Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Welcome, TA could happen here? I'm Andrew Sage of the
Speaker 2: YouTube channel Andraism, and I'm here with James.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's me and Andrew again.
Speaker 2: Yes, once again. So I recently dropped a video on states,
Speaker 2: or more pointedly, a video that sought to define the
Speaker 2: state and its functions, synthesize its critique by anarchists, and
Speaker 2: basically understand the ways that states fail both society and nature,
Speaker 2: so we can let go of status inevitability and think
Speaker 2: outside of it to realize the freedom and power of
Speaker 2: all the people. Most people aren't anarchists, unfortunately, but I've
Speaker 2: noticed that generally speaking, some folks are more receptive to
Speaker 2: anarchist ideas and others just seem to shut down without
Speaker 2: engaging with it earnestly or meaningfully. You get a mix
Speaker 2: of those reactions in my comments, so overwhelmingly toward the
Speaker 2: receptive side, because I mean, that's the kind of intellectual
Speaker 2: curiosity I tried to attract my space, But the more
Speaker 2: hostile reactions had me thinking about a book that I
Speaker 2: read many years ago, and their video on years after
Speaker 2: that was called The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer. So, once
Speaker 2: taking another look at the ideas in that book, because
Speaker 2: even though Ultimid doesn't land and any truly radical conclusions,
Speaker 2: his scholarship, in my opinion, gets us closer to understanding
Speaker 2: the psychology of both authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders. Also
Speaker 2: Rest in Peace. I found out that he died when
Speaker 2: I was preparing this just this year in February. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that aside. We'll be talking about the former first, and
Speaker 2: that is what's up with authoritarian followers. Let's get into
Speaker 2: it first. We need some context. So in the wake
Speaker 2: of wil Wards, two social scientists sought an explanation for
Speaker 2: the evils perpetuated by the Nazi government during the war.
Speaker 2: Theodore W. A'dno Els, Frankel Brunswick, Daniel Evanson, and Nevit
Speaker 2: Sandford published The Authoritarian Personality in nineteen fifty, proposing a
Speaker 2: personality type for the fascist follower ranked on an F scale.
Speaker 2: They particularly concentrated on prejudice within the psychoanalytic and psychosocial
Speaker 2: frameworks of Freudian and Fromian theories. Their work was highly critiqued,
Speaker 2: but it was also highly influential in laying the groundwork
Speaker 2: forile understanding of authoritarian personalities. In the aftermath of Adorno
Speaker 2: and Company's book, Social scientists will continue to tweak, develop
Speaker 2: and expand our understanding of authoritarian psychology. Most notably, the
Speaker 2: concept will be refined by Bob Altemeyer, a Canadian American
Speaker 2: psychology professor, proposed the right wing authoritarian personality in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty one. After numerous studies, Oltimin presented his findings in
Speaker 2: his free book The Authoritarians in two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: I had to clarify, though right wing here is not
Speaker 2: being used in the context of the political spectrum, which
Speaker 2: is a concept that its own scrutiny. In this context,
Speaker 2: Ultimate uses the word right in the sense of the
Speaker 2: old English writ, an adjective for lawful and proper. Ultimate
Speaker 2: defines authoritarianism as quote, something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders
Speaker 2: cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit
Speaker 2: too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and
Speaker 2: give them too much leeway to do whatever they want,
Speaker 2: which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical, and brutal unquote. I
Speaker 2: find this definition of authoritarianism lacking, but am anarchist, so
Speaker 2: of course I would to me if authority is defined
Speaker 2: as the recognized right above others in a social relationship
Speaker 2: to give commands, make decisions, and enforce obedience. Then I
Speaker 2: would define authoritarianism as a matter of degree to which
Speaker 2: you uphold the principle of authority. I think many people
Speaker 2: are at least authoritarian light because that's the status go unfortunately.
