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Two things about this Paul Krugman column today and its historical argument. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/opinion/republicans-democracy.html?smid=tw-share
1. I don't understand Krugman's reading of Hofstadter. Krugman suggests that Republicans gradually embraced the paranoid style across the 1980 and 1990s.
But Hofstadter's essay is explicitly about the Republican Party under Goldwater's toleration and embrace of those engaging in the paranoid style. This is its second sentence.
(As an aside, the sense that the paranoiacs were too much of a fringe to explain the rise of the right led most historians to move away from Hofstadter's emphasis as conservatism became an object of study. Rick Perlstein reassessed this very smartly here.) https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/magazine/i-thought-i-understood-the-american-right-trump-proved-me-wrong.html
2. The second thing that Krugman seems to elide is the central role of the politics of gender and sexuality in fueling right-wing anger. From the 1970s onward, anti-ERA, anti-Roe, and anti-gay rights, and the sense they're all undermining male power, are central.
The sense that natural order of gendered power are being disrupted are what helps drive the politicization of the white evangelical church, and creates generalized right wing anger at feminist gains.
He's obviously right that race is central, because this is the United States, but when gender and sexuality is ignored, there's no possibility of explaining the particular violent anger deployed at female politicians, the way that bathrooms become politicized, etc.
Without putting gender at the center, how can you understand the right wing language of "cucks," "soy boys," and the bizarre hypermasculinization of an overweight golfer that are so central to the rhetoric, imagery, and ideology of right wing politics?
