A great deal has been written since the Pavkovic family of Operation Save America chose to head into the US Senate gallery last week and attempt to shout down the Hindu Chaplain invited to give the opening invocation. A number of articles, opinions, blogs, editorials and commenters brought sanity, sound reasoning, solid history and morality to the coverage.
While Americans who may not even think much about religion responded intuitively to the event, even some authoritarian religious right para-church groups distanced themselves.
There has been a lot of mocking and dismissal of the family’s behavior and Operation Save America. That dismissal is also intuitive; a public shaming by people who are not authoritarian personalities or who blindly follow authoritarian leadership.
And online discussion was lively. I’ve been thinking a great deal of the utter futility of using reason, fact and logic in discussion with anyone convinced the Pavkovic’s did the right thing. Hauling out Founding Fathers, the 1st or 14th amendment isn’t addressing prejudice, but haul them out they did because prejudice doesn’t cross their mind. I see 3 and 8 peeking out here.
You really can’t talk with or discuss events who someone who exhibits the key traits of an authoritarian personality.
The world authoritarian has been used about Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Tony Blair , John Howard and George W. Bush.
Clarification is in order, the word authoritarian has more than one meaning.
Authoritarian can refer to leaders, it can refer to followers and the definitions are essentially different.
Someone with an authoritarian personality is someone who is looking for orders to follow, they seek out a social structure that narrowly defines all their options, and the comfort of a rigid hierarchy where ambiguity has been eliminated. An authoritarian personality is the person who does what they are told and who helps an authoritarian system function.
An authoritarian leader promotes an authoritarian worldview, the leader is often cynical and manipulative, sometimes he/she a true believer looking to lead with a clear goal of setting up an authoritarian system for those needing to follow orders.
Not many leaders are needed, they are perfectly capable of handling large groups of followers, and these leaders are best served bringing along side intellectual writers who can provide political/philosophical/religious legitimacy and cheer-leading for the leaders, ideologies, followers and kindred groups.
James Waller looks at followers: those with authoritarian personalities and along with social scientists, anthropologists, historians, and psychologists have identified personality traits and behaviors that identify authoritarian personalities.
1) Conventionalism: Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values.
2) Authoritarian Submission: Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the ingroup.
3) Authoritarian Aggression: Tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values.
4) Anti-intraception: Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded.
5) Superstition and Stereotypy: The belief in mystical determinants of the individual’s fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories.
6) Power and Toughness: Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness.
7) Destructiveness and Cynicism: Generalized hostility, vilification of the enemy.
Projectivity: The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.
9) Sex: Exaggerated concern with sexual “goings-on.”
Break this down to our own lives and experience, and it gets interesting.
I attempted to discuss the Senate event with someone online the past few days. I quickly found out known facts about the event were meaningless and unheard, so I switched tracks and attempted to bring introduce number 4. Just as challenging 1, 2 and were a waste of my time, attempting to use and appeal with number 4 became the most frustrating and most personally destructive.
In discussions in authoritarian groups I’ve found anti-intraception is verbal suicide and sanity eroding. Using it for this event merely provoked numbers 6 and 7. It’s a form of self blind torture, fruitless, angering and deeply discouraging. One or two authoritarian personalities can chase away productive,varied men and women from all walks of life willing to enter an authoritarian group discussion with valuable thoughts and ideas to contribute.
I think Joe Carter of The Evangelical Outpost and The Family Research Council fits all criteria. He proudly identifies as religious right, he is a marine, works for a marine leader, and works well with neo-conservative colleagues; there is no reason, incentive, need or ability to think through or concept of deviating from of these criteria.
So does World Magazine Blog. The William Kristol article on George. W. Bush eventually being vindicated by history won high praise from many regular readers. Of course. Any mocking, reasoning, discussion has to be labelled and dismissed, and I think that dismissal falls into category 1 most of all.
Loyalty is worshipped at all cost and against the greater good, although it is certainly seen as being for the greater good. LaShawn Barber and Adrian Warnock fall into most the personality criteria from my personal observations.
I think we all slip into one or more classification from time to time. Most of us don’t stay there. There will always be some who do, and the more they are out in the open, the healthier it is for societies.
Neoconservative members of The Southern Baptist Convention or followers of Canada’s Charles McVety fall most strongly under number 3, 5 and 6 in my estimation, as do a few groups within The Catholic Church.
Political blogs are also a place these criteria can be observed; at some Libblogs, some Blogging Tories some Dippers, Greens and some Progressive Bloggers we see some authoritarian leaders and followers. Over at The Turner Report, there is a discussion of bigotry and hate in Canada, the wilful dissemination of untruth and the inability to acknowledge untruth. Spotting authoritarian personalities in the comment section is not difficult. You’ll also see what academics have discovered. #1 is critical to the rise of bigotry, exclusion and discrimination. You’ll see hints in honest comments.
Professor Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba is a world leader in the study of authoritarians and has put his book, The Authoritarians online. It is readable, understandable and worth your time.
The person I challenged probably slept like a baby during and since our discussion. I have not.
Information in this post comes from James E. Waller: Becoming Evil: Austin Cline and Theodor Adorno and Bob Altemeyer.
What do you do?
How have you learned to deal with authoritarian personalities who enter open pluralistic communities and deliberately or inadvertently wreck havoc?
What public figures or bloggers do you think fit the above criteria?
Let’s see. The first part of #5 would apply to anyone who believes in a hands-on God who is impacting their lives; people who believe in God as the ultimate authority would tend to be “authoritarian.”
#1 would apply to most Christians, since “middle class values” often overlap with traditional Christian morality, at least on sexual issues. There’s quite a bit of materialism that comes with that suburban mindset, but being against “middle class values” tends to lead to a more Bohemian/libertine world view for most folks rather than radical service to God.
Those two seem to have the deck stacked against most evangelicals. However, some of the others have some validity.
Many evangelicals could fall prey to #2 if they don’t hold their leaders accountable. #3 seems to be a popular parlor game in many evangelical circles and #6 has a following with certain macho-oriented evangelicals.
I’d also suggest that you back off on the exchange of urinary products with Joe Carter; some of those I can see your beef with him on, but I’d be hard pressed to pin 4,8 and 9 on him.
By the same token if I posted 10 anti-authoritarian traits, and we’d find ways to fit into them or reject them.
Sociomoral Reflection Objective Measure was developed what, 50 years ago? #1 is a recent addition.
Interesting we want to assign negative moral value, and perceive my observations as accusatory.
When this model was developed it was based on psychoanalytic theory, so the traits were measured as morally deficient. They were measured as driven by external forces, so by the same token anti-authoritarianism was perceived as morally superior because it was measured as internal drive.
Bunk, but certainly not total bunk; people that exhibit and chose these traits for whatever reasons tend to be less tolerant of minorities. (factor age, culture, life experience) Moral development can stagnate, moral reasoning doesn’t need to.
As for Joe, I like the guy, and there is a lot I respect about him.
Perhaps I should make more of an attempt to give him public praise when it’s due.
If he is going to get p****d on, it will be from supposed friends inside the groups that Fotf court, I’ll say what I said the day he signed up with the FRC – keep the resume updated.