From John Birchers to Birthers - The right's paranoid political style has gone mainstream

WSJ ^ | 10/20/09 | Thomas "don't call me Barney" Frank

[pissant]

Next month will mark the 45th anniversary of the publication by Harper's Magazine of Richard Hofstadter's famous essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a work that seems to grow more relevant by the day.

I was not always a fan. When I first read it two decades ago, I thought Hofstadter was being needlessly insulting by equating political views with mental illness—despite his insistence that he wasn't using the word that way. Besides, I thought, who really cared about the strange notions that occurred to members of marginal groups like the John Birch Society? Joe McCarthy's day was long over, and even in the age of high Reaganism, I thought, the type of person Hofstadter described was merely handing out flyers on street corners.

As the historian himself admitted, "in America it has been the preferred style only of minority movements." Why bother with it, then?

How times have changed! Hofstadter's beloved liberal consensus has been in the grave for decades now. Today it would appear that his mistake was underestimating the seductive power of the paranoid style.

The essential element of this mindset, Hofstadter explained, was its predilection for conspiracy theory—for understanding history as a theater in which sinister figures control the flow of events from behind the scenes, nudging us constantly and secretly in the direction of communism.

Back in Hofstadter's day this sort of thinking at least had something supremely rational going for it: The existence of the Soviet Union and its desire to bring the West to its knees.

But take that away and the theories become something far more remarkable. Consider, by contrast, the widespread belief that President Barack Obama's birth certificate was forged. What could have been his parents' motives for committing such a bizarre deed, or his home state's motive for colluding

[pissant]

Well, Barney, I must say that the JBS was and is far more patriotic, self reliant, intelligent, and useful to society than you liberals and the commie frauds you saddled this country with now.

And just so you know, you little twit, Bill Ayers wrote Obama's book for him. Yes, that Bill Ayers - the one you stinking liberals call "a respected member of the education community" and the one Birchers and all other red blooded Americans believe should be hanged from a lamp post for treason.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

What did the JBS warn us about that has NOT come to pass or that is NOT about to come to pass?

[ken21]

h was a liberal.

[freedomfiter2]

“The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” a work that seems to grow more relevant by the day.

The thing is, what the so called paranoids used to say was coming is now here.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I don't want to get in a fight with you, but I was a member of the JBS and don't share your positive view of them. And they advocate a solidly Paulestinian foreign policy.

That being said, I notice the 9/11 "truthers" seem to escape condemnation as conspiracy mongers (or did I miss something?).

[SierraWasp]

Excellent summation, ant person!!!

[ckilmer]

Consider, by contrast, the widespread belief that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate was forged
.............
This guy is a forgery.

We havn’t seen the Obama’s birth certificate. So we wouldn’t know whether it was a forgery or not.

[pissant]

I don’t particularly hold Birchers in high regard either. they tend to take too many flights of fancy for my palette. But compared to marxists, they are gold.

[DTogo]

From ACORN to White House.

From Union to Townhall enforcers.

From Communist to Green Job Czar (ho ho ho).

From Mao-lover to Communications Director.

From Mao-lover to Manufacturing Czar.

From ObamaCare to single-payer system, right Banking Queen?

[ModelBreaker]

“What did the JBS warn us about that has NOT come to pass or that is NOT about to come to pass?”

Well, for one, Dwight Eisenhower was not a communist??

They were right about Earl Warren and the UN, though.

[Frantzie]

Thomas Frank is the resident lib on the WSJ op-ed and he is a moron. I cancelled the WSJ because it is worthless now and Taranto attacked birther plus I was sick of Peggy Noonan’s RINO Manhattan Kennedy Catholic whining.

[DBrow]

“The essential element of this mindset, Hofstadter explained, was its predilection for conspiracy theory—for understanding history as a theater in which sinister figures control the flow of events from behind the scenes, nudging us constantly and secretly in the direction of communism.”

Yup, we are drifting into Communism because the forces of history make it inevitable, not because there are groups of people who wish it so.

It’s all so clear!

[Sherman Logan]

There is an old saying that seems appropriate here.

Just because you’re a paranoid schizophrenic, it doesn’t mean they aren’t really out to get you.

[Zhang Fei]

From Wikipedia:

Frank comes from a leftist political perspective and is highly critical of Republican governance, especially the presidency of George W. Bush. However, he has also criticized the Democratic Party for "swearing off economic 'liberalism'"[1]. He is unique among writers on the American Left both for his political outlook, which revives the discourses of the American Populist Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [2] and for his polemical style, which has been said to update that of the muckrakers of the same historical era [3].

[pissant]

And thems are his good points.

[ModelBreaker]

I find it funny that a guy who hangs with Alinsyites and truthers and male prostitutes finds paranoia to be an odd or curious thing.