Speaker 2: But more specifically, I think the people we call authoritarians
Speaker 2: are those which are especially invested in the enforcement or
Speaker 2: advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of
Speaker 2: freedom and plurality. So right wing authority and followers or
Speaker 2: r WA's are those which overwhelmingly support the established authorities
Speaker 2: in their society, like government officials, arms of the state,
Speaker 2: and traditional religious leaders. In North America and elsewhere, r
Speaker 2: WA's tend to be or other I should say high
Speaker 2: r was because the RWA thing is a scale, but
Speaker 2: the high r was tend to be political conservatives. However,
Speaker 2: that doesn't mean the authority and personality is exclusive to conservatives,
Speaker 2: not as exclusive to North America, but the scale is
Speaker 2: definitely tailored to a North American and English speaking audience
Speaker 2: lend into its documented issues that translate into other regions.
Speaker 2: But with effort, I could definitely see it being adapted
Speaker 2: to other cultural contexts as well, and as also my argues,
Speaker 2: the concept of the right wing authoritarian could equally apply
Speaker 2: to society with the established authorities claim to be represent
Speaker 2: in the left. So what defines the right wing authorityian personality?
Speaker 2: Psychologically speaking? They feature three primary traits or attitudes. For one,
Speaker 2: a high degree of submission to authorities we perceived to
Speaker 2: be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.
Speaker 2: Two a general aggressiveness directed against various persons that is
Speaker 2: perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities, And three a
Speaker 2: high degree of adherence to the social conventions that are
Speaker 2: perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities.
Speaker 2: These traits are measured with the right Wing Authoritarianism Scale
Speaker 2: or r A scale for short. It's readily accessible online,
Speaker 2: so I'm not going to go through the entire scale
Speaker 2: point by point, but basically includes a mixed series of
Speaker 2: statements that folks can indicate their level of agreement or
Speaker 2: disagreement with statements like our country will be great if
Speaker 2: we on other ways of our forefathers. Do the authorities
Speaker 2: tell us to do? And get rid of the naples
Speaker 2: who are ruining everything, or what our country really needs
Speaker 2: is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil and
Speaker 2: take us back to our true path. And just to
Speaker 2: mix things up. A woman's place should be wherever she
Speaker 2: wants to be. The days when women were submissive to
Speaker 2: their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past.
Speaker 2: As you could imagine, the degree to which you agree
Speaker 2: or discree these statements would place you somewhere along the scale.
Speaker 2: The lowest total possible score and ultimized version of the
Speaker 2: test would be twenty and the highest one hundred and eighty,
Speaker 2: but most people will hit either extreme. A sample of
Speaker 2: one thousand Americans in two thousand and five found that
Speaker 2: the average score was ninety. Technically speaking, high RWAs are
Speaker 2: just people who score higher than the average population, so
Speaker 2: it's really a relative to Also another disclaimer, in the
Speaker 2: context of psychological studies, personality tests can definitely make mistakes
Speaker 2: about individuals, so it's not a diagnostic tool for individuals
Speaker 2: to determine if they'd make a good storm trooper. However,
Speaker 2: the scale can reliably identify levels of authoritarianism in groups. Also,
Speaker 2: keep in mind that stuff like the interpretation of wording
Speaker 2: and fore knowledge of what the test is trying to
Speaker 2: measure can definitely influence results. Still, this tool has been
Speaker 2: used for most of Altemeier's research authoritarianism, so it's good
Speaker 2: to be familiar with it. So now you may be
Speaker 2: wondering how well does the RWA skill's measurement of submission, aggression,
Speaker 2: and conventionalism map onto people's reality. So for submission, higher
Speaker 2: RWs tend to believe that people should submit authority in
Speaker 2: almost all circumstances, So they put a lot of trust
Speaker 2: in the law and the authorities. Maybe not all authorities
Speaker 2: in every single circumstance, but they definitely brought into the
Speaker 2: concept itself. For the types who trusted Nixon during and
Speaker 2: even after the War to Gaate crisis, likely the ones
Speaker 2: in Germany in nineteen forty five who refuse to believe
Speaker 2: that Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust, the type to
Speaker 2: rapidly support anti terrorist initiatives, no matter to how invasive.
