Suspicious Minds

The timely, provocative bestseller that inflamed public opinion and made the national news at the time of it’s release. In this careful and incisive book, Ian Dowbiggin charts the migration of paranoid thinking and conspiratorial fantasy from the right-wing political fringe to the very centre of politics and culture in Canada and the United States. Once the domain of conspiracy theorists, paranoid thinking now represents a mainstream response to our loss of faith in our...
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The timely, provocative bestseller that inflamed public opinion and made the national news at the time of it’s release. In this careful and incisive book, Ian Dowbiggin charts the migration of paranoid thinking and conspiratorial fantasy from the right-wing political fringe to the very centre of politics and culture in Canada and the United States. Once the domain of conspiracy theorists, paranoid thinking now represents a mainstream response to our loss of faith in our institutions, politicians, communities, and families. Dowbiggin finds support for his thesis in the positions of everyone from Quebec sovereigntists to gender feminists, and recovered memory survivors to members of the Solar Temple cult. He cites not just the paranoia of such clearly disturbed people as Timothy McVeigh and Marc Lepine, but of such culturally central figures as Bill Clinton, and Jerry Seinfeld. Paranoid thinking has become an intractable feature of North American life and can only become even more widespread in years to come. InSuspicious Minds, Dowbiggin offers some thoughts about how to recognize paranoid thinking, and how to counter it. From the Hardcover edition.