There’s a tendency to see the current surge in right-wing anti-democratic, authoritarian norm-breaking as something new in America, and therefore both frightening and baffling.
This is wrong—and dangerous.
We begin with a distinction between conservatives and reactionaries (also called right wing authoritarians).
Conservatives are averse to change. They prefer stability & status quo.
Those with an authoritarian disposition, on the other hand, are averse to complexity (which includes diversity).
Those with authoritarian dispositions prefer sameness and uniformity and have “cognitive limitations.” They’re “simpleminded avoiders of complexity.”
Quotations from Profs. Jon Haidt and Karen Stenner’s article “Authoritarianism Is Not a Momentary Madness, But an Eternal Dynamic Within Liberal Democracies,” from this book:
The article is also available on Stenner’s website, here.
Those with an authoritarian disposition have a “bias against different others (racial and ethnic outgroups, immigrants)
A normative threat is something that threatens “sameness and order.”
When confronted with a normative threat, authoritarians have a strong reaction. They become fearful and angry. They can be violent & tolerate violence in others. Fear of immigrants is discomfort with people who are different.
Trump governs by creating normative threats. He deliberately keeps the authoritarians riled.
Those with authoritarians dispositions make up about 1/3 of the population. This percentage occurs across cultures.
The Nazis came to power with 33% of the vote. Le Pen won 35% of the vote in France. I suggest Trump maintains 40%+ approval (aggregate as per 538) because of the effectiveness of the Fox-Trump-right wing media loop & because Trump has a lock on the Republican Party.
The GOP is no longer conservative. It’s reactionary / authoritarian.
The shift occurred during the decades since Brown v. Board of Education (the SCOTUS case desegregating schools) sent the nation’s right wing authoritarians into a panic from which they still haven’t recovered.
Q: Why doesn’t Trump try to expand his base.
A: The only way would be to stop creating normative threats, and he can’t stop. He needs to keep his base riled. He knows he’s better off with 33% stirred to anger and fury, than a larger percentage with his base calmed down.
That 33% gives him a lock on the GOP, which gives him a lot of power. So he needs to continually rile his base with normative threats.
They love it, by the way. Hofstadter, in his classic work, explains.
Hofstadter looked at American politics from before the founding of the nation through McCarthyism and noticed a pattern among a small impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum.
He called their behavior the “paranoid style” in politics.
The “paranoid” believe unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger in which they belong.
According to Hofstadter, the “something larger” generally phrased as “the American way of life.”
They “feel dispossessed” and that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind.”
They’re “determined to repossess it and prevent the final act of subversion” so they adopt extreme measures to prevent what they see as impending calamity.
Gingrich channeled this paranoia in the 1990s when he urged Republicans not to compromise.
Democracy requires compromise. Some scholars call those with authoritarian disposition an“anti-democratic personality.”
There’s a direct line between the Confederacy, Gingrich and McConnell.
What calamity do the Mitch McConnells want to prevent? The calamity is the “invasion” of brown people (and Democrats and minority communities) who they think are trying to take what they believe is rightfully theirs.
This brings us back to the normative threat.
(They become cruel, but think they’re victims)
The Authoritarian Dynamic is this: Liberal democracy naturally expands (for example, by expanding voting rights) which causes a reaction in those with paranoid / authoritarian dispositions.
Put another way: Progressives push forward. Reactionaries push backwards. It’s a never-ending dynamic.
It’s dangerous to see this as something new and unexpected, because then we feel shocked.
Yale prof. Timothy Snyder explains that “shock is pre-helpless.”
If it’s never before happened, it’s natural to think there’s no way out.
But we’ve been here before, and we’ve gotten out before.
If you think we having been here before, imagine being African American in the year 1850s.
See, for example, Susan B. Anthony Taught us How and FDR taught us how.