Speaker 2: Throughout his research, Altimore found that higheres are far more
Speaker 2: likely to tolerate police burglaries, drug rades without warrants, police
Speaker 2: crackdowns on peaceful protests. Subversion via Ajan's provocateurs and so on.
Speaker 2: As far as they're concerned, Father knows best. Their favorite
Speaker 2: authorities are above the law, But like I said, they
Speaker 2: don't always submit. Their blind support can be trumped by
Speaker 2: other concerns. But most times they're not big fans of
Speaker 2: holding officials accountable for their actions. They really don't care
Speaker 2: if a cop kills someone in broad daylight or someone
Speaker 2: drives through a crowd of protesters on the street. In
Speaker 2: terms of aggression, higher wees aggress when they believe right
Speaker 2: and might on their side. Right meaning their hostility is
Speaker 2: authority approved might meaning they have a physical, tactical, or
Speaker 2: numerical advantage over their target. They don't fight far, and
Speaker 2: just like they go easier on authorities who commit crimes,
Speaker 2: they go easier on anyone who attacks people they're prejudiced against.
Speaker 2: But they definitely don't go easy on the people they hate.
Speaker 2: They seek to sentence criminals to longer terms and average
Speaker 2: And there's some of the loudest supporters of capital punishment.
Speaker 2: And if they hate one group, bet your bottom dollar
Speaker 2: they probably hate other groups too. You could call them
Speaker 2: equal opportunity bigots. Chances are if they hate immigrants or
Speaker 2: trans people, those are not going to be the only
Speaker 2: targets of their ire. Their prejudice has more to do
Speaker 2: with their own personality and their targets actual attributes. Still,
Speaker 2: they don't always aggress when they think the proper authorities approve,
Speaker 2: just like they don't always submit. They are always more
Speaker 2: factors that play in any given situation, including a fair
Speaker 2: of counter aggression or consequences that may hold their hostilities.
Speaker 2: Regarding conventionalism, higher was believe that everyone should live by
Speaker 2: the norms that their authorities have decreed. Multiculturalism, plurality, diversity,
Speaker 2: those things clash with what they consider correct and what
Speaker 2: they consider wrong. They usually get their ideas from fundamentalists religions,
Speaker 2: so you'll find that higher WA's are strong advocates for
Speaker 2: the traditional family structure, with patriarchal husbands, submissive wives, and
Speaker 2: obedient children. They're also far more likely to support their
Speaker 2: governments patriotic version of various historical narratives. Most interestingly, their
Speaker 2: conventionalism even influences their response to the high RW test itself.
Speaker 2: If they were totally average response for a statement on
Speaker 2: the test, they were far more likely to adjust their
Speaker 2: answers to the mean than most When asked what they
Speaker 2: would like their own RWA score to be. Low, rbs
Speaker 2: said they would like to be low. RWs middle or
Speaker 2: W said they'd like to be low w's, but higher
Speaker 2: ws said they want to be middles, not lows or highs.
Speaker 2: Why because they tend to rank being normal very highly
Speaker 2: in values tests. Also, just because they were to be
Speaker 2: normal does means they don't want to be richer or
Speaker 2: smarter than others not doesn't mean they're necessarily going to
Speaker 2: drop their prejudices. They may get tugged slightly, like with
Speaker 2: the somewhat decrease in prejudice against gay people after the
Speaker 2: legalization of gay marriage. But their normal is often a
Speaker 2: measure of what's normal in their in group. So if
Speaker 2: it's still normal in their in group to be violently homophobic,
Speaker 2: more than likely they will still be violently homophobic.
