Abstract
Richard Hofstadter’s astute analysis of the paranoid style in American history—from an eighteenth-century group of New England clergy who feared a massive subversion from a small European enlightenment group, the Illuminati through the many nativist movements and virulent hate groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with, one might add, the activities of right-wing extremists since the election of Barack Obama—notes the significance of the paranoid theme from the very beginnings of our political and cultural experience. This troubling tendency in human affairs is not, as some authors have said, characteristic of modern times—especially the twentieth century. I believe we can even see evidence of it in ancient Egypt, while perhaps the urtext of the paranoid organization is the book of Revelation, written in 95 AD, that concludes the New Testament. Such paranoid thought that I have called the “paranoid gestalt” has since arisen in large groups and small throughout Western history, and we have seen it in other cultures as well.
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Notes
- 1.
Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” in The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, ed. Richard Hofstadter (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 3–40.
- 2.
An example of a paranoid leader who did not impose his paranoia on the social or political group of which he is head may be Richard Nixon. Nixon’s obsession with enemies, and his pursuit of them in an effort to thwart activities that he deemed destructive to him led to the Watergate break-in and the violation of American laws. Rather than stimulating support, these actions and the Nixon paranoid view of the world alienated the people and led to his resignation. In his case, the paranoid gestalt concerned only his own person; it was not cast in larger social terms. And rather than make it part of his overt political position, he hid it. So he made no attempt to use it as a basis to mobilize and organize the group. And at that time, there was no group need for such a psychological organization. Nixon was aware enough of the needs of the political group to hide his personal paranoid organization. I would infer that he sensed that it would alienate the group rather than mobilize it—as it did.
- 3.
Erich Fromm, Anthony Storr, and Heinz Kohut each began to single out this particular form of anger or rage. Fromm labeled it “malignant aggression” and Storr described a “thirst for vengeance” that is “cruel, lustful and insatiable.” See Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), 271; and Anthony Storr, Human Destructiveness (New York: Basic Books, 1972), 108.
- 4.
See Heinz Kohut, “Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 27 (1972): 360–400 for a full discussion of the mechanism of narcissistic rage.
- 5.
See David Terman, “Fundamentalism and the Paranoid Gestalt,” in The Fundamentalist Mindset, ed. Charles Strozier, David Terman, and James Jones, with Katharine Boyd (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 47–61.
- 6.
See Terman, The Fundamentalist Mindset, Chapters 2 and 4 for the function of ideology in groups.
- 7.
There are a number of authors that have shown the importance of ideology—and especially, perceived injury to the group ideology. See Nehemia Friedland, “Becoming a Terrorist: Social and Individual Antecedents,” in Terrorism: Roots, Impact, Responses, ed. Lawrence Howard (New York: Praeger, 1992), 81–93; Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); and Martha Crenshaw, “How Terrorists Think,” in Howard, Terrorism, 71–80.
- 8.
Bernard Lewis has extensively studied Islam and its relation to the West. A particularly succinct account of the sources of the injury and rage of the Muslim world can be found in his article in the Atlantic Monthly some 20 years ago. See Bernard Lewis, “The Roots of Muslim Rage,” in The Atlantic Monthly (September, 1990). Lewis enumerates the ways the Muslim community has been traumatized especially by the challenge to their traditional values and beliefs—and in the end, their dignity and even their livelihoods—by the force of Western values. This perspective has been expressed repeatedly in the works of Sayyid Qutb, whose life and thought are discussed in the chapter. For example, in Milestones (Damascus: Dar Al-Ilm, n.d.), Qutb inveighs against the West in calling for jihad against all that is deemed jahiliyyah, impure and ignorant of divine guidance.
- 9.
Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961).
- 10.
Thomas Mann maintained that de Lagarde was one of the most productive and influential German thinkers of the nineteenth century and compared him to Nietzsche and Wagner. See Robert G.L. Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolph Hitler (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 274.
- 11.
Waite, The Psychopathic God, comments that Langbehn’s work on Rembrandt in which he glorified art, denigrated modern science, and held Jews responsible for all German ills had 40 printings in the 1890s.
- 12.
See Walter C. Langer, The Mind of Adolph Hitler and the Secret Wartime Report by Walter C. Langer (New York: Basic Books, 1972). I have used several biographies of Hitler to extract the data about his life. Robert G.L. Waite’s The Psychopathic God: Adolph Hitler provided important information about Hitler’s early life and childhood. Norbert Bromberg and Verna Small, Hitler’s Psychopathology (New York: International Universities Press, 1983) also offered some additional points of view. Ian Kershaw’s Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998) was helpful in providing a contemporary evaluation of the scholarship on Hitler. The account of August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew (London: Greenhill Books, 2006), offered an invaluable peek into Hitler’s adolescent mind, and Hitler’s own Mein Kampf, translated by Ralph Manheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), with appropriate caution can sometimes help reconstruct aspects of his inner world.
