Key to Hofstadter was the marriage of the idea of “recurrence” with the notion that American political society proved unique in its ability to repeatedly provide fertile ground for the rapid proliferation of such wayward thinking. For Hofstadter, these modern-day conspiracies provided evidence of an enduring thread in American history, an “old and recurrent mode of expression in our public life which has frequently been linked with movements of suspicious discontent.” These conspiracy theories animated political discourse and mobilized sections of the population on hearsay of persecution, foreign plots, and generalized chicanery. His article, however, did outline the then-ongoing debate over water fluoridation, the lingering effects of McCarthyism, and a supposed government plot to take citizens’ guns. Written amidst the immediate tumult of the Kennedy Assassination, Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” did not have a chance to fully digest the plethora of conspiracies that proliferated in its wake. Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” 1964 “Although American political life has rarely been touched by the most acute varieties of class conflict, it has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds.” This will be our last post focused on Stamped. I look forward to your comments and would love suggestions for our next read!

His articles and reviews have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, H-Net, Essays in History, The Strategy Bridge, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Episteme, and other peer-reviewed journals.

in history from Texas Christian University. This is a guest post by Andrew Forney, as part of our Stamped From the Beginning Salon. Andrew J.

Hofstadter the paranoid style