Speaker 1: The conformity is the value rather than specific bigotry or
Speaker 1: what have you. Yeah, talking of conformity, Andrew, we have
Speaker 1: to conform to the needs of sponsors of this show
Speaker 1: right now, and we're back.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, Alse my husband lightly critiqued for rendering r W
Speaker 2: as the dominant psychological account of authoritarianism. Of course, it
Speaker 2: makes sense that our has been the focus, considering the
Speaker 2: study of authoritarian personality was born out of post World
Speaker 2: War two study of fascists. Right wing authoritarians often fever
Speaker 2: established absolutist forms of government and weaponize that presently dominates
Speaker 2: in hierarchy to facilitate said absolutism. But there are authoritarians
Speaker 2: who also fever absolutist forms of government with slight differences
Speaker 2: believe n that the presently dominates in hierarchy should be
Speaker 2: overthrown and replaced with their own. These have potentially been
Speaker 2: called left wing authoritarians, even though the right and right
Speaker 2: wing authoritarians didn't have anything to do with the political spectrum.
Speaker 2: Let's keep pushing. In chapter nine of The Authoritarian Inspector,
Speaker 2: Altemaier conceptualizes left wing authoritarianism or LWA, as also composed
Speaker 2: of submission, aggression, and conventionalism, So essentially LWA is a
Speaker 2: subcategory of RWAs. He's also quick to point out not
Speaker 2: all leftists are lws, but as he describes them, l
Speaker 2: ws are revolutionaries who one submit to movement leaders who
Speaker 2: must be obeyed aka submission. Two have enemies who must
Speaker 2: be ruined from capitalists to counter revolutionaries aka aggression, and
Speaker 2: three have rules and party discipline that must be followed
Speaker 2: aka conventionalism. In essence, authoritarianism is psychological r ways support
Speaker 2: the established authorities elders oppose them in favor of their own,
Speaker 2: but the underlying dispositional core is still authoritarianism. But the
Speaker 2: focus is on ar debas in general. Here concerning these
Speaker 2: trade submission, aggression, conventionalism, it's clear that people with right
Speaker 2: wing authoritarian and personalities are rather dangerous. They find it
Speaker 2: easier to bully, harass, punish, mame, torture, eliminate, and exterminate
Speaker 2: their victims than most people do. They're more willing to
Speaker 2: join mobs and militias, more likely to blame victims for
Speaker 2: their misfortune, and more likely to condemn common criminals to
Speaker 2: long brutal sentences in jail. They seem to have a
Speaker 2: lot of hostility boiling away inside them that their authorities
Speaker 2: can easily unleash. So we have to ask what causes this?
Speaker 2: Why are they like this? According to Albert Bandura's social
Speaker 2: learning theory of aggression, aggression occurs after two conditions are met. Firstly,
Speaker 2: some feelings like anger or envy meet us to a hostility. Secondly,
Speaker 2: inhibitions or contextual restraints against release in that hostility would
Speaker 2: have to be overcome. Only then can the aggression erupt
Speaker 2: and flow. So let's discuss the instigator and releaser of
Speaker 2: authoritarian aggression. High days are highly motivated by fear like
Speaker 2: they have an extra dose of fair response in their
Speaker 2: genes more than most people. They probably learn to be
Speaker 2: fearful from their parents about all kinds of things you know, radicals, atheists, kidnappers,
Speaker 2: queer people, et cetera, et cetera. They grew up in
Speaker 2: a scarier world than modes, which is probably why they
Speaker 2: tend to score so highly on the Dangerous World scale.
Speaker 2: That scale, like previous scales, provides statements and measures levels
Speaker 2: of agreement or disagreement with stuff like quote. If our
Speaker 2: society keeps degenerating the way it has been lately, it's
Speaker 2: liable to collapse like a rotten dog, and everything will
Speaker 2: be chaos and quote any d now, chaos and anarchy
Speaker 2: could erupt around us. All the signs are pointing to it,
Speaker 2: and code everything to them is a sign of the times.
