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Wednesday 21 October 2009

The source for much of the current epidemic of paranoia is no doubt the Glenn Beck Show on Fox News, which follows the Hofstadter script with remarkable faithfulness. One episode last month featured Mr. Beck and a panel of guests speculating darkly about indoctrination in the public schools, about the war on religion, about the Federal Reserve, about the student loan system, the United Nations, and the swine flu vaccine. As a bonus, Mr. Beck rattled off a short history of lobbying that was almost entirely incorrect — perhaps to illustrate his favorite plaint about Americans not learning history. And in the commercial break the real-life conspirator G. Gordon Liddy advised viewers to invest in gold. What is most remarkable about the paranoid style, though, is the earnest self-pitying that always seems to follow each round of accusation. Case in point: a recent essay by syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin. After describing the murder of a controversial abortion doctor, a guard at Washington’s Holocaust Museum, and a census bureau employee who was found with the word “Fed” written on his corpse, she insisted that “The criminalization of conservative dissent is well underway.” How so? Because some of these acts caused media revulsion against certain branches of the conservative movement; surely the clampdown is not far behind. Thomas Frank

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