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African American Culture and Society After Rodney

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1

Chapter 12

‘Not One of Us’: Barack Obama, the ‘Paranoid Style’, and the Polarization of American

Politics

Kevern Verney

Some events are so momentous as to be unforgettable. The election of Barack Obama as the first

African American president of the United States on 4 November 2008 was a moment in history that

will remain an enduring, lifelong memory for many of the millions of onlookers who witnessed it,

whether in the United States or via international news coverage. Fifty years after the assassination of

John F. Kennedy, on 22 November 1963, people around the world old enough to have personal

memories of the president’s death are still able to recall where they were, and what they were doing,

when they first heard news of the tragedy. It does not seem unreasonable to suppose that, 50 years

after Obama’s first election to the White House, surviving witnesses of the occasion will similarly be

able to recall how, and when, they first witnessed the images of his victory speech in Grant Park,

Chicago, on that memorable autumnal evening.

Obama’s re-election in 2012 was, by comparison, a more muted event. The return of any

incumbent to the White House, perhaps inevitably, invokes a less dramatic and exciting atmosphere

than that created by their first victory. For any individual the intervening four years in office leads to

the feeling of a break with the past giving way to a sense of familiarity, and expectations being

tempered by the recognition that politics is the art of the possible. In the words of former New York

governor, Mario Cuomo, politicians ‘campaign in poetry’ but ‘govern in prose’.1

Such was the case with Obama. In 2008 his bid for the presidency generated excitement and

euphoria not just in the United States but around the world. In particular he seemed to articulate the

hopes and thoughts of a generation of first-time voters, creating a feeling that anything and everything

was possible. Inheriting a set of problems greater than those confronting any incoming president in

living memory – including the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and not one but two unresolved

1 Mario Cuomo, ‘New Republic’, 8 April 1985, quoted in Elizabeth Knowles (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations,

Fifth Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 247.

2

foreign wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan – it was always going to be impossible for Obama to meet such

expectations. His 2012 re-election campaign was, unsurprisingly, more pragmatic and realistic, both

in respect to what had actually been accomplished and also as to what would be achievable during a

second term of office.

Despite this more sober mood, and the inevitable sense of disillusionment created during the

intervening four years, Obama’s global popularity remained remarkably high. A poll of 21,797 people

around the world conducted by the BBC World Service between 3 July and 3 September 2012 found

that 20 of the 21 nations included in the survey favoured the re-election of Obama over his

Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Pakistan was the only country in which the former

Massachusetts governor enjoyed a poll lead, and that with the support of just 14 per cent of

respondents compared to 11 per cent for Obama, with the remaining 75 per cent of people questioned

either undecided or expressing no preference for either candidate. In the survey as a whole an average

of 50 per cent of respondents favoured an Obama victory, compared to just 9 per cent in favour of

Romney, and the remainder expressing no preference between the two men.2

In a parallel survey undertaken in the heady days of 2008, Obama had admittedly performed

slightly better, enjoying leads over John McCain in all 23 countries included in that poll. By 2012

Obama had suffered a significant falling off in levels of support in some of the 15 nations included in

both surveys. In Kenya the 87 per cent of respondents who had favoured him in 2008 dropped to 66

per cent four years later, and in China and Mexico there was a decline in support from 35 per cent to

28 per cent of respondents and 54 per cent to 43 per cent of respondents respectively. Nonetheless, the

lead over his Republican opponent remained commanding, with support for Romney peaking at just

18 per cent in Kenya. In seven nations – France, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Panama, Indonesia,

India, and Turkey – the level of support for Obama actually increased in the 2012 survey in relation to

its 2008 predecessor. Moreover, Obama performed particularly well in Western democracies that

might be seen as, socially and politically, having the most in common with the United States. The

level of public support for Obama in Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom thus ranged

from 64 per cent to 72 per cent of respondents in 2012 compared to just 2 per cent to 9 per cent of

2 ‘Global Poll: Obama Overwhelmingly Preferred to Romney’, Globescan, 22 October 2012, www.globescan.com.

3

respondents who favoured Romney, and an increase on the 59 per cent to 69 per cent of respondents

in those countries who had favoured Obama in the 2008 survey.3

Such statistics are at odds with the findings of most opinion polls undertaken within the

United States in the closing months of the 2012 election campaign which consistently pointed to a

close-fought race. In the event, Obama’s tally of 51 per cent of the total vote in the November

election, compared to 47.3 per cent for Romney, thwarted Republican hopes of a shock victory and

demonstrated that the president did, after all, command the support of a small, but clear, majority of

voters at the polls. Nonetheless, the differences between the levels of domestic and international

support for the president remain striking.4

This essay explores these contrasting responses to Obama. It argues that the negative

perceptions of the president in the United States can be attributed to two factors. Firstly, they reflect

continuing racial divisions within American society. Although the overt expression of racial prejudice

is no longer acceptable in mainstream political discourse it is manifested in coded language and

rhetoric. Specifically, this takes the form of the repeated claims made by Obama’s detractors that for a

variety of reasons, ranging from supposed doubts as to his place of birth and religious beliefs through

to his alleged lack of patriotism, he is in some way not truly American.

