A few months ago, longtime Unfogged commenter Tripp started talking about a book he’d recently read that, he said, explained a lot about the current political situation. I checked it out. The Authoritarians is a summing up of the work of social psychologist Bob Altemeyer. Altemeyer has made it available free online (you can also order a printed copy) because he thinks his findings are “important to the survival of American democracy.” After reading the book, I came to agree.
And I found myself talking about the book to all sorts of people. Altemeyer’s findings about authoritarian followers, authoritarian leaders, and the dreaded “double highs” (more on them later) have a fair amount of explanatory value in the current political climate. And I liked how Altemeyer’s categories and characterizations are backed by careful research and statistical validation rather than the usual armchair sociology and lazy generalizations. (Although as a blogger I hope the latter never go out of style completely.) And so, a book club. (And probably the longest post in the site’s history. Sorry!)
I asked Tripp for a few words, mentioning to him that The Authoritarians had helped me understand a few things about my own Mormon upbringing. He responded with the following:
I don’t really want to grind on someone’s spirituality. I’m a Methodist and I know many Mormons that I would not like to criticize.
Like many people I’ve been watching US politics with a vague sense of dread and dissatisfaction at what has been happening. I also got in some trouble recently when I voiced my concerns about some well-intentioned home schoolers. Looking back that was my fault because I didn’t really have the knowledge or vocabulary to properly articulate my concerns.
I started seeing similar squabbles among good people, mostly due to misunderstandings. I have long had a fascination for human behavior and was trying to make sense of everything with my own knowledge but with little success.
I then saw a reference to The Authoritarians on a blog I view and took a look at it. A few minutes of online reading convinced me I had to have the book and I wanted to pay for it because I definitely wanted to encourage the author to pursue the topic further.
The book explained most everything I was seeing in a clear fashion that made a great deal of sense to me. It explained many things that are all around us, in plain sight, and yet so “natural” to us that we don’t even see them.
(And in case you all think this sounds wacky and pseudo-religious I agree. Please don’t take my word for it. Be skeptical, especially now. Use your own critical reasoning skills. I strongly encourage that.)
I read the book in a couple nights and the epiphany (again a religious term) was so exciting I wanted to tell everyone about it. Yeah, I know, I sound totally wacky. Maybe I am. I’d love to find out if I am.
The book has given me the terminology so that I can correctly identify what our situation is and thus have an idea of how to correct it without offending or bothering the wrong people.
Lately I have been very heartened to hear that the younger Evangelical movement is turning more towards charity and service and away from fear and judgment. This aligns much more with my own opinion of Christ and I like it much better.
Yes, I am a spiritual person and a Christian. I think that wedges have been driven between spiritual people, American Christians, for political purposes. I believe in God, Christ, and science and evolution as well. I also know I cannot prove those so I don’t really bother arguing it because they are a matter of faith. If you have it you have it.
Our country is facing some bad times, and not the phony “bad times” of “declining morals” drummed up by amoral politicians for their own purposes. No, we are facing the real problems of depleting oil and global warming. Massive amounts of people will die of starvation.
It will be natural for people to respond to these problems with fear and to cling even stronger to authoritarianism and scapegoating but that is not what Christ would do. Christ showed us a better way. Together we can get through this. Divided we will splinter and fail, losing our morals and succumbing to fear, anger, and sin.
I know some of you come from different backgrounds than I do and I do not mean to disrespect anyone. I talk about my experiences just as I hope you will talk about yours. I will not judge you.
God Bless,
Tripp
With that introduction, I’m going to proceed as follows: A brief run through the book, hitting what I considered the most important or interesting points. A few more words from Tripp. Then a few thoughts of my own, a bit darker, I’m afraid, than Altemeyer’s.
Even if you haven’t gotten around to reading the book (yet), do stick around for the rest of the post, and please feel welcome to contribute to the discussion.
Authoritarian followers. Altemeyer calls authoritarianism “something authoritarian followers and authoritarian
leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too
much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do
whatever they want–which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and
brutal” (p. 2).
