Paranoid politics

The politics professor Matthew Goodwin made an interesting observation on Twitter this week. He pointed out that many of the characteristics of the ‘paranoid style’ in American politics — a phrase coined by Richard Hofstadter to describe right-wing populists such as Barry Goldwater — apply to left-wing anti-Brexit campaigners. They are convinced that the 2016 referendum result was due to the machinations of sinister data-mining companies, Kremlin bot factories and Vladimir Putin.

I reread Hofstadter’s 1964 essay and the parallels are striking. The paranoid style is characterised by ‘-heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy’, all of which were on view this week, with Gordon Brown accusing the Brexit party of being funded by sinister foreign forces. The ‘evidence’ for this is almost laughably threadbare. Donations of under £500 to the party are supposed to be in sterling, but it’s technically possible for foreign donors to convert their currency into sterling via PayPal (true of every political party, including Change UK).