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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI just found "The Authoritarian Personality" online
here is the link http://www.ajcarchives.org/main.php?GroupingId=6490
This book was written in the 1950's in response to the anti-semitism of the Hitler regime and deals with, among other things, how authoritarians require a minority group to demonize and persecute as part of keeping their mental equilibrium. I thought I would share the link in hope it might shed some light on Trump cheerleaders.
mikelewis
(4,079 posts)Least racist... most physically fit... smartest... handsomest... coolest... ... ... ...
it can be generalized, authoritarians don't require semitic minorities, ANY ethnic or religious minority will do, as we have already seen
Zambero
(8,954 posts)Sort of like being "a little pregnant"!
starshine00
(531 posts)it focuses on the subject not the object, it paints an accurate profile.
And it can be applied to him but I was more thinking of his followers and their prejudices. My opinion is that male authoritarians in particular are so tormented as children that literally ALL they have to value about themselves is their own haplotype, their inherited y chromosome. You can see this in prisons where people group themselves according to race specifically.
Wounded Bear
(58,436 posts)Last edited Fri Feb 17, 2017, 12:53 PM - Edit history (1)
The leaders and the followers. When they pair up to seize power, the rest of us normies are basically screwed.
starshine00
(531 posts)she was a Swiss psychoanalyst who studied the causes of authoritarianism and concluded it was severe child abuse. The abrahamic religions, the more orthodox and hardline, are great at creating authoritarianism because of their love of severe child abuse ('spare the rod spoil the child'). Authoritarianism is essentially when the person disowns their own internal point of reference (which most authoritarians have had beaten and/or tormented out of them) and aligns with the point of view of an external authority. Most authoritarians do this in childhood on threat of death or great physical harm (interestingly George Orwell did a fantastic job of documenting the whole process of tormenting a person into authoritarianism in 1984 via the torture of his protagonist by the gov't.) Miller's book "For Your Own Good" made an extensive study of German child rearing methods in the time prior to the rise of the Third Reich and she makes a convincing argument that people tolerated Hitler because they were already so compartmentalized to violence anyway through childhood discipline. Part of the development of authoritarianism also is casting the negative aspects of oneself onto a minority in an effort to release the pathological anger that results from severe abuse, hence the need for anti-semitism or other bigotry toward minorities that Trumps followers have been so receptive to. If Miller is right then whether or not we are screwed depends on what percentage of society is this brain-damaged. I think we are at a point in time where that percentage is significantly less than in the first half of the twentieth century when the abrahamics had a much greater hold on society and corporal punishment of children was much more accepted.
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)I had forgotten about it being available for free. Thanks for reminding me.
starshine00
(531 posts)I will check it out. I don't think Trump is an authoritarian, he's a narcissist for sure but his most ardent followers certainly are.
hedda_foil
(16,368 posts)But his shtick only works on the worst instincts of his authoritarian followers, and those instincts have been sharpened to a fine point by many years of exposure to Fox and Limbaugh
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starshine00
(531 posts)and it is paying off, it reminds me of several books I've read that talked about how you can still find people in Russia with framed pictures of Stalin on their walls like he's God or something.
He's definitely a wanna be who is willing to posture this way to make money. For him it is ultimately about business.