Altemeyer defines authoritarian followers, people whose personalities incline them to blindly follow authorities, as exhibiting the following three traits:
1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society;
2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
3) a high level of conventionalism. (p. 9)
Altemeyer has developed a scale, called the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale, that picks out authoritarian followers fairly well. (You can take it yourself starting on page 10 of the book.) “Right-wing” simply means supportive of established authority; in the U.S., people who score high on Altemeyer’s measure (he calls them “high RWAs”) tend to be political conservatives, but in the Soviet Union under Gorbachev they were the most committed Communists.
Altemeyer spends a fair amount of time explaining the three characteristics and defending the validity of the scale, an important discussion. It turns out that high RWAs are fairly frightening. Altemeyer had groups of low RWAs and groups of high RWAs play a “Global Change Game” simulation. The low RWAs worked together and solved global problems; the high RWAs started a nuclear war.
Also from Altemeyer’s findings about high RWAs:
It’s been clear in my studies for several decades that lots of people, with no persuading by the authorities at all, were already close to endorsing the torture and execution of their fellow citizens if the government simply said it was necessary. So it would be no surprise at all if they supported President Bush’s insistence that America be allowed to torture suspected foreign terrorists. (p. 26)
What makes authoritarian followers? Altemeyer suggests that the “social learning model of aggression” explains authoritarian aggression in high RWAs. The model is basically fear plus a trigger, in this case self-righteousness.
Thus in the experiments done on this subject, if you know how highly people scored on the Dangerous World scale, and if you know how self-righteous they are,you can explain rather well the homophobia of authoritarian followers, their heavy-handedness in sentencing criminals, their prejudices against racial and ethnic minorities, why they are so mean-spirited toward those who have erred and suffered, and their readiness to join posses to ride down Communists, radicals, or whomever. (p. 57)
He also offers a personal-development model of overall high-RWA characteristics. “I have discovered in my investigations that, by and large, high RWA students
had simply missed many of the experiences that might have lowered their
authoritarianism” (p. 61). Altemeyer doesn’t rule out a genetic component to being a high RWA, but he suggests that life experiences that reinforce the correctness of authority and offer few chances to question received truth are responsible for the development of high RWA characteristics.
Some characteristics of high RWAs. Altemeyer has found that people who score high on the RWA scale tend to also have the following characteristics:
1. Illogical Thinking
2. Highly Compartmentalized Minds
3. Double Standards
4. Hypocrisy
5. Blindness to Themselves
6. A Profound Ethnocentrism (“Authoritarian followers are highly suspicious of their many out-groups; but they are credulous to the point of self-delusion when it comes to their in-groups.” p. 90)
7. Dogmatism: The Authoritarian’s Last Ditch Defense
He suggests that the hard core of supporters of President Bush’s invasion of Iraq — only 30 to 35% of the U.S. in 2006 — are mostly authoritarian followers.
Right-wing authoritarianism and religion.
The first thing you need to know about religious fundamentalists, in case you haven’t inferred it already, is that they usually score very highly on the RWA scale. A solid majority of them are authoritarian followers. (p.111)
Altemeyer sees religious fundamentalism as “a template for prejudice,” and not surprisingly, fundamentalists exhibit the same kinds of cognitive and ethical problems as high RWAs — a disregard of standards of reasoning and evidence, mental compartmentalization, hypocrisy, dogmatism, etc. This chapter is where the careful groundwork of earlier chapters really pays off — Altemeyer makes a convincing case that religious fundamentalism feeds its followers right-wing authoritarian attitudes.
Authoritarian leaders. What about the other side of the coin? Other researchers created the “Social Dominance Scale” to measure a belief in social inequality, and it was found, along with the RWA scale, to be a good predictor of prejudice.
The characteristics of social dominators:
Desire for power
Low empathy
Not religious
High on Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty (“Exploitive-MAD”) scale
Attack minorities and oppressed “out of meanness, as an act of intimidation and control” rather than fear and self-righteousness (p. 169).
