What Richard Hofstadter characterized in 1965 as the “Paranoid Style” in American politics — the nativist notion that we are being manipulated and subverted by secret conspiracies — dates back to the earliest days of our country when a furor against supposed Illuminati skullduggery exploded in 1798. Since then, popular scapegoats for domestic ills have included Freemasons, Papists, immigrants, and more recently Communists. The penchant for fingering secret enemies is hardly exclusive to the U.S. — the Nazis rode to power in Germany by exploiting fears of Reds and Jews, after all — but it may be only in America that this world view has been able to bloom into its lushest, most mutant
varieties.
Critique, a small, handsomely typeset biannual subtitled “A