[RightInEastLansing]

Consider, by contrast, the widespread belief that President Barack Obama's birth certificate was forged. What could have been his parents' motives for committing such a bizarre deed, or his home state's motive for colluding in it, or the courts' motives for overlooking it?

A canard. He has never publicly revealed his birth certificate therefore no one is claiming it is forged. The certification of live birth that was presented as proof of birth is worthless because one could be obtained even if born outside the USA. Is the author willfully ignorant, or just one more lying Odumbo sycophant?

[1rudeboy]

I think the part about fluoride in our drinking water being a Communist plot is one . . . .

[Sherman Logan]

Consider, by contrast, the widespread belief that President Barack Obama's birth certificate was forged.

Actually, I believe the claim is that we haven't yet seen his "real" birth certificate.

What could have been his parents' motives for committing such a bizarre deed, or his home state's motive for colluding

50 years ago, no logical motive. Last year, very obvious motives for anyone supporting him.

Personally I lean towards the president having been born in HI and therefore a natural born citizen. But he sure seems oddly resistant to coughing up the actual documentation to prove it.

[Just mythoughts]

See what is expected of 'compassionate' conservatives ... "temperate and compromising spirit."

I always like to remind people that the 'question' of BamaKennedy's eligibility was first 'birthed' by Hillary Clinton.... campaign 2008. And interestingly she is also the one who birthed the claim of some 'vast right wing conspiracy' that unzipped her hubby's pants... Hillary also birthed the 'truthers' when she took to the US Senate floor with her NY newspaper asking the question "What did Bush know and when did he know it.... I am so happy this wicked woman will not be the first woman elected president.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

The old JBS underestimated the conspiracy.
Even they never predicted that the socialists would make
school children worship the leader as a false messiah with absurd and ridiculous songs of praise.

Tailgunner Joe also underestimated the problem.
Can you imagine the howling of liberals if Joe McCarthy
had claimed Eisenhower had had a science czar who talked
about putting anti-fertility and sterilization drugs in the water supply???!!!

But sending butch Maoists out to speak and recruit at high school
commencements seems like an SNL parody. Worthy of Sterling Hayden and Dr. Strangelove.
The Alinskyites in the Obama White House are a parody
of Bircher conspiracy theories. So who needs theories?

[rstrahan]

You’re not paranoid if someone is after you....and they are.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I don’t particularly hold Birchers in high regard either. they tend to take too many flights of fancy for my palette. But compared to marxists, they are gold.

My problem with the Birchers--and please remember that I used to be one--is that (and I sincerely believe this, however wrong I may be) they act as the "blue lodge" of the anti-Semitic movement in this country. People who join are not showered with anti-Semitic propaganda, but there are subtle doses given here and there that push members in that direction. Then when the victim "bites" at the bait they make a big deal of throwing them out when the fact is they wouldn't have become anti-Semites without the subtle messages of the JBS to begin with.

The JBS is basically "chr*stian reconstructionist," anti-Fundamentalist, anti-Israel, and a continuation of the people who thought we fought on the wrong side in WWII. They are opposed to the "war on terror" and to American "interference" in the Middle East (because they think it benefits Jews) but they had no problem with the military draft in the Sixties or "American interference" in Central America in the Eighties. It's only bad for America when "democracy" gets exported to the Middle East. And no, I am not a Wilsonian, but I do detest this hypocrisy.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Everything the John Birch Society predicted has happened, or is happening now!!

[marron]

I guess he missed the punchline about Joe McCarthy, where in the aftermath of the cold war we found out that he was right.

And he isn’t at all suspicious of the fact that, ok, I get it, its crazy to think the O’s birth certificate is a forgery, which is why he won’t produce it, and the entire press establishment agrees that its crazy to even bring the subject up. And its crazy to ask to see his college records, and his passport records. You’d have to be a conspiracy nut to even think of it.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

It’s hip to be square. :)

[Stepan12]

ARe the birthers really all that nutty? Orly Taitz for example? excerpts from the link:

"It so happens that 5 years ago the prestigious publication AP knew that Mr. Barack Hussein Obama, II was in fact born in Kenya and therefore not eligible to occupy the Office of the President."
********************************************
"Obama Born In Kenya According To 2004 News Article

Apparently OBAMA supporters now have a lot of explaining to do to Judge Carter, Orly Taitz ( which is presenting it to him as we write ), and the rest of the AMERICAN PEOPLE...."

As for the John Birch Society, I don't think everything can be explained by a conspiracy, but I have at in on their meetings and they seem like patriotic Americans to me. Also, they knew I was Jewish and I pace "Little Green Footballs," I detected no racism with them. In fact, they had a black policeman as a member* (I spoke with him about the purposly hidden, racist mumerings of Karl Marx).

*Blacks in the John Birch Society don't call themselves black, but, instead, they use the better term, negroe.

