There is, as Richard Hofstadter put it many years ago, a paranoid style of politics. While, he came up with this notion in his examination of American politics, McCarthyism and its predecessors, I am struck how this sort of politics can be found in just about every democracy. The paranoid knows that enemies surround us. We must be vigilant and protect ourselves, limit or eliminate immigration, impose loyalty oaths, arm ourselves. For, “they” are out to get us. The complexities of the world are explained by the machinations of “them.” (A most popular them these days are Muslims.)
The paranoia continues: we will resolve the problems posed by them only through vigilance. Those who don’t see this are naïve, in some ways worse than the enemy itself. You’re either with us or you’re against us: our country right or wrong, love it or leave it. The National Front in France, the Swedish Democracy Party, the Austrian Freedom Party, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, the Bulgarian Ataka party, Hungary’s Jobbik party, the Party for Freedom in the Netherlands, the British National Party, the League of Polish Families, among others in Europe and beyond, including the Tea Party in the U.S., utilize this style of politics, the populist, xenophobic kind. (link) (link)
In each country, the health of democracy, it seems to me, will be determined by whether the paranoid style is marginalized, and remains so through time, or if it seeps into the political mainstream. When a right wing coalition ruled in Poland and included the League of Polish Families, the prospects for Polish democracy dived, only reviving when that coalition was defeated in the polls, and , indeed, to mention Hofstadter’s immediate concerns, when Dwight Eisenhower’s Republican Party turned against McCarthy, American democracy was strengthened. A pressing American concern today has to do with the paranoid style of politics in the Tea Party and in the anti-immigration movement. Our fate is tied to how we respond to the Park Islamic Community Center and other such activities around the country. There are other places the cat of paranoid politics is getting out of the bag, threatening democracy in even more dramatic and potentially deadly ways. Indeed, I have been thinking about all of this while observing recent events in Israeli politics, to which I will turn Sunday.
Isn’t it interesting that such a current runs through Europe and America simultaneously? Or seems to anyway. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that, socialism not withstanding, they have democracy in common, and share many of its benefits, and problems.
I’ve recently come across an article by a Finnish scholar who uses a graph of the “collectivity-individualism cycle” to investigate the degree of public support for welfare programs. (The graph is applied to both Europe and America.) A cycle of individualism, corresponds to less support for welfare. This is the stage of the cycle we are in now. (Though author does however explain that this is a somewhat simplistic assessment, but that’s a longer story.) It seems to me however, that paradoxically, stage is also accompanied by an “us-versus-them” mentality, like the McCarthyism of the 50’s, like the Islamophobia of today. And ultimately, for all the self-defining as individuals that goes on, what we are really dealing with is a collective phenomena. That is, these individuals, in their state of paranoia, are not nearly as “individualist” as they think. Just a thought.
This “us-versus-them” mentality creates a fear of democracy, lest their country be taken over by outsiders via the ballot. Maybe that’s why the Tea Party is so insistent on keeping their bullets. I wonder how applicable this is to Israel, where the same phenomenon seems to be occuring, only worse. Is Israel still really a democracy?
I came across a September, 2009 article by the Israel Democracy Institute entitled “The Return of the State,” highlighting the, “apparent paradox {in Israel} of the negative evaluation of the government’s performance, on one hand, and the desire to see it become more active in providing social services, on the other.” Quite different than what is happening in the US at least in this respect, though they both share a growing fear of outsiders. I don’t actually know much about Israeli civil society though so I’ll be interested in reading your forthcoming article about it.
Political paranoia is a problem. Perhaps the most interesting question is why does it arise, and what if anything can be done about it?
It seems to me that political paranoia increases with the fragmentation of predictability and the decrease in transparency. Deep economic recessions disrupt lives and create chaos. Many people need to recreate themselves in order to survive, and numbers of them are not capable of coping when virtually everything they have known has been turned upside down.
We are certainly adrift in unsettled times, and as a society, we continue to avoid recognizing serious problems which need to be addressed, for instance, if we don’t face how we are going to address our bonded and unfunded liabilities, we will never be able to deal with other issues. Remaining solvent is fundamental for the existence of a nation.
Transparency has decreased over the past decades. Most deliberations are held behind closed doors, and frequently high-level rhetoric is the only thing that is aired during public deliberations and in many campaigns. Bills have become so large and complex that people without legal training have difficulty understanding them. Adding to the uncertainty is the way that laws are applied, mainly through regulations written and implemented by bureaucrats. Compounding the transparency issue is the reliance that contemporary presidents have on Executive Orders.