Secondly, it will be suggested that the vehemence of the domestic hostility to Obama needs to

be seen in the context of what historian Richard Hofstadter claimed to be a paranoid tendency in US

political life. This, he argued, is a recurring phenomenon in the American historical tradition,

particularly at times of economic crisis or heightened ethnic and religious tensions, all of which exist

in the present-day United States.

The sense of disparity in domestic and international responses to Obama is reinforced by the

intensity of much of the opposition directed against him within the United States. Within a week of

his re-election so-called secession petitions were launched by residents of Texas, Louisiana, Alabama,

and five other states calling for their home states to be allowed to withdraw from the Union rather

3 Ibid.

4 Larry J. Sabato, ‘The Obama Encore That Broke Some Rules’, in Larry J. Sabato (ed.), Barack Obama and the New

America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013): 2.

4

than face the prospect of a second Obama administration. Admittedly, this constituted only a small

proportion of the electorates in the states concerned and even the most popular petition, in Texas, only

attracted the support of some 100,000 signatories. Nonetheless, the very existence of the secession

movement was itself notable as a phenomenon not seen in the United States since the election of

Abraham Lincoln in 1860.5

Given this historical precedent there is a degree of irony in the fact that both in the

mainstream media, and his own carefully presented self-image, the president whom Obama is most

often compared with is Lincoln. In common with Lincoln, Obama also shares the unfortunate

distinction of being one of the most publicly vilified presidents during his term of office with both

men being caricatured as apes by journalists and political opponents. By the end of his first term of

office at least 67 bestselling anti-Obama books had been published within the United States.6

Beginning with Jerome Corsi’s The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of

Personality (2008), the conclusions presented in such works, or to be more accurate, assertions, for

they typically put forward little in the way of serious argument to support them, ranged from claims

that the president was a covert communist to suggestions that he was an empty media creation, or

simply lacking the political insights and character attributes needed to be president. Frequently

intellectually weak and contradictory, these publications were invariably strident and alarmist in tone.

They were also often highly personalized and offensive in their depictions of Obama, as reflected in

such titles as Aaron Klein and Brenda Elliott’s The Manchurian President (2010), Mike Cullen’s

Whiny Little Bitch (2012), and Edward Klein’s The Amateur (2012).7

5 Manny Fernandez, ‘White House Rejects Petitions to Secede, but Texans Fight On’, The New York Times, 15 January

2013, www.nytimes.com.

6 Ishmael Reed, Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers (Montreal: Baraka Books,

2010): 16; Howard A. Jewitt, Obama’s Detractors in the Right Wing Nut House (Scottsdale: Horizon Books, 2012): 101.

7 Jerome Corsi, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (New York: Threshold Editions, 2008);

Aaron Klein and Brenda Elliott, The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and other Anti-

American Extremists (Washington, DC: WND Books, 2010); Mike Cullen, Whiny Little Bitch: The Excuse Filled Presidency

of Barack Obama (Raleigh, NC: Quite Right Books, 2012); Edward Klein, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House

(Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2012).

5

In the case of some commentators, the use of such emotive and partisan language reflected

the idiosyncratic nature of their political views, or more calculating objectives of media self-

promotion and easy book sales to diehard right-wing audiences. At the same time, that their works

attaininged bestseller status was testimony to the fact that they struck a sympathetic chord with large

sections of US public opinion. In terms of serious political organization, this phenomenon was

highlighted by the emergence of the so-called Tea Party movement as a nationwide grassroots

opposition to the Obama administration within months of the president taking office.

