's especially hard today, when social media can quickly spread anti-Gandhi propaganda. Even Gandhi isn't Gandhi today; he's got a lot of negative things on his record and they'd eat him alive.
So you may eventually become enemies for real, and not just as a matter of rhetoric. Breaking that self-reinforcing loop may be impossible.
And the paranoids, by seeking to influence many with their paranoia, create a conspiracy against what they saw as a conspiracy.
The problem is, as has been demonstrated many times, is: just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. This is sort of an inflammation response that is wrong some percentage of the time but not 100%.
> Assuming that your opposition is decent, responds to generous gestures, and can be convinced of your position
But what if none of these are true? What if they don't respond to gestures (see the history of "bipartisanship")? What if, Nixon passim, they have no sense of decency? What if they can't be convinced of your position because their income depends on not being convinced of it?
People definitely like conflict as entertainment. Hence the clickbait industry. The problem is that this can be ramped up to the levels where it starts getting dangerous.
Interestingly, on this forum, it is pretty common to espouse the "paranoid style" against tech giants, etc.
The "paranoid style" is just an extraordinarily resilient meme. It might just be genuinely unbeatable.
Article written in 1964... It is astonishing. It is not just that the public discourse has worsened: paranoid anti-intellectualism now _dominates_ the discourse in the US.
I think a lot of modern anti-intellectualism is really more of a pseudo-intellectualism.
It's anti-intellectual in the sense that it can be disdainful of intellectuals and intellectual institutions like newspapers, universities. But form-wise, it tends to be formulated around alternative facts, studies, experts and whatnot.
Flat earth or intelligent design theories are more pseudo-intellectual than anti-intellectual. They have their own studies & citations... mimicking scientific intellectualism rather than dismissing it. The from is of rogue or dissenting intellectuals against the mainstream. If they're in a tussle with Richard Dawkins, the criticism is that he is not really being scientific. It's rarely a criticism of science as an approach.
Frankly, much of the concerning anti-intellectualism is coming from the university in the form of identity politics and stifling of discussion.
A saying I've had for quite a while: the left pioneers really bad ideas, and the right implements them at scale.
Identity politics is a great example. Late 20th century leftists brought identity politics into fashion, but it was the right that really took it and ran with it with Bush's politics of the "base" and then Trump's identity politics.
A deeper example would be "culture jamming" and the maybe-ironic prankster/trickster political style. That came out of the 60s/70s left with stuff like the Church of the Subgenius, and stuff like alternate reality gaming (ARGs) pioneered in the 90s. The intellectual basis for it ultimately comes from postmodernism. The right is now weaponizing this style and implementing it at scale with Qanon.
Edit since it won't let me reply:
I'd define identity politics as the idea that your biology or cultural background places you in a group that should define your ideas and political affinities.
Go watch Carlin's old comedy bits. He talks about disinformation, culture wars, etc.
You think fake news and misinformation is new?
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day..."
https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_sp...
Go look up how "conspiracy theories" were used as a weapon by the media/elites to silence those they did not like just a few decades ago.
It's all like generational groundhog day. Each generation lives through the same story over and over again.
And this is why we should not be letting anyone convince us that they know best about which stories should be allowed and which should be suppressed.
Those advocating for what amounts to a Ministry of Truth should really know better. We've already learned this lesson. This lever of power should not exist because it is impossible for it not to be abused.
For all the downsides of too much information and a torrent of crappy opinions that exist on an open internet, it's still much better than the results you get with authoritarian oversight.
And yet, observe the lovely greyed out color of the comment to which you are responding, among the large quantity of claims that it's only the right that engages in propaganda and self-serving delusional thinking.
It would be quite interesting (but I suspect unpopular) for HN to have an experimental mode where people must give a reason for downvoting. :)
Sticking with it’s prescience:
But the modern right wing, as Daniel Bell has put it, feels dispossessed: America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion. The old American virtues have already been eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals; the old competitive capitalism has been gradually undermined by socialistic and communistic schemers; the old national security and independence have been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power. Their predecessors had discovered conspiracies; the modern radical right finds conspiracy to be betrayal from on high.
I’d go as far as to say the protectionism and conspiratorial thinking is the result of an actual betrayal that the larger population have not emotionally reconciled. The right wing, along with the left wing, sold out to corporate interests in a steady manner over decades.
Sometimes, it can be difficult to accept betrayal. It’s similar to grief, you can’t believe it’s real - Say it isn’t true, there must be another explanation. Tell me it’s these social welfare programs, and immigrants, say it isn’t the systematic erosion of the working class.
My kid? Failed fifth grade? Me? A bad parent? Impossible, the teachers are bad, the education system .... Who is ready to accept this stuff immediately? The American public have been voting against their own interest for a long time. You have shitty healthcare and benefits because you got duped. You spent your tax money on foreign wars because you got duped. Your stock market is an unregulated casino where bankers toy with your money with impunity, and you’ll bail them out, again because you got duped into eating the bullshit. No, not my kid, he’d never murder anyone, the cops must have set him up. This is certainly the denial stage for the right wing.
