Plan B Forum

http://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/tr ... itarianism

This link is to a very lengthy examination of the role of authoritarianism in the rise of Trump and the polarizing process going on in the Republican party. It makes brief allusion to the role of populism - perhaps too brief- but the studies on authoritarianism, latent and enacted, suggest that "anger" and populism are not sufficiently explanatory for the rise of one such as Trump.

For those interested, it is worthwhile reading this (my granddaughter forced me to it!). I'm not sure what conclusions to draw but she will no doubt insist that I have some - and then argue.

"Have we misunderstood hard-line social conservatism all along?"

Most of the other social-threat questions followed a similar pattern2. On its surface, this might seem to suggest that authoritarianism is just a proxy for especially hard-line manifestations of social conservatism. But when examined more carefully, it suggests something more interesting about the nature of social conservatism itself.

For liberals, it may be easy to conclude that opposition to things like same-sex marriage, immigration, and diversity is rooted in bigotry against those groups — that it's the manifestation of specific homophobia, xenophobia, and Islamophobia.

But the results of the Vox/Morning Consult poll, along with prior research on authoritarianism, suggests there might be something else going on.

There is no particular reason, after all, why parenting goals should coincide with animus against specific groups. We weren't asking questions about whether it was important for children to respect people of different races, but about whether they should respect authority and rules generally. So why do they coincide so heavily?

What is most likely, Hetherington suggested, is that authoritarians are much more susceptible to messages that tell them to fear a specific "other" — whether or not they have a preexisting animus against that group. Those fears would therefore change over time as events made different groups seem more or less threatening.

One behavior pattern among authoritarians is part of this general susceptibility to fear--they require overwhelming, out-of-proportion, objective data to change an attitude.

Snail gate

Now that was an excellent article (I'd actually come across it on my own last night), and I'd urge everyone here to read it--even those of you who might initially be put off by the fact that it's on Vox.com.

I do wish they--someone, anyone--could come up with a better term than "authoritarian"...one with less implied value-judgement and negative connotations. Because Republicans especially need to understand what has happened to their party, without feeling that the researchers' agenda is to put them down. The article does note that

"[...] this early research seemed to assume that a certain subset of people were inherently evil or dangerous — an idea that Hetherington and Weiler say is simplistic and wrong, and that they resist in their work. (They acknowledge the label "authoritarians" doesn't do much to dispel this, but their efforts to replace it with a less pejorative-sounding term were unsuccessful.)

A couple more significant quotes:

To my surprise, the most compelling conclusion to come out of our polling data wasn't about Trump at all.

Rather, it was that authoritarians, as a growing presence in the GOP, are a real constituency that exists independently of Trump — and will persist as a force in American politics regardless of the fate of his candidacy.

If Trump loses the election, that will not remove the threats and social changes that trigger the "action side" of authoritarianism. The authoritarians will still be there. They will still look for candidates who will give them the strong, punitive leadership they desire.

And that means Donald Trump could be just the first of many Trumps in American politics, with potentially profound implications for the country.

It would also mean more problems for the GOP.

[...] the rise of authoritarianism as a force within American politics means we may now have a de facto three-party system: the Democrats, the GOP establishment, and the GOP authoritarians.

And although the latter two groups are presently forced into an awkward coalition, the GOP establishment has demonstrated a complete inability to regain control over the renegade authoritarians, and the authoritarians are actively opposed to the establishment's centrist goals and uninterested in its economic platform.

I'm trying to work out if this has relationship to the Know-Nothings of the 19th century or if their position was more clearly driven by xenophobic impulses. Regardless, what's somewhat disturbing (setting aside the unlikely Trump victory) is the manner in which modern communication (speed of, availability of) is an instrument that so swiftly and completely penetrates to this authoritarian tendency. Time was, news took a while to travel and often enough when a particular animus or reaction happened in (say) Michigan, it was already long past in (say) New York. Nowadays it's instant across the entire country and fed by misinformation at that.

I don't know it's so good to contemplate the downfall, perhaps, of the 2-party system. Also I wonder if there are studies into the opposite phenomenon - the... er libertarian? that doesn't seem right. If fascism is the ultimate extreme of the authoritarian impulse, what is the logical opposite and its outcome?

I haven't read through the whole article, (I plan to, but not today, way too busy for that) but just a couple quick observations based on the excerpts that have been posted:

First of all, regarding this:

authoritarians are much more susceptible to messages that tell them to fear a specific "other" —

I categorically reject the idea that the political right has a monopoly on this approach...

Bernie Sanders has been tirelessly building his campaign upon just such fears; fear of "the wealthy" , "the one percent" "the bankers" "Wall Street", etc, etc,...

Fear of a "specific other" is used by some on both the right and the left...