By April 2009 more than 1.2 million Americans had attended Tea Party meetings, and by

2012 there were more than 3,500 Tea Party chapters across the United States. Albeit stopping short of

seeking recognition as an independent political party, the movement enjoyed considerable influence

within the Republican Party by endorsing candidates for office who most closely identified with its

views. In this vein, during the 2012 Republican primary campaign the hitherto largely unknown Rick

Santorum emerged, at least for a while, as a serious alternative to the better financed and more

mainstream candidacy of Mitt Romney. Santorum’s strident anti-Obama rhetoric was one factor that

contributed to this success, as reflected in his startling claim made on 25 March 2012 that the

president’s re-election ‘would be the end of freedom’.8

The intensity and widespread nature of domestic opposition to the president, as reflected in

the anti-Obama literature, the Tea Party movement, and the close-run 2012 election campaign, raises

the question as to why perceptions of Obama within the United States are so different from those in

the wider international community. One possible explanation is the persistent and enduring nature of

historic racial prejudice in American society. The validity of such a claim would appear to be

reinforced by the allegations of racism against the Tea Party movement by leading Civil Rights

organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Moreover,

the 2012 election also demonstrated a continuing ethnic divide with Obama receiving the backing of

less than 40 per cent of white voters. Both in 2008 and again in 2012 he performed worst among

white voters in states with a history of racial conservatism, most notably in the Deep South.9

8 Dewitt, Obama’s Detractors: 23, 31.

6

In the euphoria that surrounded Obama’s election in 2008, it is ironic to recall that a number

of political and media commentators hailed his victory as proof that the United States had become a

post-racial society. Four years on there were few, if any, serious scholarly researchers prepared to

support such a claim. This shift in perception can be explained by a number of factors. In the first

instance, a number of highly publicized and well-documented race-related incidents during Obama’s

first term of office highlighted the continuing importance of race in American society. These included

the 2009 arrest of African American Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates on suspicion of trying to

break into his own home; a series of racially charged references to, and representations of, President

Obama himself and First Lady Michelle Obama in the media; the 2010 dismissal and re-hiring of an

African American federal government employee, Shirley Sherrod, over incorrect allegations of racism

against her; and the 2012 shooting of a black teenager, Trayvon Martin, in Florida and the subsequent

acquittal of the white neighbourhood watch volunteer who killed him.10

The aftermath of Obama’s 2008 election victory saw a significant rise in the levels of traffic

on race hate websites and his first term of office was marked by a disturbing increase in the incidence

of racially motivated crimes across the nation. Social and economic indicators of prosperity and

wellbeing highlighted major inequalities between the life prospects of white Americans and those of

African Americans and Latinos. In comparison to their white counterparts, members of the latter

groups were less likely to benefit from a college or university education, more likely to be arrested or

serve time in prison, be paid lower incomes throughout their working life, receive lower standards of

health care, and die at an earlier age. The president himself drew attention to such disparities in his

writings and speeches. Indeed, the cumulative evidence of a continuing racial divide in American

society was such as to lead one scholarly commentator to conclude that ‘one of the main challenges

9 ‘NAACP Condemns Racism in Tea Party’, NBC News.Com, 14 July 2010, www.nbcnews.com; Alan J. Abramowitz, The

2008 Elections (New York: Longman, 2009): 38–9; Sabato, ‘The Obama Encore’: 16.

10 For further details on these incidents see Kevern Verney, ‘Introduction: A Dream Deferred?’ in Mark Ledwidge, Kevern

Verney and Inderjeet Parmar (eds), Barack Obama and the Myth of a Post-Racial America (New York: Routledge, 2013):

ix–x.

7

facing future historians will be to take seriously the vogue for postracial rhetoric during the 2008

election cycle’.11

One explanation for this post-racial vogue was that from the early 1980s onwards it had

become increasingly unacceptable to overtly express racially prejudiced views in mainstream

American society. By 2008 ‘most Americans who think in racially prejudiced ways’ had, as Mark

Orbe, Professor in Communications and Diversity at Western Michigan University, observed, learnt

‘to avoid explicitly racist comments especially when it comes to public figures’. Racist sentiments

were more likely to be expressed in coded ways. In respect to Obama, this arguably found expression

in a variety of representations of the president that characterized him as somehow un-American, or

‘not one of us’, without any direct reference to his African American ancestry.12

This approach was manifested in a memo for Hillary Clinton written by her campaign

strategist Mark Penn during the 2007–08 Democratic Party primaries. ‘All of those articles’ on

Obama’s ‘boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared toward showing his background is

diverse, multi-cultural and putting that in a new light’, he noted, but this was also a ‘very strong

weakness for him – his roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited’. Consequently,

Penn advised Clinton that ‘every speech’ she gave ‘should contain the line that you were born in the

middle of America to the middle class, in the middle of the last century. Let’s explicitly own

“America” in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t’.13

11 Heidi Beirich and Evelyn Schlatter, ‘Backlash: Racism and the Presidency of Barack Obama’, and Rogers M. Smith and

Desmond S. King, ‘Barack Obama and the Future of American Racial Politics’, both in Ledwidge et al., Barack Obama and

the Myth of a Post-Racial America: 80, 103–5; Thomas J. Sugrue, Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010): 104–8; Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the

American Dream (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006): 242, 248; Obama, ‘The Great Need of the Hour’, speech in Atlanta,

Georgia, 20 January 2008, in David Olive (ed.), An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama (Toronto: ECW Press,

2008): 240–41; Brian Ward, ‘“I Want My Country Back, I Want My Dream Back”: Barack Obama and the Appeal of

Postracial Fictions’, in Danielle McGuire and John Dittmer (eds), Freedom Rights: New Perspectives on the Civil Rights

Movement (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2013): 330.

