Sublime

“Gen. Butler Bares ‘Fascist Plot’ To Seize Government By Force,” read the front-page headline in The New York Times on Wednesday, November 21, 1934.

Before the city could begin to see the truth about Moses’ programs, his legend would have to be exposed for the lie it was. Before the people would be willing to look at Moses’ programs straight on, they would have to look at Moses straight on, and before the public could do that, there would have to be an issue that would show him so clearly for w

“The president of the United States has Alex Jones on speed dial! Alex Jones! I mean…” He trails off.

The warping of shared reality leads a man with an AR-15 rifle to invade a pizza shop. It brings online forums into being where people colorfully imagine the assassination of a former secretary of state. It offers the promise of a Great Awakening, in which the elites will be routed and the truth will be revealed. It causes chat sites to come alive w

In the 1960s, Hofstadter saw paranoia as a pernicious and growing influence in American life, citing the rise of groups like the anticommunist John Birch Society. He laid out a blueprint for the paranoid style that, even after all these years, sounds familiar to anyone who ever watched Glenn Beck sweat onto his chalkboard.

Under the leadership of a flabby junior high school dropout named David C. Stephenson, the Klan especially thrived in Indiana. The state boasted 350,000 members; in some communities up to half the white men were fee-paying Klansmen. Fired up by Stephenson and his minions, Hoosiers became peculiarly receptive to wild anti-Catholic rumors. Many in th