Secrets of Silicon Valley TV - Lucy Worsley TV - Joseph McCarthy - Reggie Yates TV - Geoffrey Chaucer - Alan Hart TV - Clare Jackson TV - Cold War Armageddon TV - Dean Koontz - Andrew Grove - Banksy - St George’s Day 2012 - Strange Days 1995 - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV - Celia Morgan - Hunter S Thompson - William S Burroughs - J D Salinger - Adam Curtis TV - House of Cards US 2013-2018 -
The constant hum of mild paranoia is never far away in Silicon Valley. Secrets of Silicon Valley I: The Disruptors, BBC 2017
Government workers lived in fear of McCarthy’s accusations … ‘transcripts had been altered.’ American History’s Biggest Fibs with Lucy Worsley III, BBC 2019, academic
I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department. Joseph McCarthy
There seems to be a weird sense of paranoia in this world. Reggie Yates’ Extreme UK: Men at War, BBC 2019
The guilty think all talk is of themselves. Geoffrey Chaucer
The fears and paranoia of Americans who believed the enemy was anywhere and could be anyone. Alan Hart, Media Morphs: Conspiracy I, producer Hossein Setareh, Edge Media 2012
The anxieties of the Cold War had conditioned the American public to fear the worst. Alan Hart, Media Morphs II
Across the three kingdoms there was huge paranoia about the Catholic threat. Dr Clare Jackson, The Stuarts III: A Family at War, BBC 2014
The 1950s: A decade of paranoia. The start of an unprecedented arms race between the superpowers. As the stalemate between communism and democracy threatens to send the world into chaos, ever closer to the edge of World War III, the propaganda battle and deadly game of the Cold War continues. Cold War Armageddon s1e2, Discovery 2016
In this world only the paranoid survive. Dean Koontz, Midnight
Only the paranoid survive. Andrew Grove, cited New York Times 18th December 1994, attributions & variations
Your mind is working at its best when you’re being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity. Banksy, Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall
This is what I call the Paranoia Time – being grassed up, an occupational hazard. St George’s Day 2012 starring Craig Fairbrass & Frank Harper & Charles Dance & Vincent Regan & Dexter Fletcher & Nick Moran & Keeley Hazell & Jamie Foreman & Sean Pertwee & Luke Treadaway & Ashley Walters et al, director Frank Harper, commentary
The issue isn’t whether you’re paranoid, but whether you’re paranoid enough. Strange Days 1995 starring Ralph Fiennes & Angela Bassett & Juliette Lewis & Tom Sizemore & Michael Wincott & Vincent D’Onofrio & William Fichtner & Glenn Plummer & Brigitte Bako & Josef Sommer & Nickt Katt & Richard Edson et al, director Kathryn Bigelow, Max
Of course I’m paranoid – everyone’s trying to kill me. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s7e6: Treachery, Faith & the Great River, Weyoun to Odo
Gradually this develops into a sort of paranoia ... If they start smoking before fifteen it seems to have a much greater risk of developing some of the harmful things of smoking the drug, like psychosis. Dr Celia Morgan, University College London
Paranoia is just another word for ignorance. Hunter S Thompson
There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment. Hunter S Thompson
Sometimes paranoia’s just having all the facts. William S Burroughs
A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what’s going on. William S Burroughs
I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy. J D Salinger
All of us have become Richard Nixon. Just like him we have all become paranoid weirdoes. It’s the story of how television and newspapers did this to us and how it has paralysed the ability of politics to transform the world for the better. Adam Curtis, Paranoia and Moral Panics, short film 2010
They [journalists] found corruption in the heart of the elites who ran their country … There really were hidden conspiracies in the heart of the establishment … Secretly they were running things in their own interests. ibid.
The news and television programmes have ended up taking serious threats to society and exaggerating and distorting them. By doing this they have created a widespread mood of fear in society. ibid.
He [Cecil King] began to poison corrupt the relationship between the press, politics and the city of London. Out of it would become a paranoia. Adam Curtis, Every Day is Like Sunday, 2011
The Labour government were descending into paranoia. ibid.
The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make. And could just as easily make differently. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head I: Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain, David Graeber, BBC iplayer 2021
We are living through strange days. Across Britain, Europe and America societies have become split and polarised. Not just in politics but across the whole culture. There is anger at the inequality and the ever-growing corruption. And a widespread distrust of the elite. But at the same time there is a paralysis, a sense that no-one knows how to escape from it … And never a different tomorrow. ibid.
Because in the age of the individual what you felt and what you wanted and what you dreamed of were going to become the driving force across the world. ibid.
Often power that was decaying and desperate to keep its ascendancy. These strange days did not just happen; we and those in power created them together. ibid.
In the late 1950s as the British empire was falling apart, there was a growing sense that something was badly wrong under the surface. There was a feeling of unease. Despite all the reforms after the Second World War and the welfare state, the old forms of power had not gone away. And neither had the violence and the corruption that had always been a part of that power. ibid.
Reports had started to come back from one of the last parts of the empire Kenya that seemed to show that those in charge had gone out of control. They had been fighting a liberation movement called the Mau Mau. The reports said that hundreds of thousands of Kenyans had been put into special camps where they were going to be psychologically adjusted. The British were trying to manipulate what their chief psychologist called the African Mind. But what then happened in the camps turned into a frenzied madness. The British used mass torture and killing as they desperately tried to hold on to power. The government in London denied all the accusations but the rumours of violence and horror continued. ibid.
Those who came to Britain from the empire were shocked at the strange country they found … a sad and frightened country. ibid.
In America the idea of individualism had become central to the politics of the Cold War. Because it was what defined the United States against the collective ideology of Russia … Out of these fears came a paranoia that was fuelled by groups on the extreme Right like the John Birch Society. They said that the American government had been taken over by hidden groups controlled by the communists. ibid.
In the homeland, England, the old structure of power remained intact. And not only in the Institutions. But inside people’s heads as well. The old attitudes of power were still deeply embedded in the minds of the establishment who dominated the country. Those in charge demanded obedience. ibid.
Peter Rachman was far more than the brutal gangster that he was portrayed as. He had lived an extraordinary life … Rachman judged nobody, but the English judged him: he was hated with an overwhelming disgust as the face of evil … On the surface there was the overt racism against the immigrants that Rachman was bringing into Notting Hill … Rachman’s property empire was a brutal and violent one but it was doing something that polite English society completely refused to do: he was giving people on the very margins of society – prostitutes and black immigrants – somewhere to live. His empire shone a harsh light on the hypocrisy … [and] they hated him for it. ibid.
‘This is Peter Rachman: one of Britain’s big-time twentieth century racketeers.’ ibid. BBC Panorama
Behind the polite veneer of the middle classes there was a hard ruthlessness and a suspicion of others. DeFreitas [Rachman heavy] gave it a name: he called it Englishism, it came he said from both an anger and melancholy at the loss of their empire. Then, Peter Rachman died of a heart attack. And Michael DeFreitas suddenly found that he was the new face of evil. ibid.