12 Mark P. Orbe, Communication Realities in a ‘Post-Racial’ Society: What the U.S. Public Really Thinks About Barack

Obama (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011): 139–40.

8

Portrayals of Obama as lacking ‘roots to basic American values’ took a variety of forms

during the 2007–08 primary and general election campaigns and persisted throughout his first term of

office. A recurring suggestion was that Obama was a Muslim. In January 2007 Fox News presenters

Steve Doocy and John Gibson thus claimed that he had been educated at a radical Islamist school in

Indonesia. The following month photographs of Obama in Islamic-style clothing were posted on the

Drudge Report website and were widely held to have been submitted by a Clinton aide. In March

2007 Israela Dharmawan, a former teacher of Obama, told the Los Angeles Times that as a primary

school student in Indonesia he ‘was a Muslim […] He was registered as a Muslim because his

(step)father Lolo Soetoro was Muslim’.14

Reports of Obama’s supposed Islamic heritage were noteworthy in a variety of ways.

Disturbingly, they conveyed the connotation that being a Muslim and a good American were

somehow incompatible. When John McCain rebuked an overzealous supporter at a Republican

campaign rally in Minnesota in October 2008 for calling Obama an ‘Arab’ he thus stated ‘No ma’am,

he’s a decent family man […] that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues’.

The seeming implication was that being an ‘Arab’ and a ‘decent family man’ were somehow

incompatible. Perceptions of Obama as a Muslim also persisted well into his first term of office,

despite the lack of evidence to substantiate such claims and the president’s repeated public

affirmations of his Christian faith. In August 2010 a national opinion poll commissioned by CNN thus

found that 32 per cent of respondents still believed Obama was a Muslim. What is remarkable is that

this was a poll of a cross section of members of the public, not just Tea Party activists or committed

Republican Party supporters.15

13 Enid Logan, ‘At This Defining Moment’: Barack Obama’s Presidential Candidacy and the New Politics of Race (New

York: New York University Press, 2011): fn. 156; Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson, The Battle for America 2008: The Story of

an Extraordinary Election (New York: Viking, 2009): 148–9.

14 Logan, ‘At This Defining Moment’: 117; David Remnick, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama (London:

Picador, 2010): 60–61.

15 Remnick, The Bridge, 546; Logan, ‘At This Defining Moment’: 118; Orbe, Communication Realities in a ‘Post-Racial’

Society: 5.

9

Obama’s American identity was questioned in other ways. In the closing weeks of the 2008

election campaign, Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin repeatedly told audiences that

Obama was ‘not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America’, accusing him of

‘palling around with terrorists who would target their own country’ because of his association with

former 1960s radical Bill Ayers. This was despite the fact that Obama was just eight years old when

Ayers was convicted of a domestic bombing campaign and that by the time Obama had contact with

him Ayers had become a respected Chicago community leader.16

More subtly, the Obamas were accused of being lacking in patriotism and failing to show

sufficient respect to symbols of American national pride and identity. In February 2008 Michelle

Obama was thus rebuked by right-wing commentators for her statement that the support her husband

had received made her ‘really proud of my country’ for ‘the first time in my adult life’. Similarly,

Barack Obama was criticized for refusing to wear a United States flag lapel pin and not giving a hand

on heart salute during the playing of the national anthem. Some commentators claimed to find

evidence of unpatriotic tendencies in even the most innocuous actions. In May 2009 Obama was thus

condemned by right-wing talk-show host Laura Ingraham because he favoured ‘French’ Dijon

mustard on his hamburgers. ‘What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup but Dijon

mustard?’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t even like the way the man orders a hamburger’. Even more

improbably, she argued that unemployed American workers were starving so that Obama could enjoy

his foreign condiment, despite the fact that some brands of the mustard were made in the United

States.17

Proponents of the so-called ‘Birther’ movement went further asserting that Obama was not

even a native-born American citizen and as such ineligible to serve as president of the United States.