They just have different target sets...

Second, I completely reject what I take to be the suggestion that "social conservatism" represents some sort of necessary factor for "authoritarianism"...

(And I say this as person who is not, and has never claimed to be, a "social conservative"...)

I think this interpretation represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of "authoritarianism"

Authoritarianism, is about the impulse to control other people's lives and to dictate how they should live, and punishing them if they don't...

And without question, many "social conservatives" would fall into that category...

But so would many others....

For example, liberal local governments that pass ordinances telling people they can't smoke in their own homes...(which has happened)...

Again, it's not about ideological, "left or right"...

It's about authoritarians of different ideological bents having different target sets...there are authoritarians on both sides of the ideological divide....

To illustrate this point on a larger scale, with just one example:

I don't think that anyone would argue that Mao's "Cultural Revolution" in the late 60s was motivated by "social conservatism"...

But I also doubt that many would disagree that it was firmly based on "authoritarianism"....

Well, I hope you read the entire article, LJ. I think Bernie's message may well be authoritarian and the article suggests that this (in fact) puts off non-authoritarians and they tend to be democrats. A prediction then might be that Bernie cannot win the Democrat nomination because he alienates much of the base.

The Mao comparison is not on point. Authoritarian in this study refers to people who do not want "change". It does not refer to the tendency of governmental authority to "auth".

Social conservatism is not a pre-requisite for authoritarianism. That's putting the cart before horse.

According to Hetherington and Weiler's research, this is not a story about how Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus. It's a story of polarization that increased over time.

They trace the trend to the 1960s, when the Republican Party shifted electoral strategies to try to win disaffected Southern Democrats, in part by speaking to fears of changing social norms — for example, the racial hierarchies upset by civil rights. The GOP also embraced a "law and order" platform with a heavily racial appeal to white voters who were concerned about race riots.

This positioned the GOP as the party of traditional values and social structures — a role that it has maintained ever since. That promise to stave off social change and, if necessary, to impose order happened to speak powerfully to voters with authoritarian inclinations.

Democrats, by contrast, have positioned themselves as the party of civil rights, equality, and social progress — in other words, as the party of social change, a position that not only fails to attract but actively repels change-averse authoritarians.

Over the next several decades, Hetherington explained to me, this led authoritarians to naturally "sort" themselves into the Republican Party.

That matters, because as more authoritarians sort themselves into the GOP, they have more influence over its policies and candidates. It is not for nothing that our poll found that more than half of the Republican respondents score as authoritarian.

Perhaps more importantly, the party has less and less ability to ignore authoritarians' voting preferences — even if those preferences clash with the mainstream party establishment.

Over the next several decades, Hetherington explained to me, this led authoritarians to naturally "sort" themselves into the Republican Party.

I find this thinking completely lacking in historical accuracy...

Anyone who believes that "authoritarianism" has somehow "naturally sorted itself out" to the Republican Party, either hasn't been paying attention, or has an agenda...

There's plenty of "authoritarianism" to go around...

He's not paying attention, is he?

Lord Jim, did you work your way through the whole article? It seems to me to describe fear of social change. Social change--Civil Rights of minorities, various 'equal rights' policy planks, civil marriage without religious constraints, and the kinds of change that mostly drives the growth of the authoritarianism as defined in this paper. It notes these changes have hit most in the high-school-or-less-education white male.
These changes are promised by the Dems.

It has been a long time since a white male could leave high school, get a union job at the local factory and expect to make enough money to buy a house, raise his kids, buy a second house and boat at the shore or the mountains, and send his kids to college while his wife stayed home and 'kept house'.

Meantime, things ARE getting better for the migrant, the minority, the educated female. Challenge me on the female? My wife was telling me today about the estrangement she felt from her parents when she graduated from college with no immediate prospects for a husband. The Mrs. degree was the whole reason for going to college. Rare is the female today who thinks the only respectable job for them is secretary, nurse, or school teacher.

Again, I agree that the referenced work at the beginning of this thread is worth reading carefully.

Burning Petard wrote: It seems to me to describe fear of social change.

That's a bingo!

Lord Jim wrote:I think this interpretation represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of "authoritarianism"

Authoritarianism, is about the impulse to control other people's lives and to dictate how they should live, and punishing them if they don't...

On the contrary, Jim, it is you who have a fundamental misunderstanding of authoritarianism:

Authoritarians prioritize social order and hierarchies, which bring a sense of control to a chaotic world. Challenges to that order — diversity, influx of outsiders, breakdown of the old order — are experienced as personally threatening because they risk upending the status quo order they equate with basic security.

***

When they face physical threats or threats to the status quo, authoritarians support policies that seem to offer protection against those fears. They favor forceful, decisive action against things they perceive as threats.

