Will All The Real Fascists Please Stand Up?

The Führer 2.0

The fact that a despicable man like Adolf Hitler was able to brainwash the majority of the German populace into buying his twisted worldview is a fact that still seems unbelievable over 70 years later. An analysis of the unique political and social factors present in Germany at the time is not sufficient to explain how the masses were so vulnerable to Hitler’s advances. For that we must also take psychological factors into account. Research suggests that there is a certain type of character structure, called the authoritarian personality, which makes one particularly prone to being submissive to authority. If it were not for the prevalence of this type of character in Nazi Germany, Hitler may never have assumed power in the first place. This is the same type of personality that we see displayed in many conservatives today. In contemporary American politics, the influence of this personality type wreaks untold havoc, effectively acting as a silent killer of democratic progress.

The authoritarian personality was first studied shortly after WWII in the early 1950’s by psychologists at UC Berkley. These researchers found that the authoritarian personality typically consisted of nine specific character traits: conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception (desire for status quo), superstition and stereotypy, power and ‘toughness,’ destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sexuality (sexual repression).” Although the validity of some of these specific traits have been debated over the years (i.e., they have not all been found to correlate highly with each other), it is now well accepted that authoritarians are generally people “who readily submit to the established authorities in society, attack others in their name, and are highly conventional.” The parallel here with extreme right-wingers in this country should be clear enough. An ironic example of authoritarian “conservatives” can be witnessed in the fans of Glenn Beck (i.e., the Obama is Hitler crowd); these folks represent a perfect example of potential Nazis in training. If cultural and political forces were tweaked in the right way, these are the characters that would jump at the opportunity to be cogs in the machine of any fascist dictator.

Many liberals assume that a lack of intelligence is primarily to blame for the conservative or authoritarian proneness to self-imposed slavery. The question is: what specific aspect of intelligence do they lack? Because there are many different facets of intelligence, there are no doubt plenty of half-retarded conservatives that can nonetheless display any amount of competency within various areas of expertise. Where conservatives do show evidence of mild to severe mental retardation, however, is in their lack of critical thinking skills and inability to tolerate ambiguity (i.e., creative problem solving). In other words, they tend to think in absolutistic, black and white terms. This closed-minded way of approaching the world makes the authoritarian character prone to things like excessive religiosity and/or patriotism. The common denominator for these conservatives is the excessive drive to submit to a grand authority figure. Questions of morals, for example, are either perceived to be absolutely dictated by the laws of men or by an almighty god; in either case, there is always an ultimate authority figure that dictates right from wrong. It is this lack of tolerance for ambiguity and the concomitant lack of self agency that makes many a conservative comparable to a childish thumb-sucker in constant need of a father figure to control their every whim. This, my friends, is real stupidity. And this is conservatism in the good old US of A.

It seems to me that the authoritarian’s inability to tolerate ambiguity (anti-intraception) is the most damaging character trait of all. This marked discomfort with uncertainty is what drives conservatives to cowardly strive for maintaining the status-quo, which to them is comfortable because it seems objective and real. Holding onto the status-quo negates the “need to seek subjective thought or imaginative resolution to problems. The solution is thought to be written somewhere in the policies and rules of the organization; if not the authoritarian can turn to a higher authority such as a superstition or myth. If the solution is not written, it is the job of the authority to decide, not the submissive.” It is this masochistic submission of will prompted by the fear of uncertainty that spawns virtually all of the other traits of the poisonous authoritarian/conservative personality.

The conservative mind’s special proneness to fearing uncertainty is also supported by an abundance of evidence suggesting that conservative ideologies serve to allay fears of death. By submitting their will to authorities, these characters can effectively bypass the experience of being alone in an uncertain and dangerous world. In effect, the drive toward conservatism can be boiled down to representing a defense against these basic existential fears. Of course, these are fears that every one of us grapples with just by virtue of being a fragile human being destined to be devoured by meal worms. Conservatives, however, represent the extreme end of this fear spectrum; they are the most fearful and cowardly among us. A horrendous example of a state ruled by such fear was witnessed in Nazi Germany. If it were not for those of us on the opposite end of the fear spectrum (e.g., progressives) to buffer the power of these cowardly conservative souls, we would all surely be fucked.

Franklin Deleano Roosevelt once said: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” In a sense, this is certainly a wise and true statement, for it is fear that spawns most of the evil perpetrated by our species. But fear itself only wreaks havoc when it is manifested by the human animal, so perhaps progressives should embrace and accept a healthy fear of those authoritarians among us who unknowingly have too much of it. Maybe we should start to get more paranoid à la Glenn Beck and find some charismatic personalities to go around ranting on popular news shows about the scourge of conservatism that is attempting to ruin our fine country. Only instead of pretending to be an academic by writing on a chalkboard and drawing insanely illogical conclusions in order to spread fear, the progressive paranoid could be a real academic that rants about the actual evidence which suggests that conservatives truly are the cancer eating away at our society.

So go out there and be afraid. Be very afraid. (Beck starts 1:00 in.)



Note

In this essay I have taken liberties with the use of generalization. Not all “conservatives” can be said to have authoritarian personalities. In fact, what I would consider real conservatives (e.g., Ron Paul) can often display the polar opposite traits of the authoritarian. The ones I am referring to are mostly those on the more extreme end of the social conservative spectrum (e.g., people who habitually watch Fox News, religious fundamentalists, George W Bush fetishists, etc). Furthermore, the fact that those with authoritarian personalities happen to exist primarily within the conservative and Republican camps in this country is not to say that these types always fall to the “right” of the political spectrum. Historically, authoritarian types have just as easily been swayed by Stalin’s brand of communism, for example. So yes, super “lefty” communists with authoritarian personalities can also be authority-humping assclowns. Again, it is the unique combination of contemporary social and political forces in this country that make these types gravitate towards the Grand Old Party.

~Wolf