Speaker 2: A perversion corrupt in society in peaceful times and in
Speaker 2: generally dangerous ones. Hired luys feel threatened. But what releases
Speaker 2: that aggressive impulse to act? Also, I have found, more
Speaker 2: than anything else self righteousness. Of course, almost everyone thinks
Speaker 2: they're a bit more moral than average, but higher luys
Speaker 2: they tend to think they're the holy ones, the chosen,
Speaker 2: the righteous. That empowers them to isolate, segregate, humiliate, persecute, harass,
Speaker 2: beat and kill. That self righteousness, combine with their high
Speaker 2: scores on the dangerous world scale, is what empowers their prejudice,
Speaker 2: their heavy handedness, their means spiritedness, and their eagerness to
Speaker 2: crusade against the other. So how do high ars become
Speaker 2: high ws? Are they born that way? Possibly? Do their
Speaker 2: parents make them that way? Somewhat but not completely? See
Speaker 2: no one's a complete cobon copy of their parents. It's
Speaker 2: what determines a person's position on the art of wa experience.
Speaker 2: Our life experiences teach us lessons that our parents and
Speaker 2: payers may not. Our experiences with authorities shape or perception
Speaker 2: of authority. Especially when someone hits adolescence, they tend to
Speaker 2: chafe against authority, even if they submitted to authority as children.
Speaker 2: Those hormonal urges, desires for astronomy and new experiences could
Speaker 2: shake up their early lessons completely. Experiences could either end
Speaker 2: up reinforcing their authorities teachings or contradicting them entirely. Naturally,
Speaker 2: it's easier for kids from authoritarian homes to remain authoritarian
Speaker 2: and vice versa, but ultimately experiences do most of the shape.
Speaker 2: Middle r was have some mix of experiences and upbringing
Speaker 2: that keeps them in the middle. When it comes to
Speaker 2: Higher was, their experiences were probably very controlled. Authoritarian followers
Speaker 2: usually live in a homogeneous bubble of patriotic traditional people,
Speaker 2: an echo chamber apart from the evils of the world,
Speaker 2: safely kept on a short leash for most of their lives.
Speaker 2: But there's hope yet. Otomi's research has shown that higher
Speaker 2: was can change if they have some life experiences. That's
Speaker 2: why university can be such a game change of people.
Speaker 2: It's just meeting new people, leaving that small, enclosed world
Speaker 2: and developing relationships with people of different walks of life,
Speaker 2: and that makes a big difference. There are a couple
Speaker 2: of traits that make Higher Ways such good followers for
Speaker 2: would be dictators. In short, those traits are illogical thinking,
Speaker 2: highly compartmentalized, minds, double standards, hypocrisy, a lack of self awareness, ethnocentrism,
Speaker 2: dogmatism in long will consider syllogism. All fish live in
Speaker 2: the sea, sharks live in the sea. Therefore sharks are fish.
Speaker 2: Logically speaking, the conclusion doesn't follow. Even if sharks are fish,
Speaker 2: and they are the premises don't support the conclusion. But
Speaker 2: if higher w were asked if the reasoning was correct,
Speaker 2: they were more likely than most to say that it was.
Speaker 2: When asked why, they'd answer because sharks are fish, in essence,
Speaker 2: because they agreed with the conclusion they assumed for reasoning
Speaker 2: was right. That simple test shows that if authority and
Speaker 2: followers like the conclusion, the logic involved is fairly irrelevant.
Speaker 2: Reasoning is what should justify the conclusion, but as far
Speaker 2: as they're concerned, the conclusion validates the reasoning. Of course,
Speaker 2: let me not overstate a lot of people have trouble
Speaker 2: with logistic reasoning. Higher was just happened to be slightly
Speaker 2: more likely to make such mistakes, But higher WA's generally
Speaker 2: have more trouble than most people do realize in a
Speaker 2: conclusion as false. They have a harder time determine whether
Speaker 2: empirical evidence proves or doesn't prove something. They more easily
Speaker 2: fill gaps in science with supernatural forces, and they have
Speaker 2: trouble being critical of anything unless they already gotten their
Speaker 2: talking points from their authorities. Regarding the highly compartmentalized minds,
Speaker 2: I mean, we all have some inconsistencies not thinking, but
Speaker 2: their minds as be like oil and water. One second
Speaker 2: they say in free speech, next they say in ban
Speaker 2: critical race theory. One moment they're talking about individual freedom,
Speaker 2: and next their basically throat in the boots of the state.