Authoritarianism is not about controlling others; it's about an individual's sense of personal security and control in his own life. There is a natural human tendency to want prescribed rules and social order for a number of reasons, but principally because 1) it frankly makes life easier, less stressful, more predictable and more orderly to follow a given set of rules, and 2) the individual can rely on the relevant authority to enforce those rules, reducing anxiety about uncontrollable external forces. In Freudian terms, authoritarianism is the function of the superego, and finds its expression socially/politically in law-and-order and rejection of change. The political party (or other social structure, such as a church) that promises such security, order and continuity of social expectations will have a natural pull for those with a stronger authoritarian inclination.

Fascism did not become a popular movement because fascists are inherently bad; it became popular because people want security in knowing their place and purpose, and in knowing that there are consequences for those who violate the rules. And that is fundamentally human.

This is also supported by current brain science research into the amygdala function, fear expression and political persuasion.

Excellent points - Sue and BSG. The linkage between authoritarianism and populism, including nationalistic impulses, cannot be clearer. We all crave certainty and security in one form or another. But there is further the dedication to the preservation of a comfortable status quo that is threatened by change

Even positive change, that shakes up an uncomfortable status quo in which one is miserably unhappy, is still VERY hard - it's fundamentally against human nature to change, I'm convinced.

I think it's because it's so easy to envision that what comes next might be worse, and so much harder to have faith that the change will manifest greatness. Again, I think that fear is merely an expression of our biology, our constant instinctive focus on danger avoidance.

But thankfully, with courage, it's not impossible to change. Thankfully there are always some folks out there with that ability to envision greatness in change.

We're back here now, to your original thread...

I'll start by asking what I think is a very logical question...

are you stark raving mad?...

In what quadrant of the galaxy does it make even any sort of minimal sense to equate caring about "good manners" or being "well behaved" with support for Donald Trump?

He represents the complete opposite of those concepts; it's utter lunacy...

His own supporters openly talk about "burning the house down"...

That's hardly conservative...(Bernie Sanders say he's leading a "revolution" too...)

But laying all of that aside...

No, the fellow who wrote the article for vox, didn't try to say that all conservatives or Republicans were "authoritarians"...(as he defines them...)

What he did try to say, is that "authoritarianism" is some how an exclusive subgroup of conservatives, or Republicans, or those on the right...(or anyone he's not particularly fond of...)

Which is a completely specious argument, when one looks at the broader picture...

Are the creation of "safe spaces" on university campuses where one is not supposed to hear anything that offends ones sensitive sensibilities "authoritarian" ?

Absolutely...

When conservative speakers are shouted down by left-wing thugs on college campuses, is that "authoritarian"?

You betcha...

When a left-wing regime like Castro's Cuba throws thousands of people into prison for speaking out against the government, is that "authoritarianism"?

If it isn't, I'd be keen to learn what creative, and uhh, imaginative construction one might come up with to explain how it isn't...

And yet "right wingers" are supposed to have some sort of "ownership" of this behavior, while "left wingers" engaging in the exact same behavior, get some sort of pass...

My reading of history (both domestically and internationally) is that when it comes to authoritarian behavior, there's an enormous record for it, on both the left and the right...

My argument certainly is not that there aren't those on the right that have an authoritarian mindset...

It would be idiotic and counter-logical to make an argument of that sort...obviously there are many on my side of the aisle who fall into that category...

But it would be equally idiotic and counter-logical to suggest that there is no such thing as "authoritarianism" on The Left...

The whole tenor of that article, when you read carefully (and painfully) through every sentence, comes across, (to me at least) as someone who began with a conclusion and then back-filled his "facts" so they would match his conclusion....(a rubato approach, but better written...)

It's cleverly constructed, (which is perhaps why you fell for it....that and the pain killers

It's "Pseudo Scholarly"... it "reads" like a "scholarly tome"...

Until you start drilling down...then you find there's an obvious agenda and a paucity of facts....

"Authoritarianism is all about disliking and fearing minorities and how they upset your way of life"....

Well, no it's not... there's a lot more to it then that...

Leftist/Socialist/Liberal authoritarianism is a very real thing, for which I can produce many examples, and the attempt being made here to "prove" that "authoritarianism" is somehow an off shoot of conservatism is pure bollocks...

Did I make my point clear enough there?

Lord Jim wrote:In what quadrant of the galaxy does it make even any sort of minimal sense to equate caring about "good manners" or being "well behaved" with support for Donald Trump?

Quadrant - the USA. Again, you have missed the point. The study does not equate caring about good manners or being well behaved with support for Donald Trump. It demonstrates that those who chose good manners in preference to curiosity are far more likely to be backing Trump. Placing primacy on well behaved children over being considerate is a reliable indicator of conservative emphasis in social values and candidate support.

