The Authoritarian Dynamic

Saturday, September 10th, 2016

“Racism” is a shallow term, Jonathan Haidt argues, when it is used as an explanation:

Nationalists in Europe have been objecting to mass immigration for decades, so the gigantic surge of asylum seekers in 2015 was bound to increase their anger and their support for right-wing nationalist parties. Globalists tend to explain these reactions as “racism, pure and simple,” or as the small-minded small-town selfishness of people who don’t want to lose either jobs or benefits to foreigners.

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On closer inspection, racism usually turns out to be deeply bound up with moral concerns.

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People don’t hate others just because they have darker skin or differently shaped noses; they hate people whom they perceive as having values that are incompatible with their own, or who (they believe) engage in behaviors they find abhorrent, or whom they perceive to be a threat to something they hold dear.

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Among the most important guides in this inquiry is the political scientist Karen Stenner. In 2005 Stenner published a book called The Authoritarian Dynamic, an academic work full of graphs, descriptions of regression analyses, and discussions of scholarly disputes over the nature of authoritarianism. (It therefore has not had a wide readership.) Her core finding is that authoritarianism is not a stable personality trait. It is rather a psychological predisposition to become intolerant when the person perceives a certain kind of threat. It’s as though some people have a button on their foreheads, and when the button is pushed, they suddenly become intensely focused on defending their in-group, kicking out foreigners and non-conformists, and stamping out dissent within the group. At those times they are more attracted to strongmen and the use of force. At other times, when they perceive no such threat, they are not unusually intolerant. So the key is to understand what pushes that button.

The answer, Stenner suggests, is what she calls “normative threat,” which basically means a threat to the integrity of the moral order (as they perceive it). It is the perception that “we” are coming apart:

The experience or perception of disobedience to group authorities or authorities unworthy of respect, nonconformity to group norms or norms proving questionable, lack of consensus in group values and beliefs and, in general, diversity and freedom ‘run amok’ should activate the predisposition and increase the manifestation of these characteristic attitudes and behaviors.

So authoritarians are not being selfish. They are not trying to protect their wallets or even their families. They are trying to protect their group or society.

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One of Stenner’s most helpful contributions is her finding that authoritarians are psychologically distinct from “status quo conservatives” who are the more prototypical conservatives — cautious about radical change. Status quo conservatives compose the long and distinguished lineage from Edmund Burke’s prescient reflections and fears about the early years of the French revolution through William F. Buckley’s statement that his conservative magazine National Review would “stand athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’”

Status quo conservatives are not natural allies of authoritarians, who often favor radical change and are willing to take big risks to implement untested policies. This is why so many Republicans — and nearly all conservative intellectuals — oppose Donald Trump; he is simply not a conservative by the test of temperament or values. But status quo conservatives can be drawn into alliance with authoritarians when they perceive that progressives have subverted the country’s traditions and identity so badly that dramatic political actions (such as Brexit, or banning Muslim immigration to the United States) are seen as the only remaining way of yelling “Stop!” Brexit can seem less radical than the prospect of absorption into the “ever closer union” of the EU.

So now we can see why immigration — particularly the recent surge in Muslim immigration from Syria — has caused such powerfully polarized reactions in so many European countries, and even in the United States where the number of Muslim immigrants is low. Muslim Middle Eastern immigrants are seen by nationalists as posing a far greater threat of terrorism than are immigrants from any other region or religion. But Stenner invites us to look past the security threat and examine the normative threat. Islam asks adherents to live in ways that can make assimilation into secular egalitarian Western societies more difficult compared to other groups. (The same can be said for Orthodox Jews, and Stenner’s authoritarian dynamic can help explain why we are seeing a resurgence of right-wing anti-Semitism in the United States.) Muslims don’t just observe different customs in their private lives; they often request and receive accommodations in law and policy from their host countries, particularly in matters related to gender. Some of the most pitched battles of recent decades in France and other European countries have been fought over the veiling and covering of women, and the related need for privacy and gender segregation. For example, some public swimming pools in Sweden now offer times of day when only women are allowed to swim. This runs contrary to strong Swedish values regarding gender equality and non-differentiation.

So whether you are a status quo conservative concerned about rapid change or an authoritarian who is hypersensitive to normative threat, high levels of Muslim immigration into your Western nation are likely to threaten your core moral concerns. But as soon as you speak up to voice those concerns, globalists will scorn you as a racist and a rube. When the globalists — even those who run the center-right parties in your country — come down on you like that, where can you turn? The answer, increasingly, is to the far right-wing nationalist parties in Europe, and to Donald Trump, who just engineered a hostile takeover of the Republican Party in America.

Comments

  1. Slovenian Guest says:

    Xenophobe is much more sinister, because a phobia is an irrational fear of something that poses no actual danger, so the implication is that we are sick, that something is medically wrong with us, by merely having politically incorrect thoughts, like back in the USSR.

    The angry whitey meme plays on the same angle: if you would only calm down and think things through calmly, you would of course be a liberal and support mass migration; hence we can dismiss you outright, if you don’t.

    I guess racism is a type of anxiety disorder, but there are pills for that! It’s like pest control asking if you have arachnophobia, when you call to report finding a million spiders crawling around your home. Sexist, racist, and the likes are all a play on that, serve the same purpose, to dismiss outright.

  2. Candide III says:

    And how is “authoritarian dynamic” better as an explanation? It’s the same trick as with the postwar “authoritarian personality”: declare some traits pathological when they manifest in a particular way but not in another way. I was disappointed when I read that bit about “authoritarian dynamic” and “authoritarians” in Haidt’s essay. He really ought to know better. Don’t liberals, or globalists, or whatever he calls them, have these buttons on their foreheads? Don’t they have a psychological predisposition to become intolerant when they perceive a certain kind of threat? They become intensely focused on defending their in-group, kicking out foreignersout-group and non-conformists, and stamping out dissent within the group. Etc. Mutatis mutandis, you can basically repeat the whole argument.

  3. Candide III says:

    And how is “authoritarian dynamic” better as an explanation? It’s the same trick as with the postwar “authoritarian personality”: declare some traits pathological when they manifest in a particular way but not in another way. I was disappointed when I read that bit about “authoritarian dynamic” and “authoritarians” in Haidt’s essay. He really ought to know better. Don’t liberals, or globalists, or whatever he calls them, have these buttons on their foreheads? Don’t they have a psychological predisposition to become intolerant when they perceive a certain kind of threat? They become intensely focused on defending their in-group, kicking out foreignersout-group and non-conformists, and stamping out dissent within the group, as well or better than any rube or racist. Etc. Mutatis mutandis, you can basically repeat the whole argument.

  4. Coyote says:

    r/K explanations in evolutionary psychology make this subject of in-group and out-group more approachable. Check out Anonymous Conservative.

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