Thursday, October 06, 2005
(11:45 AM) | John Emerson:
The Authoritarian Personality and the Just World
A fascistic streak of violent anger lies very close to the surface in one faction of the contemporary right wing, and is openly expressed on many of the most popular winger blogs. This faction often seems more interested in venting than in details of policy or political results of any kind. The citations and links below give some insight into the origins of this kind of politics.The Just World
"Zick Rubin of Harvard University and Letitia Anne Peplau of UCLA have conducted surveys to examine the characteristics of people with strong beliefs in a just world. They found that people who have a strong tendency to believe in a just world also tend to be more religious, more authoritarian, more conservative, more likely to admire political leaders and existing social institutions, and more likely to have negative attitudes toward underprivileged groups. To a lesser but still significant degree, the believers in a just world tend to 'feel less of a need to engage in activities to change society or to alleviate plight of social victims.'
Link; via Respectful of Otters
The Authoritarian Personality
"In the June 19, 2005, issue of The New York Times Magazine, the journalist Russell Shorto interviewed activists against gay marriage and concluded that they were motivated not by a defense of traditional marriage, but by hatred of homosexuality itself. 'Their passion,' Shorto wrote, 'comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: It seeks to spread itself.' It is not difficult to conclude where those people would have stood on the F scale.
Not all opponents of gay marriage, of course, are incipient fascists; the left, to its discredit, frequently dismisses the views of conservative opponents on, for example, abortion, church-state separation, or feminism as irrational bigotry, when the conclusions of most people who hold such views stem from deeply held, and morally reasoned, religious convictions. At the same time, many of the prominent politicians successful in today's conservative political environment adhere to a distinct style of politics that the authors of The Authoritarian Personality anticipated. Public figures, in fact, make good subjects for the kinds of analysis upon which the book relied; visible, talkative, passionate, they reveal their personalities to us, allowing us to evaluate them."
(Link; via A&L Daily)
An example, with a Democratic response. (No, I do not think that these two posts are on the same level, and no, it's not special pleading when I say that.)
"Do Democrats want a Civil War? (Blogs for Bush)
Hunter responds on the Daily Kos