Most social dominators live out their lives making a few people miserable but not causing too much trouble. But a “lethal union” occurs when a social dominator is in charge (pushing for unethical, destructive policies) of high RWA followers (who are unlikely to object to the leader’s demands.)
Even scarier, although there are not many people who score highly on both the RWA and the Social Dominance scale, a few such “double highs” exist. These people are basically social dominators — amoral and manipulative, seeking power before all else — who are are part of a fundamentalist milieu and adopt (at least on the outside) the pious attitudes of fellow RWAs. Double highs are frightening because they have a ready-made constituency of fellow fundamentalists, people who would otherwise be inclined (because of their ethnocentrism) to distrust a powerful leader. Altemeyer paints a convincing portrait of Tom DeLay as a double high and suggests that George W. Bush is one, too.
High RWAs in politics. Altemeyer did a survey of United States state legislators of both parties in the early 1990s and found that Republicans scored significantly higher on the RWA scale than Democrats, except for Democrats in the South who were also quite high on the scale. Similar results were found in the Canadian system. At the time, the Social Dominance scale had not bee developed.
Altemeyer’s recommendations for action. Altemeyer offers several long-term strategies for reducing authoritarianism: reduce fear, reduce self-righteousness, reduce religious roots of ethnocentrism, teach children not to trust authorities automatically (p. 239).
But he thinks the problem is too pressing to wait for long-temr solutions. His practical solutions include: Build temporary alliances with fundamentalists (e.g. environmental cleanup). Have respectful discussions, to show them that others have good reasons for opposing views. Become visible as a minority; high RWAs often change their views when they are less frightened of the other. More higher education. Pass laws enshrining non-authoritarian principles, since authoritarian followers are more inclined to follow the law. Model anti-authoritarian (ethical) behavior. Use non-violent tactics, since these are the only protest tactics that don’t induce a high-RWA reaction.
And in the short term, Altemeyer says,
Don’t remain silent… Exercise your rights too, while you still have them, and get just as concerned, active, and giving to protect yourself and your country… Take leadership, help inform, and organize others. (p. 247)
More from Tripp. Okay, so after all that, you might recall that Tripp said that the book “explained many things that are all around us, in plain sight, and yet so ‘natural’ to us that we don’t even see them.” I asked him to elaborate, and he sent me this:
I meant world events since about, oh, WW II or 1956 when I was born. I meant the disconnects between what people say and what is real.
For example – globalization – it is a given. Accepted. That is the way it is. Nobody asks why it is happening.
Wal-Mart. Manufacturing moving overseas. Low low prices. Consumption. The US using most of the world’s energy. Wars in places and not in others. Inconsistencies.
Also, wacky religious stuff. Groups that obviously have all the power always complaining that they are persecuted. People saying the world is getting worse when it is getting better. People saying schools are terrible when my schools are good.
I like where I’m at and I sort of figured all that bad stuff must be happening somewhere else and that is why other people were thinking those things. Most of the people around me are good people, working hard, making a living, not bothering anyone.
Oh, and I made the mistake of going to England for work and finding out that, hello?, socialized medicine is pretty good. I also found out that in America we are working our butts off compared to much of the world. On the other hand we are really living in a consumer’s paradise. For now anyway.
And I figured what I now as Authoritarian followers were just misguided cranks being taken advantage of. Kind of like the old cartoon with the bum on the corner carrying the sign that says “the end is near.” Just some crank.
And stagnant wages. Why are they a given? Why is it an Army of one? Why is the wage gap increasing? Why are prescription drugs from Canada dangerous? Why are Democrats ineffectual? Why don’t things change?
And how in the world could people like Bush?! How could he get elected? And why would people support invading Iraq? Why are they banning the teaching of evolution in Kansas? Why do people say school prayer is banned when it isn’t?
It all piled up so high that I couldn’t simply toss it off as random wackiness anymore. Something bigger was going on. Something was pushing things in a certain direction.