- 13.
There is an extensive discussion of the evidence for the missing testicle in Waite, The Psychopathic God, 150–162, which I have excerpted. I find Waite’s full discussion of the evidence quite persuasive. The combination of the lack of motivation for falsifying a report of a missing testicle on autopsy and the behavioral symptoms cited in his latency and adolescent years make a quite plausible case for such a condition. Though one does not need such a physical defect to feel a sense of shame and humiliation, and there was ample cause for such an inner state from Hitler’s experiences with his martinet father, this defect would have compounded such an inner conviction and help account for the intensity of his rage and the consequent violence of his paranoid structure.
- 14.
August Kubizek, The Young Hitler I Knew (London: Greenhill Books, 2006), 117–118. This edition of Kubizek’s memoires was translated by Geoffrey Brooks and has an introduction by Ian Kershaw. In his introduction, Kershaw cautions against taking Kubizek’s account too literally. However, the basic tenor of the account is quite plausible. Grandiose visions of himself were evident in his activities as they constituted grand plans without any real, concrete actions that might be a step to actuate such ambitions.
- 15.
Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1889–1936: Hubris (New York: W.W. Norton, 1998). Kershaw points out in his biography that Kubizek’s contention that Hitler joined the Antisemitic League after revealing the fact that he was rejected from the Art Academy could only have been false because the League was not formed until 1918. Kershaw also dismisses Hitler’s contention in Mein Kampf that he had developed his anti-Semitism in 1908 in Vienna. Though there may be some reasons to doubt Hitler’s accuracy about the precise date, the assertion makes great psychological sense. Hitler’s subjective sense of the origins of his anti-Semitism may be more trusted than apparent external reasons that Kershaw summons to refute it.
- 16.
Kubizek, The Young Hitler, 160
- 17.
Kubizek, 174
- 18.
Kubizek, 175, “Personally, I doubted if, indeed, anything would ever come of my friend’s private studies. Admittedly he studied with incredible industry and a determination which one would have thought beyond the strength of his undernourished and weakened body. But his pursuits were not directed towards any practical goal. On the contrary, every now and again he got lost in vast plans and speculations.”
- 19.
Kubizek, 223
- 20.
Much of the biographical material on Qutb’s early life comes from the PhD dissertation of Adnan Ayyud Musallam, “The Formative Stages of Sayyid Qutb’s Intellectual Career and His Emergence as an Islamic Da’iyah. 1906–1952” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1983).
- 21.
Musallam quotes a number of his poems that reflect these themes, ibid, 85.
- 22.
Though the novel has not been translated into English, we have Musallam’s précis of its contents. Musallam describes the novel as follows: 150–151“This romantic novel portrays the stormy relationship of Sami and Samirah, an engaged couple, following Samirah’s confession to Sami of a love affair she had had with a young army officer before meeting Sami, coming at a time when he had pinned his hopes on settling down with her to build a family life. This confession leaves Sami bewildered and in doubt about his idealized fiancée and her moral standards. Sami’s suspicions bring their relationship to the verge of collapse, but Sami’s deep love for Samirah continues. Desire for her happiness motivates his decision to search for her previous lover in order to arrange for his reunion with Samirah—even if that would mean the demise of Sami’s own future with her. But his conversation with the army officer is fruitless and only leaves him more suspicious of Samirah’s moral standards.… The vicious circle of suspicions continue to haunt the couple’s relationship. Even though Sami tries repeatedly to forge ahead with their wedding plans, his suspicions have already done permanent damage. Three days before the wedding a misunderstanding causes Samirah and her family to break off the engagement. Sami tries to restore the relationship, but to no avail.”
- 23.
Musallam, Dissertation, 158.
- 24.
Incidentally, the full paranoid attitude toward the West long antedated his visit to America in 1948–1950. His visit to America only confirmed what he had come to believe as a result of his personal development more than a decade prior to his visit.
- 25.
Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, ed. John Hardie (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2000).
- 26.
Milestones, Chapter 11, 143
- 27.
Qutb, ibid, Chapter 9, 127
- 28.
Sayyid Qutb wrote three books that are the basis of jihadist ideology: In the Shade of the Qu’ran, Social Justice in Islam, and finally, Milestones (Damascus: Dar Al-Ilm, year of publication and translator unknown).
- 29.
For a very interesting and informed account of the development of Osama Bin Laden’s life and terrorist career see Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006). Wright has traced the background and interrelationships of the central and influential people in bin Laden’s life. The complex web of associations spring from those associated with Sayyid Qutb. Also see Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (New York: Penguin Press, 2008) for an account of the family and a picture of the hedonistic, Western-oriented Bin Laden brothers.
- 30.
Wright, The Looming Tower, 75.
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Terman, D.M. (2011). Paranoid Leadership. In: Strozier, C., Offer, D., Abdyli, O. (eds) The Leader. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8387-9_8
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