The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays.

HOFSTADTER, Richard.

$350.00

Item Number: 147147

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1965.

First edition of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian’s pivotal volume of  essays, including the title work that expresses his alarm at “the arena of uncommonly angry minds” that dominates the nation’s politics, manufacturing a “vast and sinister conspiracy… as the motive force in historical events… Time is forever just running out.” Octavo, original cloth. Near fine in a very good dust jacket.

In developing the subject, Hofstadter initially establishes that his use of the phrase "paranoid style" was a borrowing from the clinical psychiatric term paranoid to describe a political personality, and acknowledges that the term is pejorative. Hofstadter asserts that, throughout American politics, politicians incite fear to sway voters toward a certain viewpoint. He argues that a "political paranoiac" engages in such demagoguery because they cannot accept society and seek to destroy the current order under the guise of a looming threat.