While I agree with them, there are some things I cannot get away with calling people despite my attempts to avoid PC language.

[RichInOC]

Mr. Frank, a good number of the left still think that 9/11 was an inside job. And a widely respected writer for one of the nation’s oldest literary magazines still believes the immediate past Republican vice-presidential candidate’s infant son...wasn’t her son. The paranoid style, it would appear, has at the very least gone bipartisan.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Bingo.
It's NOT a paranoid "theory" if it is really happening.
See #21.

[pissant]

The birchers I’ve known have not been anti-jew. But have been solidly anti-jihadist.

[Republic of Texas]

It used to be that if you saw a socialist behind every tree you were paranoid. Now it’s because there’s a socialist behind every tree.

[T. Buzzard Trueblood]

Back in Hofstadter's day this sort of thinking at least had something supremely rational going for it: The existence of the Soviet Union and its desire to bring the West to its knees

Oh, the left finally noticed that, did they?

[Zionist Conspirator]

The birchers I’ve known have not been anti-jew. But have been solidly anti-jihadist.

That surprises me, since my experience has been the exact opposite. But I believe you.

Their magazine (The New American) toes the straight Ron Paul line though, I believe.

[pissant]

Here’s a current article on their website:

Muslims Call for Sharia in Britain

http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/world-mainmenu-26/europe-mainmenu-35/2121-muslims-call-for-sharia-in-britain

[Stepan12]

Mr. Frank, a good number of the left still think that 9/11 was an inside job. And a widely respected writer for one of the nation’s oldest literary magazines still believes the immediate past Republican vice-presidential candidate’s infant son...wasn’t her son. The paranoid style, it would appear, has at the very least gone bipartisan.

9/11 was an inside job! I know this is so because these bimbos in bikinis say it is so

They are terrorist sympathizers and they need to be spanked!

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods is a suggestion that seems to horrify people more than most proposals for involuntary fertility control. Indeed, this would pose some very difficult political, legal, and social questions, to say nothing of the technical problems. No such sterilant exists today, nor does one appear to be under development. To be acceptable, such a substance would have to meet some rather stiff requirements: it must be uniformly effective, despite widely varying doses received by individuals, and despite varying degrees of fertility and sensitivity among individuals; it must be free of dangerous or unpleasant side effects; and it must have no effect on members of the opposite sex, children, old people, pets, or livestock."
- John Holdren, Obama’s “science czar” on how to introduce population control drugs into the water supply

Not just a movie this time...

[RegulatorCountry]

Well, here’s a conspiracy for you ... the “Birther” label was cooked up precisely because it sounds like “Bircher,” and the plan all along has been to marginalize and discredit anyone who questions whether Obama actually is eligible under the Constitution. Tar them with the Bircher brush.

And, furthermore, ready-made “conspiracies” were sprung, not surprisingly with the aid of websites like Daily Kos, to suck the opposition in and discredit them. The so-called “fake” online birth certificate was is a major case in point, that seemed tailor made to target FReepers wanting to relive the glory days of Rathergate.

We had a university administrator and former psychologist (three guesses whether such a person is Republican or not), with a very questionable past, having set himself up previously as an “online dating expert,” who created and refined another online persona, then signed up to FR and presented himself as an authority on document analysis, and he drew quite a crowd. Never mind that a JPEG can’t prove anything. That was the point. While everybody in opposition to Obama, who had suspicions about his eligibility, were busy chasing their tails with this red herring, Obama sailed right into office, with the obvious, Constitutional disqualification of a foreign father just laying out in the open.

So, there’s conspiring alright. Conspiring to harness conspiratorial mindsets with manufactured conspiracies, and then beating us over the head with them.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Have those Birchers been anti-Jew, or were they of the impression Jews held them and theirs in contempt?

Not trying to stir things up. Just making an observation.

There are a (lot) of arrogant, know it all pro-gay ACLU type Obama-hugging kook leftwing Jews in very influential positions in America, who with great regularity ridicule fly-over country, and the segment of America the Birchers represent.

Just saying.

Perhaps it’s defensiveness you’re seeing, and perhaps misinterpreting to be something more sinister than that.

[Republic of Texas]

Since the left is obviously crazy, it’s not paranoid to assume they are capable of anything, no matter how horrifying the idea.

[montag813]

The “Birthers” do a great job. Regardless of the truth, a significant percentage of Americans will always believe that Obama is illegitimate. and that doesn’t hurt a bit.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Thank you for the link.

[April Lexington]

Cautious reply.... I understand your issue but I disagree with the Blue Lodge analogy. The more one studies communism in the United States, the more one becomes aware of the astounding number of American and European Jewish people involved in that movement. It is a stunning percentage and that fact alone has created an environment where antisemitic attitudes have developed. I can't explain it and I certainly don't paint all Jewish people to be communists (I know, in fact, not all are) but if one is serious about fighting the Left, one needs to look in the usual places for evidence. As for me, I'll stand side by side with you in fighting the Left.