A few of my own thoughts. In 1964, the Republican party was taken over by conservatives led by Senator Barry Goldwater. Although Goldwater would later disavow the forces he helped unleash, this was the beginning of the turn away from the postwar “liberal consensus” and the turn towards a radical right-wing takeover of American politics. Historia Rick Perlstein, in the fantastic Nixonland (which I’m in the middle of reading), chronicles how Ronald Reagan in 1966 and Richard Nixon in 1972 developed and perfected a right-wing, us-against-them, cuture-war politics based on appeals to fear and ethnocentrism. The death of Jesse Helms this weekend was another occasion to reflect on the disgusting mix of racism and hatred of women and sexual minorities that the conservative ascendancy relied on.
In the late 1970s the nation saw the rise of the Christian Right as fundamentalist evangelicals shifted from an insular, next-life focus to an activist, this-world orientation. Despite sundry declarations that its heyday was over, the Christian Right has seen a series of high-water marks of its influence, the latest and greatest during the current administration.
Amid the rise of the Christian Right and the tapping of racialized, fear-based political energy, the elite, pro-corporate Republicans (always a numerical minority) became completely dependent on this new base. Neither presidential nor congressional victories are possible without it. A system has evolved, in short, in which the Republican party needs to maintain an authoritarian leader/follower dynamic to remain in power. Altemeyer’s research helps explain, as Tripp says, what this “something” was that “was pushing things in a certain direction.”
(9/11 was thus a perfect opportunity to increase and sustain the fear in which high RWAs flourish. Republican leaders promoted fear in their own self interest.)
Although this year’s elections look favorable to the Democrats, remember what the U.S. electorate, with its high percentage of high RWAs, is capable of, as recently as 2004. It seems to me that it just takes a triggering event to bring up latent high RWA attitudes in many “moderate” voters. Also remember that there’s still a massive minority of voters that’s blocking constructive politics by supporting the unscrupulous double highs that infest the Republican Party.
More worrisome to me (and I think to Tripp as well) are the challenges on our horizon: global climate change and the problem of containing it and/or adapting to the massive disruptions it will bring; peak oil/tightening energy markets and the attendant changes in our economy and lifestyle; the fading of the American empire and possible wars for strategic and resource dominance, to name a few. How do we as a society confront these problems: as fearful, ethnocentric individuals ready to follow the first unscrupulous strong man who offers cheap salvation, or as a mutually trusting collective of thoughtful, resilient individuals who take responsibility for their own decisions and who feel empathy for others, no matter how different from themselves? A society filled with high RWAs will be, at the very least, less capable of solving our pressing problems. At the very worst, it can easily turn to a more virulent form of authoritarianism of the sort that the U.S. was lucky to avoid in the 20th century.
As crucial as it is to understand high RWAs and the dangers they pose, however, I’m not sure there’s much that can be done to discourage high-RWA attitudes and personality formation. Vote Obama? His communitarian rhetoric is a start. But I also remember the Republican backlash when Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, and I’m afraid of even worse this November. I fear that a revival of trust and community might require exactly the sort of social stress that could also send us into an authoritarian death spiral. Anyone have any other suggestions?
I read it, too, and I’m glad I did. The book reads a bit glib and bloggy, unfortunately, but having grown up Southern Baptist, I always did wonder what it was that made me so anti-authoritarian. (I’m a 25 on the RWA scale.) Part of it, I think, was that although my parents were extremely authoritarian in practice, they promoted a lot of culture that was anti-authoritarian to me, like music, books, and movies. Also, our pastor when I was a kid constantly preached humility and Christian compassion, but when he died and was replaced by a crazy wingnut, everyone sort of went along with it, and the church is now a Republicans-only place. It’s quite scary.
