Love to be Richard Hofstadter and have the CIA secretly spending big money to circulate my articles decrying the populist mind and its propensity for conspiracy theories.
Hofstadter's interest in conspiracy theories long pre-dated Paranoid Style and and can be seen in American Political Tradition & Age of Reform. Hofstadter published in CIA journals (notably Encounter) into 1960s. This is really splitting hairs.
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Outside "Paranoid Style," Hofstadter didn't directly examine conspiracy theories. Suggesting the CIA promulgated such ideas by funding Encounter is an _outrageous_ stretch ("CIA journal," indeed!) I am quite baffled that you call this hair-splitting, when it categorically isn't.
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Untrue about Hofstadter since he strongly emphasizes alleged conspiratorial dimension of populism in Age of Reform (wrongly, in my view). And what is writing on McCarthyism except a conspiracy obsessed movement? And, yes, Encounter was funded by CIA till late 1960s.
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