The Left has it’s own grief coming soon enough. Lots of promises, lots of stuff that’s never going to come true. Lots of stuff about the Democrats that’s no different than the Republicans, and one day they’ll have to conjure up some conspiracy to deal with the dupe.
Some part of me almost understands the Trump voter. He transparently manipulates you (oxymoron?). If you’ve been lied to for decades, there is some dignity in accepting someone that straight lies to you versus the bells and whistles liars like some Presidents have been.
> The Left has it’s own grief coming soon enough. Lots of promises, lots of stuff that’s never going to come true.
Definitely lots of stuff that already hasn't come true, and the left can't seem to get a plurality in a primary.
> Lots of stuff about the Democrats
Oh wait I thought we were talking about the left.
I wouldn't include Wallstreet bankers as getting off because of politics. There is a fair amount of regulation and law surrounding that sector. My opinion is their lack of punishment comes from an unfair and possibly corrupt legal system. When you have that much money, it doesn't matter if you are a banker or some other profession, you are much more likely to beat the system.
I think your parent analogy is apt.
It's basically impossible to be politically successful and accept blame. Politics is an "us" game. Even in the most leader-oriented set ups, the leader is an avatar for the group.
If something is bad, it can either because "we" did something wrong or because we were deceived, manipulated and exploited. By blaming others we absolve us.
> conspiratorial thinking is the result of an actual betrayal that the larger population have not emotionally reconciled. The right wing, along with the left wing, sold out to corporate interests in a steady manner over decades.
Sure, there is big money behind candidates, and strong regional interests. Other countries face this too.
I am not convinced that psychology has as much to do with the idiotic state of public discourse (and at least one candidate's debate style) in the US as the practical problems in US democracy: moronic "news" reporting that misinforms for profit, and the Electoral College and First Past the Post, which rob citizens of their voice.
Is conspiratorial thinking confined to the right wing? A sizeable portion of the country believes in a conspiracy theory where a sitting US president is somehow a Russian sleeper agent.
I had the check the publication date too. Not due to the content, but because you don't see pieces as well written and constructed in today's press.
It makes me wonder how long the authors spent research, writing, and revising. I suspect it took more time than would ever be allocated to crafting an article in 2020.
You do, you probably just aren't willing to pay for them.
Do you have any examples?
I haven't seen newspaper articles, magazine articles, online articles, nor television reports of this quality. Most of these generate revenue through ads, but some are behind a paywall or require purchase.
There is a ratcheting effect in US conservative politics whereby the social conservative voting bloc needs to be cultivated with ever more extreme positions just to keep them interested enough to vote for the Republican party. This has mostly manifest through increasing racism but is also manifest by increasing hatred towards intellectuals and thinking people in general.
The pattern of social conservatives demanding increasingly extreme positions from their leaders is not dissimilar to how addicts become desensitized to their drug of addiction and need increasingly higher doses to get their high.
In the 1960s, using dog-whistles to pander to anti-black racism (through the Southern Strategy[0]) was enough to bring out the social conservative vote for the Republican party. Over time, the demands of social conservatives have made the dog-whistles less quiet and the number of targeted groups has expanded from only African-Americans to Hispanics, people who live in urban areas, to scientists and other intellectuals, and now to all Democrats. By 2016, it took Trump's level of vile xenophobia--directed against anyone who wasn't a willfully ignorant racist--to motivate social conservatives to vote in large numbers. In 2020, the social conservatives are demanding fealty to QAnon, a conspiracy theory that is at odds with objective reality. Whatever degree of racist anti-intellectualism social conservatives demand in 2020 and 2024 will be worse.
Hofstadter has been mostly discredited. Jeet Heer recently wrote an appraisal:
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/richard-hofstadter...
Tom Frank's new book, "The People, No", is scathing about Hofstadter's elitism and misportrayal of the Populist movement (Hofstadter only used anti-Populist secondary sources).
Well... bad people do conspire (i.e. cooperate)... just as much as good people do. It's not outlandish to worry that say the church is conspiring (e.g. Catholic abuse scandal). Of course solid evidence is always nice, but as with so many things it takes decades of mounting anecdotes and evidence to accumulate formal proof.
Perhaps conspiracy theory is just the first stage of hypothesis refinement, and that's where they mostly die. There are many times it's actually a healthy and correct choice to mistrust motives of an institution (e.g. No thanks, I don't need that oxycodone), even if the mainstream consensus is a few years out.
The challenge is, as it always was, to figure out which claims of bad-people-conspiring are true and which ones aren't. And when those bad-people-conspiring can taint/hide the information sources themselves (e.g. Nixon trying to withhold Watergate recordings by claiming "National Security", or astroturfing, or settle out of court, or using authority figures, or buying research) it becomes exponentially more complicated and the net gets cast much wider.
This piece is a very detailed historical read, but I'm not sure it has any bearing.
Well the history of humanity is the inspiration for Game of Thrones. People conspire to grab power all the time. That has been the norm and not the exception. The means change but that's about it.