Paranoid style in U.S. politics lives on in 2016 campaign
David Horsey / Los Angeles Times
June 14, 2016
A small but fervent cadre of Bernie Sanders partisans have convinced themselves that unnamed overlords in big corporations ordered their vassals in the Democratic Party and their minions in the corporate media to use every dastardly trick — from rigging voting machines to news blackouts — to snatch victory away from the senator from Vermont. They surely do not recognize it, but their paranoia is just the latest manifestation of a phenomenon that is as much a part of America’s political tradition as elephants, donkeys and red, white and blue balloons.
Back in the 1830s, here is what alarmed thousands of U.S. voters: “It is an ascertained fact that Jesuits are prowling about all parts of the United States in every possible disguise, expressly to ascertain the advantageous situations and modes to disseminate Popery… The western country swarms with them under the name of puppet show men, dancing masters, music teachers, peddlers of images and ornaments, barrel organ players, and similar practitioners.”
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All of these examples of American political paranoia are taken from historian Richard Hofstadter’s hugely influential Harper’s magazine essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” The piece gained a wide audience in no small part because it was published in 1964, the tumultuous political year when right-wing insurgents took over the Republican Party and nominated Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater for president. Now, 52 years later in the context of the current outlandish presidential campaign, Hofstadter’s observations continue to resonate.
“American politics has often been an arena for angry minds,” Hofstadter wrote in his opening paragraph. “In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority. But behind this I believe there is a style of mind that is far from new and that is not necessarily right-wing. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”
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more including the author's cartoons: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-paranoid-style-20160614-snap-story.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
“Google is directly engaged in Hillary Clinton’s campaign” claimed Julian Assange at a Moscow journalism forum on Tuesday.
The Wikileaks founder who is still under investigation by the Swedish government over allegations of sexual assault was speaking via video link to the “New Era of Journalism: Farewell to Mainstream” forum in Moscow when he made the claim that tech giant Google was complicit in the running of Hillary Clinton’s digital campaign.
Specifically, Assange claimed, “The chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, set up a company to run the digital component of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”
Eric Schmidt did in fact create a company in the last quarter of 2015 called The Groundwork whose website is empty except for a single placeholder logo. Breitbart has previously reported on The Groundwork and how it was reportedly developed to install Clinton in the Oval Office. However, whether or not Google itself is a part of Schmidts’ involvement in The Groundwork remains unclear to the public.
via Breitbart, link withheld, posted for ridicule only
POSTED 7:45 PM, JUNE 13, 2016, BY JEFFCARLINWGNAM, WGN Radio, Chicago
Chief Executive Officer of Outspoken Media, Rhea Drysdale joins Roe Conn and Anna Davlantes to talk about a report that Google is withholding search recommendations that would portray Hillary Clinton in a negative light, but allowing such searches for other political candidates.
http://wgnradio.com/2016/06/13/did-google-alter-its-search-algorithm-to-suppress-stories-that-portray-hillary-clinton-in-a-negative-light/
