the paranoid style: Glenn Beck

Recently, Glenn Beck cast his watery gaze upon George Soros. Beck is simply appealing to the anti-semitic segment of his viewing audience. His conspiratorial thinking regarding Soros, reflecting unconsciously the model of the distant past that evoked fear and condemnation of the "Golden International", comports well with the level at which his usual pseudo-intellectual punditry resides: character assassination. I heard Soros talk at an APSA meeting, during which he spoke at length of the deep impact Karl Popper made on his general vision of the social world. I look forward to Beck's future blackboard diagram of the hidden totalitarian kernel lodged in The Open Society and Its Enemies.

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Beck once devoted a program to his view that G.W. F. Hegel's thought lies at the root of what plagues America. I return to Hofstadter frequently for insight into his brand of conspiratorial theory.

"The final aspect of the paranoid style is related to the quality of pedantry to which I have already referred. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is precisely the elaborate concern with demonstration it almost invariably shows. One should not be misled by the fantastic conclusions that are so characteristic of this political style into imagining that it is not, so to speak, argued out along factual lines. The very fantastic character of its conclusions leads to heroic striving for 'evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency, and paranoid movements from the Middle Ages onward have had a magnetic attraction for demi-intellectuals . . . The typical procedure of the higher paranoid scholarship is to start with such defensible assumptions and with a careful accumulation of facts, or at least of what appear to be facts, and to marshal these facts toward an overwhelming 'proof' of the particular conspiracy that is to be established. It is nothing if not coherent -- in fact, the paranoid mentality is far more coherent than the real world, since it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities. It is, if not wholly rational, at least intensely rationalistic; it believes it is up against an enemy who is infallibly rational as he is totally evil, and it seeks to match his imputed total competence with its own, leaving nothing unexplained and comprehending all of reality in one overreachiing, consistent theory. It is nothing if not 'scholarly' in technique. . . What distinguishes the paranoid style is not, then the absence of verifiable facts (though it is occasionally true that in his extravagant passion for facts the paranoid occasionally manufactures them), but rather in the curious leap in imagination that is always made at some critical point in the recital of events. . . The plausibility the paranoid style has for those who find it plausible lies, in good measure, in this appearance of the most careful, conscientious, and seemingly coherent application to detail, the laborious accumulation of what can be taken as convincing evidence for the most fantastic conclusions, the careful preparation for the big leap from the undeniable to the unbelievable. The singular thing about all this laborious work is that the passion for factual evidence does not, as in most intellectual exchanges, have the effect of putting the paranoid spokesman into effective two-way communication with the world outside his group -- least of all with those who doubt his views. He has little real hope that his evidence will convince a hostile world. His effort to amass it has rather the quality of a defensive act which shuts off his receptive apparatus and protects him from having to attend to disturbing considerations that do not fortify his ideas. He has all the evidence he needs; he is not a receiver, he is a transmitter." The Paranoid Style in American Politics, pp. 35-38

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It's worth noting that the program during which Beck uttered the statement that became the target of controversy is entitled "The Puppet Master: How much does George Soros control?" Also interesting, in light of Hofstadter's diagnosis, is the fact that Beck (or his producers) invites his followers to participate in his paranoid style: "For months, Glenn has been pulling back the structure progressives have worked decades to put in place. Beneath every layer lies one common thread: George Soros. Tonight on TV, Glenn presents an in-depth look at the Puppet Master, billionaire financier George Soros, one of the most powerful forces in the Progressive Movement. But don’t just take Glenn’s word for it. Read. Analyze. Do your own homework and come to your own conclusions - read below to fact check all the sources used on tonight's show." (emphasis added)

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One notices in Beck’s paranoid style a monotheistic vision of evil in it. In the particular case of Soros, he is the singular puppet master behind all that is wrong, the First Mover of the "Progressive movement" that is destroying America. The "Jewish" angle Beck explicitly evokes (N.B. it is certainly the case that one could criticize Soros' politics without referencing his religious/ethnic background) works in both the secular and religious registers of the manipulative "Jewish Bankers" and the biblical "Christ Killers" (which no doubts adds to the cathexis between Beck's audience and the subject matter).

In contrast, a polytheistic vision might entail recognition of, and openness to, complexity. On this account, good and evil -- for those who traffic in such a worldview -- would be distributed across a range of gods (i.e. forces, entities, persons, institutions, long and short term historical processes, etc.). This vision may not be as emotionally satisfying for those possessed of the conspiratorial mind, but it would at least bring them in touch with ordinary reality and might take some of the symbolically violent edge off their rhetoric (e.g. the primordialist "Us" versus "Them" imagination).