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It is not uncommon in ordinary political discourse to speak of destructive political events as having been propelled by paranoia. Indeed, some leaders, from Adolph Hitler to Richard Nixon, are rarely invoked without mention of the paranoia that is presumed to have motivated them. Now political scientist Robert Robins and psychiatrist Jerrold Post have written a book that combines psychological and political analysis to investigate the phenomenon of paranoid politics.
Political Paranoia is an ambitious book and one that is likely to be of interest to a popular audience. This is so not only because of its style, but also because of its emphasis on well known leaders and movements rather than on more arcane scholarly debates. The book is both a literature review of extreme politics and an argument that ties together what is understood of political paranoia and its recent manifestations.
Although Robins and Post do not make such a division of sections, it is useful to think of the book as divided into two sections. The first is a broad set of considerations of political paranoia, including chapters on “The Mind of the Paranoid,” “Paranoid Culture,” “The Roots of Paranoia,” and “The Need for Enemies.” These chapters provide background argument and support for the analyses of particular parties, leaders, and movements that follow in subsequent chapters. In these later chapters readers will find accounts of David Koresh, Shoko Asahara, Jim Jones, Christian Identity,