The thing that I’ve become most sensitive to is the way people use hell-in-a-handbasketisms to describe just about everything. Teen sexuality has apparently never existed before, drugs never existed before, terrorism never existed before, homosexuality is brand-new, etc. It’s a rhetorical device used specifically to inculcate fear and despair that leads directly to the most pernicious kind of conservatism, the kind that doesn’t actually know anything about the history of conservative principles and acts only out of horror of progressivism. And, as Altemeyer very clearly demonstrates, RWAs are nearly always homophobic racist misogynists who seem not even to be conscious of the fact that the world they’re trying so hard to save is one that is exclusively made up of white Christian men. Or, even if they are conscious of it, it hasn’t really occurred to them (or they don’t care) how the majority of people suffer when they do. All they can complain about is having to budge a tiny bit to grant massive rights and freedoms to those who are excluded. (Language Log has been posting recently about how pissed off some people are that they have to press “1” for English on phone services. How terribly the monolinguals suffer!)
I found especially interesting his statement that RWAs fear violence so much more irrationally than non-RWAs. I remember after 9/11/2001 I was talking to an older Republican couple of my acquaintance in Ohio who had gone into therapy for sleep deprivation and anxiety because every time a plane passed overhead, they were sure it would crash into their house. The woman was a British ex-pat who used to be a hippie druggie girl in the 60’s, but had now become a ruthless corporate executive. I kept asking her why, if her exceptionalism was so extreme that she could fuck over her lower employees and crush small businesses, she was so sure she would be a terrorist target in an Ohio suburb. “Oh, this world today—it’s so dangerous, especially for people like us! There are Muslims everywhere; don’t you see it?” Haven’t there always been Muslims everywhere? And don’t most of them have something better to do than terrorize individual middle-aged ladies? Her fear, to her, was totally reasonable.
the book seems a bit glib and bloggy
I couldn’t get through it for this very reason. I read about two chapters and just felt patronized enough by the way Altemeyer was talking to me, it kept me from hearing much of what he was saying.
I saw that “Press 1 for English” stuff on LL. Ethnocentrism (defined as a strong sense of in-group vs. out-group) is one of the key high-RWA characteristics, as you can see when you look at the anti-immigrant stuff happening right now. (In fact, this is one issue that separates the authoritarian followers who constitute the Republican Party’s electoral core from the plutocrats who run the party, including GWB and McCain.)
I chalk up my score (also about a 25) to some wonderful teachers who fed my intellectual curiosity and to my very good fortune of being gay, which forced me to take another perspective on things than the one I’d been taught as a child.
2. The book is ‘bloggy,’ and stylistically it is easy to see why Altemeyer hasn’t received any grant funding since 1977. It makes me glad for the internet, where ideas can flourish and find their audience even when the author doesn’t have what it would take to ‘make it’ in the world of dust collectors (physical things). He who has ears to hear…
It is always a big step, in the process of solving problems, to identify and define what is wrong. The new language becomes the basis of fixing something. As a ‘left winger,’ both in the traditional sense and on Altemeyer’s RWA scale, it was a fun and easy read. But I wonder if using such loaded terms, “Right Wing Authoritarian,” doesn’t turn off Altemeyer’s findings to the people that would benefit most from reading them. This is just a quibble. Perhaps Altemeyer is content to preach to the choir, and sees his book as a Left Winger’s guide to tackling the problem of Right Wing Authoritarianism.
I can appreciate how Dave enjoyed this book as a lens through which to examine his own Mormon upbringing. The fingerprints of Altemeyer’s authoritarianism are all over Mormonism, from Joseph Smith libidinous and charismatic authoritarianism (leave your husband and let me fuck you, or suffer God’s wrath), to Hinckley and Monson’s homophobic crusade for the heterosexual two-parent family.
What are the benefits of the RWA world view? Are the high-RWA’s simply victims of inculcation and small thinking, or are there actually benefits? I suppose they enjoy the satiation of self-righteous powerlust, and those with power enjoy the privileges that come with riding the wave of high-RWA support, but are there other, more practical and reasonable benefits for your average Joe Punchclock?
I also find it interesting how intuitively Right-wingers understand Altemeyer’s principles.
If critical thought is the enemy of the RWA agenda, then policy should be shaped to undermine quality public education, and money should be funneled to anti-critical religions.
If RWA power thrives in an environment of fear, then Right Wingers’ rhetoric should focus on all that scares us, and the enemies of the RWA should be characterized as ‘scary outsiders.’
