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analysis was a big hit in psychoanalytic circles, and paranoid schizophrenics were diagnosed with repressed homosexuality for much of the twentieth century until the theory was eventually tossed for lack of evidence and general silliness. Modern psychiatrists now regard severe paranoia as a schizophrenic disorder and treat it with antipsychotic medication and cognitive behavioral therapy, though some psychoanalysts still follow Freud in rooting for the source of paranoia in the depths of the subconscious. In particular, they often return to the concept of projection that Freud described in The Schreber Case. Projection is a defense mechanism whereby the mind deals with an uncomfortable impulse by pretending that it belongs to someone else. The uncomfortable impulse could be homosexual lust, as Freud diagnosed in the Schreber case, or it could be physical aggression, dishonesty, hatred, etc. A paranoiac with infidelity urges, for example, might irrationally believe that her lover was cheating on her, while a paranoiac with homicidal urges might imagine that others were trying to murder him.

But whether one leans toward the psychoanalysts or the psychiatrists, the psychosis model of paranoia doesn’t really explain the political paranoia that has been sweeping the country. Bill O’Reilly and Glenn Beck may lose touch with reality at points, but neither they nor the majority of their viewers are clinically psychotic. Most of the men and women who believe in secret Marxist conspiracies and plots to destroy Christmas are ordinary people capable of maintaining jobs and personal relationships free from crippling psychoses. Moreover, the popular growth of persecution politics suggests that even if some people are psychologically predisposed to paranoid ideas, external factors must be exploiting those predispositions. Masses of people didn’t suddenly go crazy at the same time by sheer chance.

“The Paranoid Style in American Politics”

In 1964, eminent historian Richard Hofstadter sought to distinguish the social phenomenon of mass paranoia from the individual psychoses that Freud studied. In a famous essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Hofstadter labeled the former “the paranoid style in American politics.” He explained:

I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes.4

As Hofstadter observed, the paranoid style has relevance precisely because the people who practice it are not clinically insane. It influences “more or less normal people” in large numbers. Paranoid schizophrenia is a disease of the mind. What Hofstadter called the paranoid style is a disease of society.

It’s not a new phenomenon. Hofstadter documented the Illuminati and Freemason conspiracy theories that raged in the early years of the republic and the anti-Catholic paranoia that exploded in the mid-1800s. But he focused primarily on the anticommunist paranoia of his day, particularly the conspiracy theories of Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and the John Birch Society in the 1960s. Hofstadter argued that the anticommunists’ paranoid style differed from previous instances in that adherents of the earlier movements felt that though the nation was threatened by foreign powers, upstanding American citizens still possessed their own country, whereas twentieth-century anticommunists believed that America had “been largely taken away from them and their kind.”5 In their view, communists had deeply infiltrated the country, occupying “the very centers of American power” and ravaging the nation “step by step, by will and intention.” Joseph McCarthy named top government officials as conspirators, including secretaries of state George Marshall and Dean Acheson; JBS founder Robert Welch implicated former presidents Truman and Eisenhower.

The secular humanism hysteria of the 1970s and 1980s completed the migration