Speaker 2: They don't merge files in their brain to really see
Speaker 2: what fits. They centily just pick up whatever their demogogues
Speaker 2: are saying. And if your mind is such a massive contradiction,
Speaker 2: so you're going to end up with a lot of
Speaker 2: double standards easily justify for whatever idea you hold, it's
Speaker 2: most convenient in the moment. Principles are really irrelevant. Keep
Speaker 2: in mind the excuses they make for those in power
Speaker 2: and how hard they are in victims. Classic example is
Speaker 2: the difference between how they treat a prisoner who beats
Speaker 2: up another prisoner versus a police officer who beats up
Speaker 2: a prisoner. The d de B is usually don't have
Speaker 2: such stark double standards hypocrisy. I'm going to keep using
Speaker 2: this example because you know it's still somewhat topical critical
Speaker 2: race theory. As much as authoritarians accuse the left of
Speaker 2: being anti free speech politically correct types, RBA is a
Speaker 2: far more likely to report a desire to censor ideas
Speaker 2: they don't like. This is also because they tend to
Speaker 2: lack basic self awareness. If presented with a list of
Speaker 2: things right between, authoritarians are likely to do like be
Speaker 2: prejudiced to conform us, et cetera, and then ask how
Speaker 2: true it is of themselves compared to most other people.
Speaker 2: They really have no idea how different they actually are,
Speaker 2: and that's partially because of the bubble they tend to
Speaker 2: exist in. Us versus them is a very hard line
Speaker 2: in the sand for authoritarians. Humans as a whole do
Speaker 2: have a tendency sometimes to fall into tribal patterns of thinking,
Speaker 2: but authoritarians see the world far more sharply in terms
Speaker 2: of their in groups and our groups. And most we
Speaker 2: do tend to associate with people who agree with us
Speaker 2: in many issues, but authoritarians really do stick to their
Speaker 2: bubble and ethnocentric reinforcement. That's why they don't realize how presudiced,
Speaker 2: or aggressive or submissive they are to compare to most people.
Speaker 2: By avoiding challenges to their beliefs and holding faster their authorities,
Speaker 2: they remain stuck in a circular logic of I'm right
Speaker 2: because the people I agree with say I'm right. Finally,
Speaker 2: in terms of dogmatism, higher was holds a unchangeable, unjustified certainty,
Speaker 2: righteousness beyond a shadow of a doubt. They're more likely
Speaker 2: than most people to agree with statements like the things
Speaker 2: I believe in are so completely true, I could never
Speaker 2: doubt them, and there are no discoveries or facts that
Speaker 2: could possibly make me change my mind about the things
Speaker 2: that matter most in life. I am absolutely certain that
Speaker 2: ideas about the fundamental issues in life are correct. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: they're more likely than most people to disagree with statements
Speaker 2: like it's best to be open to all possibilities and
Speaker 2: ready to re evaluate all your beliefs. And flexibility is
Speaker 2: a real virtual and thinking since you may very well
Speaker 2: be wrong when you receive or absorb rather than contemplate
Speaker 2: your beliefs, you have no basis upon which SHO determine
Speaker 2: whether or not they're true. So you avoid challenges by
Speaker 2: staying in the bubble as much as possible. When that
Speaker 2: can't be avoided, threaton out whatever talking points you got
Speaker 2: from wherever, and if that dialogue tree fails, you can
Speaker 2: always fall back in your group's assurance that you are right. Now,
Speaker 2: you could challenge your beliefs, or you could insist you're
Speaker 2: right and retreat. What option do you think higher was tend.
Speaker 1: To choose, Yeah, the double down exactly.
Speaker 2: Dogmatism is by far the best fallback defense, but it's
Speaker 2: also the most blatant, that giveaway that the person doesn't
Speaker 2: know why they believe what they believe. Alas hired was,
Speaker 2: are only one side of the authoritarian coin, then nothing
Speaker 2: without their leaders. So next time we'll be talking about
Speaker 2: those leaders, those social dominators. Until then, all power to
Speaker 2: all the people peace.
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