Some of the same elements of political paranoia surfaced before the adoption of the United States Constitution. The Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers helped deal with the controversies. They were a serious airing of alternative perspectives. These addressed major issues in a responsible manner, and were made available to the public.
Maybe we need the equivalent of these types of papers to deal with the issues underlying our current political paranoia. I’m sure that there is the intellectual ability to address issues in this way, but I’m not at all sure that there is the will to do so.
My guess is that as associating, responsible exploration of issues and contracting increase, and then political paranoia will decrease. Economic growth and consensus making on major policy issues would go a long way towards helping, in my opinion.
I think political paranoia, along with its kissing cousins – cynicism and conspiracy theory, are a consequence of political complexity, a common sense that inadequately deals with that complexity, and short cut explanations that “they” are to blame, that they are closer than we think,that we must be vigilant and that they must be defeated. Paranoia is a manifestation of the fear. Cynicism and conspiracy theory account for the fear and provide explanation. The sense of being lost, without a conventional way out, could be the result of what Scott refers to as the individualism collectivism cycle. Certainly that is part of what is going on with the Tea Party. Its supporters are sure that government is the cause of the present crisis and government intervention has only made things worse, when all evidence points to the contrary, recognized by economists across the political spectrum. They stick to their individualism even more closely than to their guns and religion (please note I am joking, I have deep respect for people’s religious beliefs), even if it makes less sense than before the crisis.
But the paranoia around the globe isn’t only or even primarily connected to this. Fear of the other in a world where the other is getting closer and closer, seems to me to be a primary concern (whether the other are Muslims. blacks, women, Jews or gays or some other group who are frighteningly close). Certainly deep economic crises may activate this, as Michael emphasizes, and as Scott also addresses from a slightly different angle, but I think that the problem goes beyond the economic cycle. I also agree with Michael that the lack of transparency feeds paranoia. But the paranoid has such deep convictions in the face of complexity that the blindness conviction manifests probably can’t be addressed by transparency alone.
The paranoid responses to Obama, for example it seems to me, in the paranoid’s terms is more because he is a Muslim and not a citizen, than because he is a socialist. But as both Michael and Scott reveal the combination is what we now face. I thank them for illuminating comments.
Wow. Well, this is a topic that will always interest me. I have to say that I think the paranoia (and I am not completely sure how the word is being used because I don’t know its’ original use by Hofstadter) has been mainstreamed. This, to me, is when it is really dangerous— and I think you are saying this. It is always best to give parties like those you mention representation (in the philosophical and political sense), I believe, because being able to speak your mind (I hope) helps to give voice to convictions that might otherwise be violently expressed (and are sometimes concurrently expressed in violence). But once these parties gain a strong following, or their rhetoric becomes part of the main political dialogue (and not just a lunatic fringe, as happened with Sarko and Le Pen in France), what to do? We just have to fight it all of the time, using democratic means— on blogs, in intelligent publications, and in our every day lives when we see it— we have to take it on. I think of it as a dangerously simple and arrogant “othering”— and the othering is always, always, always about demonizing others (in that sense it is truly paranoid as one’s paranoia is expressed in turning the other into one who must be eradicated so that the self, the good, righteous, true and Christian American can exist. The threat lies at the level of existence (and thus ostensibly outside politics).
Then again, we have come so far on gay rights. And even people in my parents generation who never would have been okay with gay rights have changed their minds. When this happens, it is about a lot of hard work and I think ending up close to the “other”— if gay people come out then so many people discover how many gay people they know (and love) and find it harder to hate and to other.
Yes. Fight paranoia by all democratic means that are possible. And yes, there has been great progress on many fronts, but there also seems to be a societal reaction formation that has solidified in the Republican Party. It is very dangerous. Thus Ron Paul’s paranoid newsletter was very much on the fringe in the 90s when he first published it. But now the publisher of the newsletter may very well win the Iowa Caucus. I joke that every society has a portion of the population that is crazy, xenophobic, paranoid, hateful, and that a sign of a healthy polity is that this portion of the population is politically inconsequential. I think a prerequisite for this to happen in the US is the re election of Obama and then probably the election of a woman to follow. I propose Elizabeth Warren.