Such allegations typically rested on the claim that Obama had been born in Kenya, the homeland of

his father, rather than Hawaii. They persisted throughout his first term in office despite the fact that

16 David Plouffe, The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory (New York:

Viking, 2009): 353–5; Remnick, The Bridge: 545–6.

17 Balz and Johnson, The Battle for America: 209; Logan, ‘At This Defining Moment’: 116; Liza Mundy, Michelle Obama: A

Biography (London: Pocket Books, 2009): 185–8; Dewitt, Obama’s Detractors: 204–5.

10

the president had publicly released a copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate as early as 2007. In 2009

the Quest for Obama’s Birth Doctor website thus noted that ‘No doctor has (ever) come forward to

state that he or she was the doctor that brought Barack Hussain Obama into the world on August 4

1961’. In the previously cited August 2010 CNN opinion poll, 25 per cent of respondents stated that

they did not believe the president had been born in the United States. In April 2011 business magnate

and Republican presidential contender Donald Trump warned that Obama’s citizenship ‘may be a

scam’. By mid-2011 the World News Daily website had published more than 600 articles questioning

the authenticity of Obama’s place of birth.18

For some Americans the repeated questioning of Obama’s nationality evoked even more

sinister connotations than the possibility that he might not have been born in the United States.

Fourteen per cent of respondents in the 2010 CNN poll went so far as to say that they believed Obama

‘may be the anti-Christ’. A white female focus-group member in her 30s from Michigan admitted that

she ‘had an aunt who literally believes that he is the anti-Christ’. The ‘way that he presents himself, in

her mind, that’s too good to be true. No one human and godly could act that way, he must be the anti-

Christ’. In similar vein a white female college student in her 20s from Virginia reflected, ‘Wow, he

really is charismatic […] and […] perfect […] he came out of nowhere […] and he is really young.

All of these people were following him all of a sudden. And how many young politicians just appear

like that. It made you think’.19

Anti-Obama tracts and websites advanced an array of imaginative and improbable arguments

to ‘evidence’ Obama’s alleged diabolical origins. In January 2014 a random Google search of the

term ‘Obama the Antichrist’ produced some 575,000 results. Some protagonists turned to the Bible

for inspiration, such as the warning in the Book of Revelations that the beast or antichrist would rule

for 43 months of peace and prosperity as a prelude to the Battle of Armageddon in the fourth year of

his reign. Given that a presidential term of office was also four years this was cited as ‘proof’ that the

final conflict between good and evil would come during Obama’s last year in office when he sought

re-election. Others sought to find hidden meaning in the president’s name, noting that there were 18

18 Logan, ‘At This Defining Moment’: 121–2; Orbe, Communication Realities in a ‘Post-Racial Society’: 5.

19 Orbe, Communication Realities in a ‘Post-Racial Society’: 140–41.

11

letters in the words Barack Hussain Obama, or the equivalent of three sixes, the supposed number of

the beast in the Book of Revelations. The fact that the same result could be obtained when applied to

other American presidents, for example Ronald Wilson Reagan, was conveniently ignored. Even the

names of Obama’s children were seen as evidence of his demonic origins. For some commentators the

fact that one of the president’s daughters was called Natasha thus took on hitherto unrecognized

meaning when they realized that when read in reverse it spelt the dread words ‘Ah Satan’.20

In late 2012 media reports of an ancient Mayan prophecy that the world would be destroyed

by a series of natural disasters before the end of the year only served to fuel the apocalyptic fantasies

that Obama’s presidency would mark the end of times. By the time of his second inauguration in

January 2013 the fact that America and the rest of the world had clearly not perished was seemingly

conclusive proof that these claims were exaggerated. Rather than accept such an obvious conclusion

the proponents of such dire predictions just shifted their ground. Some thus grudgingly accepted that

Obama might not be the demonic beast of biblical prophecy after all, but claimed instead that he had

been ‘sent’ to prepare the way for the coming of the anti-Christ.21

The continuing public and media credence given to the various myths surrounding Obama,

from his alleged covert Islamic beliefs and lack of patriotism through to the authenticity of his

American citizenship and relationship to biblical prophecy, has been a notable, and at times

distracting, feature of his time in office. The persistence of such beliefs, with so little credible

evidence to support them and often conclusive proof to the contrary, raises the question as to whether

coded racial prejudice or political partisanship alone can be seen as sufficient to explain the

phenomenon. It may be that other factors need to be taken into account.

