The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. . . . 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, whole 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 organizing resistance to the conspiracy. Time is forever just running out.
—“The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” from The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays, Richard Hofstadter, 1965
This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.
—Patrick Cursius, a right-wing terrorist who killed twenty-two people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on August 3, 2019