Isn’t it ironic how easily so many libertarians end up supporting a RWA agenda?
5: Altemeyer doesn’t think that having high RWAs learn about his findings would help — these are exactly the people who find it easy to discount social science as a liberal/pinko/secularist plot, etc. He even talks about a study in which he describes high RWAs to a bunch of students and then read a scenario in which high RWAs became a threat to the government so repressive laws against them were passed. The high RWAs in the test group were totally on board with ratting out high-RWA neighbors, sending them to prison, etc.
You’re totally right that getting a good grasp on the problem is a huge step. What Altemeyer’s framework offers is the idea that there’s this large minority of people who aren’t open to what we think of as the normal avenues of civic persuasion and who are actually predisposed to anti-democratic behavior (especially in their authoritarian aggression). Now what do we do with these people?
If only the CIA had really invented a gay bomb.
6: The Social Dominators and Double Highs benefit when they get followers. I agree, hard to see what the authoritarian followers get. I suppose self-righteousness is its own reward; never having to adapt one’s world view is a way of avoiding psychological pain, etc.
7 is excellent.
Libertarians are often the useful idiots of right-wing authoritarianism.
8. Right, so high-RWA are practically a different species. They also happen to be my parents, siblings and friends. It is heart breaking. It is a world view that is a plague, and there are many times, at family gatherings, when I can hardly contain my anger. When even a a slightly critical word comes out, the cold shoulders follow. What are we to do with these people when there is no common language through which we can communicate?
Or is there a common language? How are we to talk with our authoritarian loved ones?
This book seems to answer the question which Demosthenes has asked- “Why are the conservatives not able to view both sides (using logic) of an issue”. It seems that Altemeyer answered the questions when he wrote “authoritarian followers drive through life under the influence of impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning, highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, a profound ethnocentrism, and–to top it all off–a ferocious dogmatism that makes it unlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic. These seven deadly shortfalls of authoritarian thinking eminently qualify them to follow a would-be dictator. As Hitler is reported to have said, “What good fortune for those in power that people do not think.”
Woodrow Wilson said that “A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly just sits.”
The liberal minded citizens can’t change the RWA’s who score high, but may be able to influence those who scored lower to consider not concurring with the right.
I found it very interesting that Altemeier was using fear in the last chapter to incite people to action. He said things like “But we may not have a long run. We have to contain authoritarianism now lest it destroy us. We’ve got to act immediately”.
I came out a 50 on the RWA scale. How did everyone else score?
How many people are not blind followers? I would contend that even anarchists stop at stop signs, and drive on the right side of the road (U.S.). If we regularly varied from the rules of society it would be chaos.
So where do we find balance between following the “good” rules/leaders and dissenting from the “bad”?
I read about the first 50 pages or so of Altemeyer’s book (and I had the same problems with its glib tone, which seemed inappropriate and unprofessional… perhaps he should’ve gotten Parrish to ghostwrite?) and, of course, this post (which reads a lot better than than the first 50 pages of the original book, I might add). And at the risk of seeming like either a complete idiot or a total asshole, I couldn’t help but wonder–what exactly is the big revelation here? Altemeyer’s explanations and descriptions here are all plausible, well reasoned, etc., but seemed rather unsurprising and somewhat obvious and intuitive, for the most part. I imagine that even his recommendations–“reduce fear, reduce self-righteousness, reduce religious roots of ethnocentrism, teach children not to trust authorities automatically”–are just more preaching to the choir, at least here at TGW.
Or am I totally missing something?
I scored a 29, but I keep wondering if my distrust for “established authorities” and my converse respect for “loud mouths” and “rabble-rousers” couldn’t also be viewed as my RWA-like submission to the accepted, passed-down truths in my own liberal circle.
12. I scored a big fat zero, because after I took the test and scored it according to the so-called-rules, I turned around and re-wrote those fucking rules and gave myself a goose egg. FUCK THE MAN!