[~Kim4VRWC's~]

When charlie sheen announced himself a truther, and wanted a meeting with the prez, then I knew it was taken as a joke. He didn’t get the meeting...or um it wasn’t publicized if he did.

[AmericanVictory]

Someone at the WSJ needs to read the parts on Hofstadter in the extemely well documented and researched Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg. Imagine the now-Fox owned newspaper of business writing this tripe. No wonder IBD is doing so well.

[Uncle Miltie]

Thomas "don't call me Barney" Frank

LOL!

[April Lexington]

How about if we just fight the goll darn Communists and forget the name calling!

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Think bigger, rudedude.

I’m talking about the global-communist plot and the many avenues-of-approach they predicted they would take and that are coming to pass.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Have those Birchers been anti-Jew, or were they of the impression Jews held them and theirs in contempt?

Not trying to stir things up. Just making an observation.

There are a (lot) of arrogant, know it all pro-gay ACLU type Obama-hugging kook leftwing Jews in very influential positions in America, who with great regularity ridicule fly-over country, and the segment of America the Birchers represent.

Just saying.

Perhaps it’s defensiveness you’re seeing, and perhaps misinterpreting to be something more sinister than that.

First of all, I'm a rural redneck from flyover country. I'm not Jewish. And as I said, I was a John Bircher for four years.

Unfortunately, the anti-Semitism of the groups within the Birch Society orbit are not based on "pro-gay" Jews because until relatively recently most Jews--even the liberals--were not "pro-gay" (you must remember how utterly new the "pro-gay" position is). Yet these groups have been anti-Jewish all along, from the days before WWII to today. Perhaps you know of some "pro-gay Jews" in the 1930's?

Second, why punish Israel for the sins of liberal American Jews? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. What brainless dolt believes that the domestic policy of American liberals is manufactured in Jerusalem? Yet the JBS and others in its orbit have evinced hostility to Israel and opposed "getting involved" in its wars while simultaneously supporting "getting involved" everywhere else in the world. The Communists put Israel and the anti-Communist countries in the same category, but certain American "right wingers" insisted on taking the Communist position in the Middle East!

Finally, no one could have more contempt for the pious Middle American than a man named Revilo P. Oliver. He rejected all religion and considered it a scam, and preferred a life governed by the laws of nature without the interference of toublesome morality. And for your information, he was not a Communist but a "right wing anti-Communist"--in fact, he was one of the twelve men who founded the John Birch Society! If you doubt my word, his atrocious, blasphemous writings (which poke fun at all religions and accuse the chr*stian apostles and church fathers of using mushrooms to cause them to have hallucinations) are available on the Internet.

Similar to Oliver's rejection of religion and the supernatural was a loathsome creature named Ben Klassen (sp?) who founded the "Church of the Creator," an atheistic "religion" (the "creator" in the "church's" name is not G-d but the "white race") whose writings are also available online. Klassen hated and loathed the Bible as an alien Jewish imposition that "aryans" should have nothing to do with and he ridiculed the Bible's stories (just like any liberal) as silly and pointless, claiming Aesop's Fables were far superior. And while Klassen wasn't a founder of the JBS, guess what? He was once a member! Almost all American anti-Semites got their start in the JBS. And I say this as a former member who used to look up to them.

Not all "right wing anti-Communists" are friends of the people of Middle America. If you doubt me, just read the putrid blasphemies of these men.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Cautious reply.... I understand your issue but I disagree with the Blue Lodge analogy. The more one studies communism in the United States, the more one becomes aware of the astounding number of American and European Jewish people involved in that movement. It is a stunning percentage and that fact alone has created an environment where antisemitic attitudes have developed. I can't explain it and I certainly don't paint all Jewish people to be communists (I know, in fact, not all are) but if one is serious about fighting the Left, one needs to look in the usual places for evidence. As for me, I'll stand side by side with you in fighting the Left.

I do not dispute what you say for one moment. What I do not understand is "getting even" with leftist Jews by punishing Israel and supporting its Communist terrorist enemies, and some "anti-Communists" do.

What has Israel done to earn the wrath of conservatives?

[Cringing Negativism Network]

I stand corrected.

My impressions are from the left coast, the inner sanctum of Hollywood tripe.

I defer to your clearly more abundant understanding of the topic. But I sure wish (some, perhaps most) Jews weren’t on balance so fundamentally hostile to traditional America.

It’s really frustrating. It’s all you see in Hollywood movies. Bashing traditional roles.

Bashing the Catholic church. Bashing what’s good and just, and building up that which is fundamentally wrong.

How can those who are so closely associated with such a righteous nation as Israel, be so wrong about so many things when they arrive in America?

It’s confounding.