"And They Are Still Shouting"

"Hofstadter did not propose a theory for why Americans are prone to conspiracy theories. Arguably, democracy imbued us with an expectation of fairness; when disappointed, we look for villains. What he does explore is the paranoid style as a mode of expression. His subjects, he said with irony, were steeped in 'factuality.' Their method was to doggedly gather 'evidence.' Causality was where they went off the rails.

"According to Hofstadter, a typical believer was torn between righteousness and persecution. The 'paranoid spokesman' is unable to compromise because he always sees fate hanging in the balance. He is 'always manning the barricades of civilization,' as though doomsday lurks around the corner. Such phrases today evoke the Tea Party, 9/11 conspiracy theorists or moon-landing debunkers."

Roger Lowenstein in The New York Times looks at Richard Hofstadter's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" fifty years later.