In 1964 Harper’s Magazine published what went on to become a well-known and oft-cited

essay by the eminent historian Richard Hofstadter, ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’. In a

short, but incisive and influential piece of analysis, Hofstadter argued that a paranoid style of mind,

such as ‘evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy’ was ‘an

20 Bob Thiel, Barack Obama, Prophecy, and the Destruction of the United States (Arroyo Grande, CA: Nazarene Books,

2012): 36–40.

21 Ibid.: 36, 40.

12

old and recurrent phenomenon’ in American public life. Historical examples of this tendency included

the anti-Masonic movement of the 1820s and 1830s, the abolitionist movement from the 1830s, the

nativist and anti-Catholic movement of the 1850s, and the Populist movement of the 1890s. At the

time of writing Hofstadter saw similar manifestations of the paranoid style in the rise of McCarthyism

and support for the Goldwater movement within the Republican Party.22

Seeking to explain the phenomenon, he argued that the paranoid style of mind was often

accompanied by ‘status anxiety’ on the part of conservative groups who felt that their position in

society and traditional American values were being undermined by developments beyond their

control. In respect to Goldwater, his right-wing followers felt ‘dispossessed’ because the United

States had ‘largely been taken away from them and their kind’. And ‘old American values’ had ‘been

eaten away by cosmopolitans and intellectuals’. Indeed, ‘the old national security and independence’

had ‘been destroyed by treasonous plots, having as their most powerful agents not merely outsiders

and foreigners as of old but major statesmen who are at the very centers of American power’.23

The paranoid style of mind that resulted produced ‘heroic strivings for evidence to prove that

the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed’. Hofstadter accepted that paranoid political

movements were not unique to the United States. In the American context, however, he argued that

class, ethnic, and religious conflicts had consistently been a focus for militant and suspicious minds.

‘Perhaps the central situation conclusive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency’, he concluded, was

‘a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by

nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise’.24

Albeit influential, the Hofstadter thesis has been the subject of much controversy and debate.

In particular, his perceptions of the People’s Party or Populist movement of the 1890s have been

strongly criticized by a number of scholars. In his writings on Populism he has been accused, with

some justification, of basing his conclusions on a limited range of unreliable primary source materials

and of taking the statements of Populist leaders out of context. Moreover, rather than suffering from a

22 Richard Hofstadter, ‘The Paranoid Style in American Politics’, Harper’s Magazine (November, 1964): 77–86.

23 Ibid.: 81.

24 Ibid.: 85–6.

13

paranoid mindset, the fears expressed by southern and western farmers who supported the movement

derived from very real concerns. To some extent they were the victims of political and economic

injustices perpetrated by corrupt politicians, ‘land-grabbers’ and rapacious railroad companies.

Similarly, it has been argued that rather than being a reactionary and backward-looking movement the

People’s Party failed, in part, because it was ahead of its time. Populist demands for political and

economic reforms, such as greater government regulation of business activity, that seemed fevered

and fanciful in the context of the 1890s later went on to become accepted mainstream political

thinking in the Progressive era, 1900–20, and during the New Deal in the 1930s.25

In short, Hofstadter’s concept of the paranoid style is not without problems and weaknesses or

lacking in scholarly critics to draw attention to them. Nonetheless, the fortieth anniversary of the

publication of his essay is perhaps an appropriate occasion to revisit the key tenets of his thesis.

Moreover, the rise of the Tea Party movement and the response of right-wing critics to the Obama

administration arguably make his thesis of particular relevance in understanding the current US

political climate. In the first instance the key catalysts in the emergence of a paranoid style of mind

identified by Hofstadter – ethnic, religious, and class conflicts – are all present in contemporary

American society.

The mythology of Obama as a covert Muslim thus needs to be seen not just in relation to his

childhood upbringing in Indonesia but also in the wider context of the sustained fear and anxiety in

the West over the perceived threat posed by the rise of Islamic extremism for more than a decade. In

respect to the United States, this includes prolonged, costly involvement in two overseas theatres of

conflict, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as concerns over the political stability of the entire Middle East

in the wake of the uprisings of the ‘Arab Spring’.

Within the United States the still painful, shocking memories of the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11

2001, and the permanent transformations they have effected on the lives and landscape of the people

and city of New York, are an ever-present reminder of the dangers posed by domestic terrorism.

Moreover, such anxieties have been reinforced by subsequent acts of violence on the American

25 Robert M. Collins, ‘The Originality Trap: Richard Hofstadter on Populism’, Journal of American History vol. 76, no. 1

(June, 1989): 150–67.

