The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964)
His conclusion is that this style of paranoia belongs to &quot;the dispossessed&quot; rather than to one political faction.  Or at least to those who feel dispossessed.<p>Another data point for that thesis: Arabs are very into what we would call conspiracy theories.  A decade ago there were all these polls showing fairly broad approval among Arabs for Osama Bin Laden.  That makes sense when you consider other polls showing that most Arabs didn&#x27;t think Bin Laden was involved in 9&#x2F;11 [0].<p>Personally I have a soft spot for conspiracy theorists.  At least Alex Jones is thinking for himself.  Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi are on HN a lot and I feel similarly about them -- which is not to say I put them in the same category as Jones.  I think they get some stuff right, I appreciate their fire-and-brimstone approach (at least it&#x27;s fun to read), but both of them frequently write sentences that cause my eyes to roll back in my head.<p>I think the ultimate source of conspiratorial thinking is linked to <i>reductio ad absurdum</i>.  In our minds, we seem drawn to the extremes.  Everything reminds everyone of Hitler, Stalin, Maoist struggle sessions, and so on.  Trump is a vile white-supremacist-fascist.  Biden is kowtowing to critical-theory-reading neo-Marxists.  Reducing an argument to the absurd makes sense in logic and math but perhaps not in the real world where there&#x27;s no guarantee that an argument is based on anything logical.<p>Or maybe it makes sense in the real world too.  It seems to me, sometimes, that conspiracy theorists are actually fairly good at identifying the <i>ultimate goal</i> of an ideology.  But ultimate goals are ideals, they&#x27;re never realized and, in practice, they provide a direction rather than a destination.  It&#x27;s one thing to identify the ultimate goal of the ideology animating leftists but are you so sure our society shouldn&#x27;t be a little more left-wing?  Because, in practice, that&#x27;s what electing the left-wing candidate is likely to accomplish.  It&#x27;s unlikely to recreate The Cultural Revolution.<p>On the other hand, maybe the fact that such ultimate goals came astonishingly close to being realized, on the right and left, in the 20th century, is a good reason to be alarmed.<p>[0] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newrepublic.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;94546&#x2F;middle-east-radical-conspiracy-theories" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;newrepublic.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;94546&#x2F;middle-east-radical-co...</a>