Illustration by KAL

NOT long after the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, the Senate contemplated a bill to tighten federal control over the sale of guns through the post. Three gun-lovers drove 2,500 miles from Arizona to Washington, DC, to protest. One argued that the bill was part of “a further attempt by a subversive power to make us part of one world socialistic government” and that it could “create chaos” and help “our enemies” to seize power. Not much has changed since Richard Hofstadter described this incident in a hugely influential book, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Gun-lovers still argue that the slightest curb on their right to bear arms will make America vulnerable to tyranny. And in other areas, too, the paranoid style is alive and frothing.

Some of Barack Obama's detractors content themselves with arguing that he is a bad president. Others go further. “Birthers” insist that he was not born in the United States and is therefore constitutionally barred from being president. Yet Mr Obama's birth certificate says he was born in Hawaii, and there is not a shred of evidence to the contrary. There is even an announcement of his birth in the archive of the Honolulu Advertiser, a local newspaper. Yet the internet crackles with theories as to how all this was faked so that, 48 years later, Mr Obama could impose a socialist state on America. And a YouGov poll for The Economist found that 26% of Republicans think Mr Obama is probably foreign-born.

Other conspiracy theories about Mr Obama are even loopier. For example, some Americans think he is the Antichrist. The evidence for this, apparently, is that in the Bible Jesus is quoted as predicting that Satan will come down like lightning from heaven, and the words for “lightning” and “heaven” in Hebrew sound a bit like “Barack Obama”. Plus, his presidential limo is nicknamed “The Beast”. For those who think this is too far-fetched, there is the theory that Mr Obama is a closet Nazi. He thinks abortion should be legal. Historically, some abortion advocates have also been eugenicists. Therefore he must be one of them. Also, he wants to discourage smoking. So did Hitler!

Hofstadter, writing at the time of Barry Goldwater's insurgency, argued that political paranoia—a mix of anger, heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy—was most evident on the extreme right. And there are plenty of examples of right-wingers peddling nutty tales. Isolationists in the 1940s accused Franklin Roosevelt of deliberately letting the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour to provide an excuse for war. Talk-radio crackpots in the 1990s accused the Clintons of having Vince Foster, a depressive friend of theirs who killed himself, murdered.

But the left is hardly immune to such fantasies. Some people, including Mr Obama's own former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, believe that AIDS was cooked up by the government to kill blacks. A staggering 18% of Americans think that the government of George Bush probably knew in advance about the attacks of September 11th 2001 but allowed them to proceed anyway. Some even contend that Mr Bush orchestrated the attacks himself, to create an excuse for invading Iraq. To believe this, you have to believe that the Bushies were both wicked enough to murder thousands of Americans and brilliant enough to execute such a mind-bogglingly sophisticated plot without a single leak—in a culture where Richard Nixon could not even hush up a burglary.

Belief in conspiracy theories can be comforting. If everything that goes wrong is the fault of a secret cabal, that relieves you of the tedious necessity of trying to understand how a complex world really works. And you can feel smug that you are smart enough to “see through” the official version of events. But widespread paranoia has drawbacks. For a start, it makes calm, rational debate rather tricky. How can you discuss the trade-offs of health-care reform, for example, with someone who thinks the government is plotting to kill grandma? It does not help, either, that politicians on both sides are willing to fan the flames. Sarah Palin calls Mr Obama's health-care proposals “evil”. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, calls the protesters who loudly oppose them “evil-mongers”. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, calls them “un-American”.

It's serious

In his book “Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History”, David Aaronovitch argues that conspiratorial fantasy can have dangerous real-world consequences. Hitler read and believed The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a bogus account of a global Jewish conspiracy. So did the founders of Hamas. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with a bomb in Oklahoma in 1995 because he thought the federal government was hatching various dastardly plots.

Some people watch the ferment at town-hall meetings in America today and worry that another Oklahoma-style atrocity is brewing. A few protesters are waving placards wishing for Mr Obama's death. Others are ostentatiously wearing firearms outside his rallies. A recent report by the Southern Poverty Law Centre describes an uptick in the number of “Patriot” militia groups since Mr Obama's election and frets that some could turn violent.

One should not exaggerate such threats. The Secret Service does not let gun-wielding protesters too near the president. And the vast majority of people who visit crazy websites will never hurt anyone. But there is no cause for complacency, either. Politicians should tone down the rhetoric. Protesters should read some history before making Hitler comparisons. Talk-show hosts should stop pretending that paranoid nitwits are asking reasonable questions. If people are continually told that their government is plotting against them, a few may decide to fight back. And as Lee Harvey Oswald showed, even one man with a violent sense of grievance can do a lot of harm.





Economist.com/blogs/lexington