![]() ![]() Hofstadter, who died in 1970, made a minor specialty of analyzing right-wing fringe movements - what he called "pseudo-conservatives" - particularly the groups clustered around Barry Goldwater's 1964 political campaign. Originating as a 1963 speech delivered in Oxford and first printed in Harper's magazine in 1964, it can currently be found in a collection, also called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," reprinted by Vintage Books. ![]() I took that as my cue to return to the Pulitzer-winning historian's seminal essay on American political crackpottery. "What triggered it?" "I keep going back to Richard Hofstadter's 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics,'" he replied. "So, why is this anti-Muslim panic coming up now?" I asked. He tried to explain the controversy over the Park51 Islamic culture center, but it wasn't easy. I spent most of August more or less disconnected from TV, the Internet and print news outlets, so when I caught up with a friend on the phone, I asked him to brief me on which stories had captured the nation's attention. ![]()
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