Fifty years ago, thePulitzerPrize‐winning historianRichardHofstadter published the seminal essay, “TheParanoidStyle inAmericanPolitics.” In this and related works he examined the rhetoric animating the extreme right‐wing of the country's electorate. In this article I revisit Hofstadter's claims regarding the marginalization of the paranoid style and its connection to status‐based politics. A review of the most popular “pseudo‐conservative” commentators, survey data, the rise of theTeaParty, and the intransigence of the present dayRepublicanParty suggests that a worldview that was once extreme has now become “mainstreme” within the political culture.
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Scott Appelrouth (2015) studied this question.
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