14

mainland linked to Islamic extremism. These include the ‘Washington Sniper’ attacks in and around

the nation’s capital in 2002 by John Allen Muhammad, the killing of US military personanel at Fort

Hood in Texas in 2009 by Major Nidal Hasan, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon in April 2013

by the Tsarnaev brothers. The fact that such acts were carried out by individuals previously seen as

ordinary American citizens and, in the case of Muhammad and Hasan, former and serving members of

the US armed forces only served to increase the sense of threat posed by the enemy within.26

Class conflict, another issue identified by Hofstadter in promoting a paranoid mindset, was

also foregrounded during Obama’s first term of office. Since 2008 the global economic crisis has

heightened awareness of income inequalities in society as well as increasing levels of economic

insecurity. The 2012 presidential election campaign highlighted the sense of a growing divide

between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ in American society. In September that year, Republican

challenger Mitt Romney thus sparked controversy when it was revealed that in an after-dinner speech

at a private fundraising event he had claimed that 47 per cent of Americans would vote for Obama ‘no

matter what’ because they did not pay income tax. This group supported the Democratic incumbent

because they were ‘dependent on government’ and ‘believe that they are victims […] believe that the

government has a responsibility to care for them […] believe that they are entitled to health care, to

food, to housing, to you-name-it’. Similarly, at a post-election conference in November, Romney

attributed his defeat to the ‘gifts’ that the Obama administration had bestowed on key electoral groups

like young voters, African Americans, and Latinos. The president’s flagship health care reforms were

a particular source of resentment for his erstwhile challenger. ‘You can imagine for somebody making

$25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly

if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family in perpetuity – I mean

this is huge’.27

26 ‘Profile: John Allen Muhammed’, BBC News, 11 November 2009; ‘Profile: Major Nidal Malik Hasan’, BBC News, 12

November 2009; ‘Profile: Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev’, BBC News, 22 April 2013, all from www.bbc.co.uk/news.

27 ‘Full Transcript of the Mitt Romney Secret Video’, Mother Jones, 19 September 2012, www.motherjones.com; Ashley

Parker, ‘Romney Blames Loss on Obama’s “Gifts” to Minorities and Young Voters’, The New York Times, 14 November

2012, www.nytimes.com.

15

Such rhetoric is consistent with a sense of diametrically opposed and irreconcilable political

interests that Hofstadter identified as being central to the emergence of a paranoid mindset and the

growing tendency to give credence to ‘the unbelievable’, however fanciful or divorced from reality.

This is reflected in the findings of the previously cited 2010 CNN opinion poll which found that 40

per cent of respondents believed that Obama was a Socialist and a remarkable 20 per cent of

respondents agreed with the proposition that he was ‘doing many of the things that Hitler did’.28

Ethnic conflict, the other major factor identified by Hofstadter as a catalyst for the paranoid

tendency, has also been an issue of growing importance in contemporary US society. Since the early

1990s, there has been growing public awareness that the United States is going through a period of

profound demographic change. In particular US census returns have highlighted the fact that by the

year 2042, if not earlier, white Americans will no longer constitute a majority of the US population.

Indeed, Obama’s electoral victories in 2008 and 2012, achieved in part because of his high levels of

support among African American and Latino voters, have been viewed as early evidence of the

political impact of this shift.

For some the change has been seen as a positive factor in turning the United States into an

increasingly multicultural society. In a much-quoted speech at Portland State University in 1998

President Clinton thus noted that ‘Today, largely because of immigration there is no majority race in

Hawaii or Houston or New York City’. In less than five years ‘there will be no majority race in our

largest state, California. In a little more than fifty years there will be no majority race in the United

States’. Rather than being cause for concern, however, this was a development to be welcomed as

immigrants were ‘energizing our culture and broadening our vision of the world. They are renewing

our most basic values and reminding us all of what it truly means to be American’.29

In his January 2009 inaugural address President Obama expressed similar sentiments,

observing that the nation’s ‘patchwork heritage’ was a ‘strength, not a weakness’. America was ‘a

nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers’ and ‘shaped by every

language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth’. Tacitly acknowledging that in the past this

28 Orbe, Communication Realities in a ‘Post-Racial’ Society: 5.

29 Quoted in Hua Hsu, ‘State of the Union: The End of White America?’ Atlantic Monthly (January–February 2009): 48.

16

had been a source of conflict and division he argued that this was no longer the case ‘because we have

tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and

more united, we cannot hope but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass’.30

In the academic world, growing awareness of demographic change was reflected in the rise of

‘whiteness studies’ from the 1990s onwards. Eminent scholars like David Roediger, Grace Elizabeth

Hale, Richard Dyer, and Michelle Brattain examined representations and perceptions of white cultural

identity. They demonstrated how immigrant groups, like the Irish and southern and eastern

