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Who Do You Trust?
Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society
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🇬🇧 English · Original
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The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style
Is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history
But that they regard a vast or gigantic conspiracy
As the motive force in historical events
History is a conspiracy
Set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power
And what is felt to be needed to defeat it
Is not the usual methods of political give and take, but an all-out crusade
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy
In apocalyptic terms
He traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds
Whole political orders hold systems of human values
He is always manning the barricades of civilization
He constantly lives at a turning point
It is now or never in organizational resistance to conspiracy
Time is forever just running out
As a member of the avant-garde
Who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy
Before it is fully obvious to an as-yet unaroused public
The paranoid is a militant leader
Nothing but complete victory will do
This demand for unqualified victories
Leads to the formulation of hopelessly demanding and unrealistic goals
And since these goals are not even remotely attainable
Failure constantly heightens the paranoid's frustration
In turn, strengthening his awareness
Of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy, he opposes
The enemy is a perfect model of malice
A kind of amoral superman
Sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving
He wills, indeed he manufactures the mechanism of history himself
He makes crises
Starts runs on banks, causes depressions
Manufactures disasters
And then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced
The paranoid's interpretation of history is in this sense distinctly personal
Decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history
But as the consequence of someone's will
A fundamental paradox of the paranoid style
Is the imitation of the enemy
The Klu Klux Klan imitated Catholicism
To the point of donning priestly vestments
The John Birch Society emulated communist cells
And quasi-secret operation through front groups
Spokesmen of the various Christian anti-Communist crusades
Openly express their admiration for the dedication, discipline
And strategic ingenuity the communist cause calls forth
Paranoid writing begins with certain defensible judgments
The government really can read all of our emails
The CIA really did conduct mind-control experiments
On unsuspecting Canadian housewives
There really was a secret FBI within the FBI
Dedicated to destroying the American left
It then carefully accumulates facts
Or at least what appear to be facts
And marshals these facts to 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
Because it leaves no room for mistakes, failures, or ambiguities