The Authoritarian Dynamic

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Historian Richard Hofstadter, in his classic 1964 work offered an eerily accurate description of today’s politics.

Hofstadter conducted a thorough review of American politics from before the founding of the nation through McCarthyism. He noticed a pattern among a small impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum.

He called their behavior the “paranoid style” in politics.

Those embracing the paranoid style of politics believe that unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger in which they belong.

According to Hofstadter, the “something larger” to which they belong is  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 are “determined to repossess it and prevent the final act of subversion.”

They therefore adopt extreme measures. They will stop at nothing to prevent what they see as an impending calamity.

These apocalyptic warnings arouse passion and militancy: The evil enemy must be destroyed—and the fight must go beyond the ordinary “give and take” of politics.

After Goldwater’s defeat, Hofstadter noted that some of the worst distempers of American democracy and become “a formidable force in our politics” and quite possibly, a permanent one. In 1992, Newt Gingrich captured this frustration—and call to militancy—when he said Republicans must resort to any means necessary. The culmination of “any means necessary” was, of course, the January 6 insurrection.

This is important: Hofstadter says that the paranoid style exists on the left end of the spectrum as well as the right. Some authoritarians move from “the paranoid left to the paranoid right.” In his book, Hofstadter focuses on right-wing paranoia presumably because right-wing paranoia has been far more destructive.

The Authoritarian Personality

Political psychologists started studying the authoritarian personality after World War II to try to understand the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

The authoritarian personality describes the followers (the rows of people dressed alike raising their hands in salute), not the demagogic leader, who may or may not have an authoritarian personality. (Some authoritarian leaders cunningly manipulate those with authoritarian personalities.)

Those with an authoritarian personality defer to established authorities, show aggression toward out-groups when authorities sanction that aggression, and support traditional values endorsed by authorities.

Traits of the authoritarian personality include rigidity and cynicism and intolerant behaviors. The authoritarian personality includes these dimensions:

  • support for conventional values
  • authoritarian submission
  • authoritarian aggression
  • stereotypy and rigidity
  • toughness and power
  • cynicism
  • the psychodynamic components of antiintraception, projectivity, and sexual inhibition

The authoritarian personality has also been called an anti-democratic personality.

Those with an authoritarian disposition are averse to complexity. In the words of political psychologist Karen Stenner, they prefer sameness and uniformity and have cognitive limitations. They are, to use her phrase, “simpleminded avoiders of complexity.”

Diversity is a form of complexity. (Slavery and racial segregation were authoritarian.)

Conspiracy theories appeal to those who are averse to complexity. Globalism gets complicated. Our federal government has grown complicated. People who are afraid of complexity are eager and able to see evil in it. A conspiracy theory a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event. Conspiracy theories seem complicated, but in fact, they reduce complicated situations down to a simple explanation that fits the world view that enemies are attacking us from within. How Trump lost the election is complicated and may not make sense if everyone you know supported him. It’s easier to believe that the election was stolen from him.

Political psychologist Karen Stenner has concluded that about 33% of the population across cultures has this personality across cultures have this disposition. She also says people are born with it as a predisposition.

The Authoritarian Dynamic

This section comes from Karen Stenner, the author of The Authoritarian Dynamic, a book and article coauthored with Jonathan Haidt. A readable version of her work is here.

Those with authoritarian personalities can be good citizens. They will embrace institutions and they’ll follow rules. They will support traditional values when those values are endorsed by the authority figure.

However, when riled by what political psychologists call a normative threat, they can become cruel and tolerate cruelty in others. They can show aggression toward out-groups when authorities sanction that aggression. (A normative threat is something that threatens sameness and order.)

In a nutshell, the Authoritarian Dynamic works like this:

  • Liberal democracy naturally expands
  • As it expands, those with authoritarian dispositions push back

Once a democracy is established, new groups seek to be included. In the United States, initially, the only group included in “we the people” were white, well-educated, mostly landowning men.

American democracy gradually expanded to include women and minorities. I say gradually because it was really hard to get some of these groups included because there was often fierce and bloody pushback. See, for example, the Civil War.

Put another way, as liberal democracy expands, a leader can come along and raise a normative threat, like this: “Those people are coming to take your jobs! Others want what belongs to you! Those brown-skinned invaders at the border will destroy what is good about America! If enslaved people are freed they will pose a danger to white people!”

In other words, some people will never feel comfortable living in a democracy. These people will always be susceptible to a demagogue who creates a normative threat.

Because they are 1/3 of the population, you can’t get rid of them.

 

3 thoughts on “The Authoritarian Dynamic”

  1. Marge Gasnick

    Teri, I just found this blog post and am so appreciative of it. Authoritarian personalities can show up at the local level, too. Of late I am pondering how voters can suss out an authoritarian personality in their local candidates for mayor, school board, city council, etc. In my view, at the local level, with fewer institutional guardrails in place, authoritarians can do a lot of damage.

  2. Caron Wedeking

    Interesting read. I came away with more questions than answers, which is good. I had the thought that the “I don’t like complex” thought goes “I want instant gratification” as well.

  3. Matthew Graybosch

    This doesn’t surprise me. We get authoritarianism with our mothers’ milk. Until we’re mature enough to understand that our parents are only human, we mistake them for gods. Our parents often hamper our journey toward individuation and independence by trying to keep control over us. Is it then any wonder that so many yearn for the bitter embrace of a ruler’s boot on their necks?

    Just look at what’s happening in the UK. Elizabeth II might have been beloved by many of her subjects, but in the wake of her passing there’s been a surge in pro-republican/anti-monarchy sentiment that both the authorities and the wider society seem determined to suppress. Why? I suspect it’s for the same reasons so many of Stanley Milgram’s subjects willingly cooperated, even when it appeared that they were torturing somebody to death.

    People want to be told what to do. They want the comfort of knowing, when everything goes to hell, that they can always point to somebody else and say, “I was just following orders.”

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