Europeans, once perceived as a threat to American values in the late nineteenth century had, by the

middle of the twentieth century, become fully assimilated into mainstream culture. Historical

experience could thus be seen as supporting the optimistic outlook for the future envisaged by Clinton

and Obama.31

Others were less sanguine. In mainstream popular culture a succession of Hollywood films

focused on the anxieties of native white Americans feeling under threat from alien or ethnic minority

groups. In Falling Down (1993) Michael Douglas played a middle-aged white professional

increasingly unable to cope with daily life in multicultural Los Angeles. Two years later, in White

Man’s Burden, John Travolta and Harry Belafonte lived in an imaginary America where white

Americans were an oppressed ethnic group and African Americans comprised the ruling class. In Tim

Burton’s 2001 science fiction re-boot Planet of the Apes, white Americans were reduced to thraldom

by the simian species that they had once enslaved, whilst Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York

(2002) examined ethnic tensions in the Big Apple in the mid-nineteenth century. In 2005 Crash

depicted a modern-day Los Angeles beset by racial and ethnic tensions in almost every aspect of daily

life.32

30 ‘Transcript: Obama’s Inaugural Address’, The New York Times, 20 January 2009, www.nytimes.com.

31 David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso,

1991); Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995); Richard Dyer, White (London: Routledge,

1997), Grace Elizabeth Hale, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 (New York: Pantheon

Books, 1998); Michelle Brattain, The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers and Culture in the Modern South (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2001).

17

In a further manifestation of the paranoid tendency a growing number of right-wing

commentators became increasingly shrill and vociferous in their warnings of the dire consequences of

demographic change for the future of America. ‘Mr Clinton assured us that it will be a better America

when we are all minorities and realize true “diversity”’, the former Republican presidential candidate

Pat Buchanan bitterly reflected. Portland students who had heard Clinton’s speech would find out

what this meant in reality when they ‘spend their golden years in a Third World America’. Making

comparisons with the fall of the Roman Empire, Buchanan predicted the end of Western civilization

whilst Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo envisaged ‘a return to the Dark Ages’. Including titles

like The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country

and Civilization, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, In Mortal

Danger: The Battle for America’s Border and Security, and Mexifornia: A State of Becoming, the

works published by such conservative authors embodied the paranoid mindset that ‘the unbelievable’

was indeed becoming ‘the only thing that can be believed’.33

In 2012 the re-election of Barack Obama was testimony to the continuing ethnic divide in the

United States rather than the emergence of a post-racial America. Overwhelmingly successful in his

appeal to ethnic minorities, the president won the support of 93 per cent of African American voters,

71 per cent of Latino voters, and 73 per cent of Asian voters. In marked contrast he secured just 39

per cent of the white vote compared to 43 per cent in 2008. Winning the support of 59 per cent of

white voters Romney’s 16-percentage-point lead among this group would, in earlier decades, have

been more than enough to see him elected to the White House. The fact that it was no longer

sufficient to do so highlighted the central dilemma for those susceptible to a paranoid mindset. The

32 Falling Down Joel Schumacher (dir.) (Alcor Films, 1993); White Man’s Burden Desmond Nakamo (dir.) (A Band Apart

Films, 1995); Planet of the Apes Tim Burton (dir.) (Twentieth Century Fox, 2001); Gangs of New York Martin Scorsese

(dir.) (Miramax Films, 2002); Crash Paul Higgs (dir.) (Lion Gate Films, 2005).

33 Patrick J. Buchanan, The Death of the West: How Dying Populations and Immigrant Invasions Imperil Our Country and

Civilization (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2002): 2–3, 9–10; Tom Tancredo, In Mortal Danger: The Battle for America’s

Border and Security (Nashville: Cumberland House Publishing, 2006): 9; Patrick J. Buchanan, State of Emergency: The

Third World Invasion and Conquest of America (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2006); Victor Davis Hanson, Mexifornia: A

State of Becoming (New York: Encounter Books, 2003).

18

underlying catalysts for the emergence of the paranoid tendency – Islamic extremism, the global

economic crisis, and demographic change – are far from imaginary. But that is precisely why it is

imperative to respond to such developments in a realistic and pragmatic way rather than a paranoid

one. In particular the challenge in the future for Western political leaders is to secure the confidence

and trust of Islamic nations rather than to demonize them. Within the United States Republicans must

win over the support of immigrants and ethnic minorities rather than alienate them. If they fail to do

so then, to paraphrase Edmund Burke, the inexorable logic of the census returns means that the GOP

will become a Party with a proud ancestry but no hope of posterity.34

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22