Tag Archives: T. W. Adorno

black bar

The Disease of Authoritarianism

Models, Problem Practices, , , , , , , , ,
                                A.I. Image

[There is justified concern that the Trump Administration is descending into authoritarian rule.  Without functioning constitutional guardrails he is able to exercise unfettered dominance and control. The current makeup of the Congress essentially means that only the courts can stop him from seizing illegitimate power. Few of us imagined we would one day descend to the perilous level of electing a rogue president.

We speak of Trump as an “authoritarian.” But the term applies equally to people looking for the psychological comfort of an “all the answers” leader. ]

Second Thoughts Banner

German academic T. W. Adorno was the lead researcher of the first major analysis of social conditions that give rise to populations overly enamored with authority figures.1 The researchers, some of whom had escaped from Europe at the start of World War II, traced the origins of a multitude of personality traits, including anti-Semitism, “susceptibility to antidemocratic propaganda,” ethnocentrism (judging others by one’s own values), and predispositions toward fascism. The rise of the Nazi Party and its wide acceptance even among well-educated Germans was the puzzle they wanted to solve.

Their questions are still relevant. Are certain kinds of citizens susceptible to appeals based on authority, especially “official” sources? Are some types of audiences too willing to ignore the natural ambiguities of everyday life in favor of the rigid ideological certainties of a demagogue? And what psychological needs are satisfied by cult-like allegiance is given to a leader? Think of any leader who sees their position as allowing the extra-legal extension of laws or institutions to punish perceived enemies.  In this view, one can ignore  constitutional mandates that would limit powers. The perceived need to purge alleged enemies is greater.

The original concept of authoritarianism focused equally on followers who are predisposed to submissive attitudes that mesh well with a dominating leader. A paper and pencil questionnaire called the F-Scale inventory probing for signs of “authoritarian submission” and “uncritical attitudes toward idealized moral authorities.” It consisted of claims, such as the ones listed below, to which a respondent would agree or disagree. Agreement gave a person a high F (Fascism) score.

“Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.”
“Every person should have complete faith in some supernatural power whose decisions will be obeyed without question.”
“What this country needs most, more than laws and political programs, are a few courageous, tireless, devoted leaders in whom the people can put their faith.”

The researchers found that anti-Semitism, rigidity, ethnocentrism, and undue respect for power tended to cluster within many of the same people. They theorized that the clustering was tied to styles of family life. They also learned that authoritarianism can be identified in segments of almost any population. Some people may be psychologically hardwired to seek a “place” in a clearly defined social order led by a dominating leader.  In Congress, for example, many GOP members seem happy to relinquish their constitutional responsibilities in favor of the President.  Right now, few committees led by Republican chairpersons are engaged in what is usually the routine work of oversight of executive actions.

As a researcher on the psychology of identification, it seems evident that–with exceptions–authoritarians tend to have a diminished capacity for social intelligence. Low social intelligence typically includes low levels of empathy for others, lower self-esteem, low self-monitoring (an inability to notice how one’s own presence effects others), attraction to charismatic individuals, and an aversion to social complexity and pluralism.

Our quickly atomizing culture unfortunately feeds some of these traits. Recent election results are a reminder that many among us want simple and magical answers to entrenched problems: all the better if the explanations include scapegoating others. We have lived through a seemingly endless number of false alternate narratives told and retold about stolen elections, pedophile Washington elites, dead voters who managed to cast ballots, or Social Security cheats. Presently the political right finds receptive citizens  with similar fears. Low-knowledge voters–and there are many–don’t have enough solid information to quell their imaginations. As a nation we need to get a whole lot smarter about weighing the claims of leaders who are willing to trade the complexities of modern life for dubious certainties.

1The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row, 1950.
Open book empty desk 4

Our Emerging Thought Police

Problem Practices, , , , , , , , , , ,

We could reach a point where scholars may need to reject job offers from states that have decided to conceal hard truths from their students.

Among other states, legislators in Alabama and Texas are working to pass laws that would prohibit academics from teaching about the social and political histories of the nation. The very thought should send shudders down the spines of anyone familiar with the attempts of German Fascists to purify their society of “decadent” art and “alien” ideas. Most of the homegrown pinheads proposing this censorship may have never learned that the United States and the West did the world a favor by sheltering a large number of German academics fleeing to seek safety and academic freedom.  Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik and Herbert Marcuse are only a few intellectuals that found their way to the United States. They fled the Nazi’s thought police who found their teaching and religious beliefs alien to the culture. All focused their scholarship on culture and society, making advances in American explorations of philosophy, psychology, sociology and cultural analysis.  Indeed, Adorno and Frenkel-Brunswik’s explorations of “The Authoritarian Personality” remain all to relevant in this era of populist-fascist dictatorships. What they described as theory we now understand as fact.

The “problem” that right-wing legislators think they are addressing includes ostensibly “dangerous” leftist ideas, and the teaching of what most misunderstand as “critical race theory:” a phrase that triggers fantasies that chain out past what are useful historical and theoretical probes. The goal is to prohibit teachers in history and the social sciences from confronting the fact of American racism first institutionalized with slavery and then embedded in nearly every corner of our national life. Tina Descovich, of “Moms for Liberty” sets out very narrow guardrails: “To say there were slaves is one thing, but to talk in detail about how slaves were treated, with photos, is another.”

Really?

 

No one alert to the challenges to any modern nation can ignore the enormous effect that racial and religious bigotry has had on its victims. The best societies have made amends. But we are still easily upside down if the classroom is subjected to gag rules imposed by non-expert and misinformed politicians. To legislate away American attempts at the useful reckonings of the past, like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, or ongoing attempts to weed out officials who are members of hate groups, is truly a fool’s errand.  These attempts suggest some of the excesses of fascist blindness described by Adorno and others.

                                  Camp Amache, 1942

Give legislators the power to shape the topics of education, and it can be no surprise that many in the teaching professions are nervous. To be sure, school teachers have always been subject to oversight of their lesson plans, which are tied to formal curricular objectives. That was maybe why it was never part of my public school curriculum in Colorado to learn about the Sand Creek Massacre of native Americans in 1864, or the existence of a huge World War II detention camp for Chinese Americans (Camp Amache), both in the southeastern corner of the state. Even today, apparently, a high schooler’s knowledge of these places of national shame might be too much for Tina.  And she would surely be chagrined to know that it was high schoolers in that area who encouraged the federal government to put the site within the National Park system.

At most true universities there are generally fewer curricular guidelines that can muzzle the accumulated knowledge of a respected scholar. If it were possible to do so, such limits would empty out academia of its best and brightest focused on cultural and media theory, American history, modern criticism, American literature, philosophy, sociology, ethnic and religious studies. It’s one thing for a church or private organization to impose a-priori “doctrines,” statements of faith, or sets of “first principles.” It’s quite another for non-expert legislatures or school boards to set rules that would restrict the free discovery of ideas that is the very reason for a university. We could reach a point where professional bodies representing various disciplines may need to issue warnings to scholars to reject job offers in states that have decided to turn their backs on hard truths about the American experiment.