13. I don’t think stopping at stop signs is a problem, unless you fail to think about why you do it. The ‘authentic’ life is one that rises above imposed identity and creates meaning and purpose wherever and however one likes. To me, stop signs are an existential call to arms. ‘Stop,’ and reflect. Okay, now go!
14. I agree Jeremy. I didn’t find anything particularly new or unexpected. Where is the revelation? But I always like an excuse to complain about my orthodox Mormon upbringing and to bash those haters. FUCK THE MORMON!
Sorry I missed the discussion. I’m kinda a “jump to the summary section” guy so forgive me in advance for being blunt.
I’ve seen some of this criticism from academics before. The style was “glib.” I couldn’t read it, it sounded “unprofessional.”
Sheesh.
I’ve also been accused of seeing things in a simplistic manner. Mostly from academic economics people who make their living teasing out the split hairs at the very tip of the shaft.
Hey, I know that the previously undiscussed and complicated gray areas are the most fun and the most likely approved for a dissertation, but c’mon – forest and trees people.
Enough with the nagging. What do authoritarian followers get out of the deal? Not much, really. What they need is a release from their fear, but they don’t get it. Since the fear comes from within the respite never comes. Indeed many of the social dominators fan the fear to make the followers more docile. I know some authoritarian followers. Scratch the surface and you’ll find an incredibly fearful anxious person.
Jeremy – You essentially ask “aren’t I also an authoritarian follower who is following the ‘liberal’ doctrine? No. The situations are not symmetrical. Pardon me but re-read the book. You are falling for the liberal trap that ‘everyone else must be essentially like me.’ Not true, and not useful.
Anyway, in unfogged I have been given the name Tripp the Crazed because I state my conclusions without all the work that went into them.
Here are my conclusions, which seem to agree with many of Dave’s:
Since soon after WWII but especially after 1973 the ultrarich mapped out a plan to keep themselves on the top, keep the US on top, and undo much of the safety nets put into place after the depression under duress and the fear of socialism.
They used modern marketing techniques and also funded think-tanks to get business, academics (mostly economics) and politics are their side. They began a relentless drumming of right-wing talking points. They stayed hidden to avoid any backlash from envious people. They slowly changed the political system so that money became a bigger factor. They also convinced people to work as individuals and give up most of the power they had. Oh, yeah, and they organized and used the authoritarian followers.
This worked.
Why is this now falling apart? A couple things.
First the inevitable problems that all humans face. Power corrupts.
Second, their system, based on constant expansions and constant increases in the use of natural resources was obviously not sustainable. I can give them a pass after WWII because for a time we thought that nuclear power would be endless and bountiful and oil was a temporary solution but after 1971, when the US became and oil importer instead of exporter the writing was pretty much on the wall and yet they didn’t change.
Because our system has been exported globally we now face a coming global crisis. Worse, the US is not really in a dominant position and if e did try to change things we don’t really have the power to enforce that. Can we tell China to stop building roads and cars? Can we tell China to stop trading with Zimbabwe and South Africa?
The genie is out of the bottle.
My bitter assessment is that this will have to play out in a global collapse. In the US we’ll be generally OK but I figure the sustainable world population will halve. Three billion people will die, starting with the poor countries. Starvation has already happened as the global price of soybeans has doubled and corn tripled. Few Americans care to know this however.
And Rogan – I’m hoping that the one new thing you found was a terminology that will allow you to be more selective about who you say FUCK YOU to.
But hey, I’m just trying to spread the word. If you’ve got loved ones then make your arrangements the best you can. Knowledge is power even if it is about something that cannot be changed.
One other thing – authoritarian followers have always been with us, and globally are maybe 25% of the population. Recently they have been used by the right wing but they are not innately right wing. Indeed many of them were previously part of the Southern Democrats.
So I don’t think the term RWA is useful.
16. Phew! Thanks Tripp. I was afraid my own glib post might be the last word on this thread. Thanks for your thoughtful insights.
