The English often sing There’s Always Been an England. For America the song would probably be something along the lines of there will always be an enemy.

In the US case it would be a combination of enemies – real and imagined – from both outside and inside the country. First Nations people, The British, African slaves, communists, gays, drug dealers, radical teachers, universities, woke people, civil rights activists, feminists, and many others – all have had a prime role in US paranoia at various points in history and often simultaneously.

Significantly – with help from Putin – there is worldwide evidence of similar beliefs and political responses around the world.

It is 60 years since Richard Hofstadter published his Harpers Magazine article, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, which analysed this very process. Social media has now supercharged the paranoia; political discourse has become debased and lies and misinformation have flourished at levels which would have amazed even Joe McCarthy – whether he was drunk or sober.

In those 60 years we have seen many new US enemies at home and abroad found, condemned and used for partisan political purposes – largely by Republicans.

After World War I and up to the Great Depression mobs burned black churches; vigilantes made citizens arrests; 75 newspapers and magazines were banned from the mail and forced to close. Anarchists, Wobblies and individuals such as Sacco and Vanzetti and Joe Hill were executed.

The US Army raided and destroyed homeless camps and millions trekked across the plains in the hope of finding new lives and a new social realist genre tracked the developments while influencing US literature up until today.

Adam Hochschild, who wrote the expose King Leopold’s Ghost on the violent exploitation of the Belgian Congo, records all this violence in his book, American Midnight. In doing so he also introduces us to the beginning of the evil career of J. Edgar Hoover, whose paranoia and persecution of Civil Rights leaders and progressives, continued right up until his death.

It is hard to remember the fury with which the FDR New Deal was met. It rescued the US from the Great Depression and set the agenda for decades of social reform and economic growth in the next 60 years.

But in the midst of the era of post WWII economic growth a series of internal and external enemies were targeted. Communists were Enemy Number 1 for much of the 50s and 60s resulting in the disastrous Korean and Vietnam Wars. The term un-American became common and was weaponised in too many contexts to list.

Australian politics saw ads depicting huge red arrows sweeping through Asis and on to our northern door stop as we joined the lists to defeat the new enemies.

Then there were the terrorists and 9/11 – a conspiracy executed by citizens of the US’s great friend Saudi Arabia – and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the hunt for the non-existent Saddam Hussein nuclear weapons.

It should be noted that the US actually has many real enemies. Most Latin American nations have experienced the alleged benefits of US intervention. Panama, Cuba, Argentina, Chile – indeed it is hard to think of a Latin American country which has not at some stage been an enemy of the US Government and US companies exploiting Latin American industries who turned to the US government to get rid of regimes they thought threatened their interests.

And all along the US talks about its commitment to peace despite the nation being at war for almost its entire history from colonial times to today. There are no current declared wars but that is little solace to those on the end of a drone strike organised from somewhere in the Mid-West.

But amazingly today it is the Trump voters who are cheering their own destruction and huddling in their homes glued to their X feeds, fearing wokeness, progressives, atheists, uppity women and librarians stocking books they disapprove of.

They idolise their new President and believe he is saving them from all these evils while he’s actually destroying many of the things they value – not through some conspiracy but openly in plain sight aided and abetted by billionaire tech bros – while also demonstrating that he may be one of those Cold War individuals dubbed ‘useful idiots’.

Putin and Xi must be laughing themselves hoarse.

Meanwhile, let’s not forget the famous Jospeh Heller quote from Catch 22. “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Sadly, we seemed to have lost sight of actually who it is  after us.