The Populist Left / The Paranoid Right

In recent posts, I've discussed the idea of authoritarian populism, an idea popularized by the sociologist Stuart Hall to describe the rise of Margaret Thatcher in early 1980s England. I argued that the resentment-fueled rhetoric of the current Republican Party could be seen as an updated species of authoritarian populism.

But forget about all that.

I think that a recent op-ed by Thomas Frank nails it. What the GOP has been up to, he observes, is not really populism at all but paranoia. It's the John Birch Society gone mainstream....

Next month will mark the 45th anniversary of the publication by Harper's Magazine of Richard Hofstadter's famous essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a work that seems to grow more relevant by the day.

I was not always a fan. [...] I thought, who really cared about the strange notions that occurred to members of marginal groups like the John Birch Society? Joe McCarthy's day was long over, and even in the age of high Reaganism, I thought, the type of person Hofstadter described was merely handing out flyers on street corners.

As the historian himself admitted, "in America it has been the preferred style only of minority movements." Why bother with it, then?

How times have changed! Hofstadter's beloved liberal consensus has been in the grave for decades now. Today it would appear that his mistake was underestimating the seductive power of the paranoid style.

The essential element of this mindset, Hofstadter explained, was its predilection for conspiracy theory—for understanding history as a theater in which sinister figures control the flow of events from behind the scenes, nudging us constantly and secretly in the direction of communism.

Back in Hofstadter's day this sort of thinking at least had something supremely rational going for it: The existence of the Soviet Union and its desire to bring the West to its knees.

But take that away and the theories become something far more remarkable. Consider, by contrast, the widespread belief that President Barack Obama's birth certificate was forged. What could have been his parents' motives for committing such a bizarre deed, or his home state's motive for colluding in it, or the courts' motives for overlooking it?

Or consider the widespread conservative conviction that we are being marched secretly into communism or fascism. Why would someone bother? It seems equally likely, given today's circumstances, that conspirators would trick us into becoming a colony of Belgium or the imperial seat of the Bonaparte family.

The paranoid pattern persists regardless. It is impervious to world events; a blurting of the American subconscious that has not changed since Hofstadter analyzed it 45 years ago. Consider the recent wave of fear that the hypnotic Mr. Obama was planning to indoctrinate schoolchildren. In "The Paranoid Style," Hofstadter wrote, "Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; . . . he has a new secret for influencing the mind; . . . he is gaining a stranglehold on the educational system."

Conspiracy-mindedness isn't just for fringe political groups anymore; it makes for riveting entertainment. And it is all around us today, a disorder with an entire industry to act as its enabler. [...]

Frank goes on to cite recent examples of this phenomenon, from Glenn Beck's fake news show to a truly bizarre essay penned by Michelle Malkin. These examples always include (1) alarmingly hysterical conspiracy theories and (2) a self-persecution complex, accompanied by massive amounts of self-pity.

What the hell's going on, anyway?

Although Frank's piece isn't about progressive political strategy, I believe that Frank's formulation (or, rather, his appropriation of Hofstadter) might provide a rhetorical framework with which to strengthen the project of Left-populism.

The conundrum that I had been perceiving in all of the Angry Right-Teabagger stuff had not been limited to the damage that violent, racist innuendo and intellectual dishonesty threatens to inflict upon civil discourse. What had been worrying me most of all had been the fact that it appeared that the Deranged Right was -- albeit disingenuously -- threatening to dominate populist-inflected discourse in this country.

But why cede that ground to a bunch of hacks, liars and -- as Frank notes -- producers of mass entertainment?

Glenn Beck doesn't represent a twisted, authoritarian version of populism: He represents many vile, stupid and wrongheaded things. Not one of them has anything to do with populism.