Here's how scientific enquiry works; a theory is created and experiments and studies conducted to confirm or deny or adapt the theory.
As you falsely put it, "someone who began with a conclusion ..." when you know full well it was a theory or notion that was tested and the results of which yield a conclusion - not the other way round.

MacWilliams studies authoritarianism — not actual dictators, but rather a psychological profile of individual voters that is characterized by a desire for order and a fear of outsiders. People who score high in authoritarianism, when they feel threatened, look for strong leaders who promise to take whatever action necessary to protect them from outsiders and prevent the changes they fear.

So MacWilliams naturally wondered if authoritarianism might correlate with support for Trump

. Theory precedes experiment/study.

The results of this study show (among other things) that the left is to some degree barking up the wrong tree when ascribing certain positions of Trump supporters to plain racism, sexism or whatever "phobia" needs to be asserted by the middle/left to feel "liberal". It shows that "a desire for order and a fear of outsiders" is consistently indicated by apparently unrelated answers to non-threatening questions.

Again, you insist in the outright falsehood of claiming the article concludes that authoritarianism is a sub-group of conservatism, to the exclusion of other left/liberal positions. It does not. It clearly identifies that authoritarian folks (revealed by the study answers) are a group that has self-aligned to Trump and thereby moved into the conservative sphere - with resultant conflict with more traditional conservative or republican supporters. The 'sub-group' is motivated not by traditional Republican ideology as much as they are by a growing fear of change, of deprivation of rights, of the creation of "special" privileges for pinko sub-groups, of disorder.

They want an activist government (not a Republican ideal in theory) that will stop the erosion of morality in the USA. They identify (I hazard a guess) gun violence etc. not as a problem of the NRA but of liberal "freedom" and social engineering that encourages disobedience, vulgarity and bad behavior over and above social responsibility. They believe standards are being lowered to bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator - and being brought down by a political/economic elite entrenched in positions of power.

I would think, LJ, if you could see past some personal hugging of insult that does not exist, the study is groping toward an understanding of a new phenomenon (to this day and age at least) that is symbolized by Trump's unexpected prominence. It isn't about you, Jim.

Exactly!

LOL

Here's how scientific enquiry works; a theory is created and experiments and studies conducted to confirm or deny or adapt the theory.

Believe me...

I don't need a lecture from you or anyone else on how "scientific enquiry" (bad British misspelling) "works"...

(You can save that for our Santa Cruz Pseudo Scientist, who might be able to benefit from your "insight"....)

you insist in the outright falsehood of claiming the article concludes that authoritarianism is a sub-group of conservatism, to the exclusion of other left/liberal positions. It does not.

Oh, for the love of God...

Re-read it...

It goes on and on about how "authoritarianism" is defined by fear of minorities"...and "outsiders"...

It starts with assumptions and then works backwards to prove them, rather than starting with a theory and seeing where the science leads... which is what good science does...

And think about the underlying group they had for this "study"...

Rational people like myself would have been tossed out of this study for taking the "weird" position that "curiosity" and "good manners" are equally valid...

so you're starting off with a study group that doesn't even include those people...(and though I'm sure you won't admit it for the purpose of this debate, in the event I suspect you would also have fallen into that group... )

Looks to me like that might skew the results a bit...











And the fact that Econo thinks this is such a wonderful theory, and brilliant source material, ought to give you pause...

Rational people like myself would have been tossed out of this study for taking the "weird" position that "curiosity" and "good manners" are equally valid...

Me too... so that proves the point doesn't it? Neither one of us is even slightly likely to vote for Trump.

But if we did take part in the study, then we'd take part wouldn't we? And we'd choose one or the other - we wouldn't strike some dumbass pose of rectitude citing a refusal to answer the bloody questions.

The point (again) was to see if there was a correlation between a form of authoritarianism and Trump supporters. And lo and behold, there is. I suppose if he had been running as a Democrat, the same people might have self-sorted into a weird faction of the center/left.

And a theory is an assumption of a kind. A thing is proposed to be true and then tested - and yes, evidently you do need the reminder that tests are not conducted without a beginning purpose to be verified, rejected or adapted. Pretty damn stupid to ask four random questions with no idea why one would ask them. Plus of course this is not one person as a one-off but a building block of social study by many people over years, culminating in a study that shows what it says it does - Trump supporters are more likely than other pol supporters to have certain views on children. These are consistent with a desire for status quo (or return to an imagined one) and an antipathy toward change when change = innovation.

You keep taking ownership as if this study said something about you. It doesn't. So why the accusations of insanity on my part? Why bash Econoline? Why not engage Sue who's better than me at this?

Are you seriously thinking of voting for Trump? I can understand how guilt might affect your writing.