It seems like part of the RWA agenda, especially the Republican one you outline, thrives in an environment of despair and powerlessness. So we have been told for a generation now that the government can’t get anything done, and whenever Republicans have been in power, they have done their utmost to hobble the government and make this true. Now we live in a country where bridges aren’t maintained and levees fall apart, and many in this country can’t imagine or remember a time when it could be any other way — despair and powerlessness.
Your own predictions of a grim future seem to buy into this despair and powerlessness. This doesn’t make you a RWA, but it does seem to mean that you accept as inevitable a present and future where RWA ideology will thrive. Does that make you a realist, or does that mean you have swallowed a whole lot of what the Republicans have been feeding us over the last 35 years?
I think things can work out without losing 3 billion people. I personally can’t imagine a future with anything close to the kind of lifestyle that we enjoy today without the massive implementation of nuclear power. As scary as that might be, the numbers between nuclear and fossil fuels have never changed. It has always been the choice between the POSSIBILITY of more Three Mile Islands vs the GUARANTEE of poisoned air and global warming. When comparing the numbers, fossil fuels have always been worse, but visions of three-headed babies and mushroom clouds , IMO, examples of left-wing RWA tactics, scared America into making the worse choice.
So we switch to hydrogen and nuclear and develop the hell out of solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and tidal power. We encourage mixed use dense urban development, make it cool and affordable, and create a massive public train systems that runs free of charge. We continue to use Green Revolution practices to feed the world’s poorest, but create more incentives for innovation in the Organic revolution. When green monoculture species succumb to disease, we draw from the biodiversity sustained in the Organic revolution to quickly replace them. We cross our fingers and hope that we will always be one step ahead of massive starvation in this dance. We figure out effective ways to reverse desertification, and if we can’t find anything easy, we move ahead with the difficult and expensive processes that we already know about today. We plant a lot of trees.
I don’t know Tripp, but I’m hopeful, and I think that things are on the brink of changing for the better.
Altemeyer discusses the “Dangerous World Scale” on pp. 54-55. High RWAs tend to agree with statements such as, “Any day now, chaos and anarchy could erupt around us. All the signs are pointing to it,” and Altemeyer takes this as an indicator of the fearfulness with which authoritarian followers view the world.
Problem is, I think I would also score pretty high on the Dangerous World Scale, or at least the parts about medium-term dangers. I try to counter this with some degree of hope. I read something by Chomsky a few months ago in which he noted that you never know when a revolution is about to happen, and when you look back at history, rapid change has happened at the most unexpected moments. And of course, the alternative to hope — despair — isn’t going to solve anything.
Sigh. So many false dilemmas.
I really hate to burst someone’s bubble or harsh the Obamabuzz we’ve got going. I also really hate the false hope about Iraq that Bush gave our troops. He told our troops that their lives had meaning and that they were fighting for our freedom. From Vietnam I’ve seen what happens when false hope sours. So I’m not gonna give false hope. If people really want the truth they need to do a little research and crunch some numbers. I’ve done that and have reached my conclusions. You reach yours.
There are other alternatives to hope besides despair and passivity.
I prefer knowledge and wisdom and action.
Speaking just for myself, when I lose all hope about the ability of humanity to stave off the impending disasters we have created for ourselves, I lose all desire to make any effort to make things better. So I need just a smidgen of hope.
I do think this hope thing is often counterproductive — people use it to avoid facing harsh reality. “We don’t need to worry too much about climate change; some new technology will save us.” “We don’t need to worry about the decades-long degradation of the American republic; vote for Obama and he’ll make it all better.” Etc.
But wisdom includes a smidgen of hope, and action, IME, requires it.
20. I wouldn’t worry about bursting anyone’s bubble or harshing anyone’s Obamabuzz. Why don’t you say what is on your mind? What ‘false hope’ from Vietnam are you talking about? The hope that fighting the war would mean something? The hope that people could foment real social change? What false hope would you give, if that was your cup of tea? What numbers have you crunched? What research have you done? Where did you go for enlightenment? How did you know that your sources were worthy fonts of ‘knowledge and wisdom?’
I always figured knowledge+wisdom+action=epitome of hope. What else is real hope, if not that?