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Please read The Authoritarians if you are still muttering "I just don't get it" about any of this. https://theauthoritarians.org/options-for-getting-the-book/
Take 328 million people.
Minus the 29% not eligible.
Minus the 33% who did not or could not.
Of the population, 25% are "high authoritarians".
Worst case scenario: All authoritarians can/do vote. That's 82 million fascists, leaving only 65 million non-authoritarian voters.
Minus the 29% not eligible.
Minus the 33% who did not or could not.
Of the population, 25% are "high authoritarians".
Worst case scenario: All authoritarians can/do vote. That's 82 million fascists, leaving only 65 million non-authoritarian voters.
The absolute worst case is not our case for many reasons. e.g. Some authoritarians prefer a man with a bushy moustache and a tendency to appear alone in group photos, so they don't vote for blondie. But the USA's voting rules still ensure you can't EVER count authoritarians out.
Some will side with authoritarians without being authoritarian themselves, but this happens because authoritarians only need ~66% saturation to completely divide-and-conquer (i.e. assure you are always talking to authoritarians and never to allies).
That's ignoring accomplices!
That's ignoring accomplices!
At the extreme, this is how cults work. They show a completely pleasant side to bait you far enough in so that they can clamp down and pressure-cook your psyche. Many authoritarian groups have been noted for how cult-like they are, complete with love-bombing.
This means you can peel SOME away... but as long as the authoritarian core persists there will be at least a few who are genuinely committed to seeing things to the bitter end, and even more who will go quiet but still wait for the next strongman. You can't reason with everyone.
And for those you CAN peel off, well... you basically need to pull them fully out of it for a bit, long enough for them to get their footing and relearn to think for themselves. It takes a lot of time and effort. Harrowing Hell is not a weekend diversion.
Altemeyer's high authoritarians though are primarily followers. They gladly will physically enforce obedience to authority but only because they really do believe in submitting to authority. But he also discusses the people who use them to their ends, the social dominators.
The high authoritarians are awful... but in their deference to hierarchy, they can be almost benign, because if you aren't recognized as part of their hierarchy, you're not a factor. But that's only true IF no dominators are around. Authoritarians love to obey social dominators.
If you combine this with "evaporative cooling" where a group that, as it becomes more toxic, pushes out people who were moderating forces, accelerating the decay...
...thaaat's basically where American politics went. Yes, it's always been awful but many things HAVE gotten worse.
...thaaat's basically where American politics went. Yes, it's always been awful but many things HAVE gotten worse.
...This thread is depressing, so let's hear some good news! This means that if a reactionary monster (Altemeyer calls them "double highs"; both high authoritarians and high dominators) is not actively leading them, authoritarians will also defer to more "prosocial" "authorities".
...which leads to more bad news! Actually I already mentioned it. High authoritarians can simply be reactivated by the next monster. They've spent much more time exercising the natural human ability to endure logical and moral contradictions without resolving them.
...Altemeyer speculates that authoritarianism MIGHT be genetic for one paragraph, but I doubt that. What he then says is that it DOES seem to "reproduce" often and that authoritarians are notably hellbent on recreating the authoritarian environment of their own upbringing.
...and I'd note that the behaviors of authoritarians resemble the results of generational abuse. However, while anxious people often worry about "perpetuating the cycle of abuse", usually abuse does NOT perpetuate! It's a weak correlation. So abuse is insufficient as a criteria.
...On its own. Here I engage in pure speculation because I don't know if anyone has done the research enough to say, but if authoritarianism replicates well and abuse does not, but there is a known pattern of abuse that does replicate, and authoritarianism is often abusive...?
I do not say this to inspire sympathy with Those Poor Abused Fascists. I say it because Evangelical Christians are a group Altemeyer notes as being very authoritarian, there are 100 million of them in the USA, and in particular the Quiverfull sect can be mind-numbingly abusive.
To clarify what I mean by "mind-numbingly abusive": You know that time around age 4 where you started frequently remembering things and forming self-aware choices?
Imagine not experiencing that for another 10 entire years because your life is so horrific you can barely think.
Imagine not experiencing that for another 10 entire years because your life is so horrific you can barely think.
If that boggles your imagination, if you cannot conceive of a situation so awful you don't even form an internal narrative but spend a decade in a dissociative haze, acting on pure reflex? ...Good!
But that is how completely alien a life that some high authoritarians have lived.
But that is how completely alien a life that some high authoritarians have lived.
Minds can be radically different while still being human and... that is not always a good thing. Fictional horror movie monsters can be lightweights next to factual human monsters. Many states have loopholes in their child abuse laws or officials who subscribe to similar beliefs.
I have helped someone escape such a family. This part is not speculation. The dehumanization and violence you see in the prison industrial complex ALSO happens in homes, enacted on children, as a way of conditioning them out of thinking. Not just in the Deep South. In California.
If only 25% of the population are authoritarians, then of the 100 million USA Evangelicals, it's unlikely they are all high authoritarians. But "is a white Evangelical" strongly predicts politics in North Carolina, and almost certainly elsewhere. Source: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/04/06/why-trump-is-reliant-on-white-evangelicals/
I'm not saying "is Republican" means "is authoritarian" either, but I will not humor arguments that Republicans have zero issues with blatant authoritarians leading the Party. Remember Steve King (R-Iowa)?
And Evangelical Republicans can be "more Republican than Republicans".
And Evangelical Republicans can be "more Republican than Republicans".
I may seem excessively focused on Evangelicals as the harbor of authoritarianism, but we know only 47% of the USA is voting, we know the average Evangelical's politics, and we know they're overrepresented. They're 17% of the population but 26% of voters. https://www.prri.org/spotlight/the-electoral-time-machine-that-could-elect-trump/
Correction! 26% was 2016.
They're only 23% in 2020, likely due to get-out-the-vote efforts. But they are overwhelmingly delivering their vote rightwards: 80% voted for Trump.
If you combine this with the math from earlier, that is a core of ~28 million. https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-race-and-ethnicity-elections-7433585aae55ea0cadd9ea5f0eb00a62
They're only 23% in 2020, likely due to get-out-the-vote efforts. But they are overwhelmingly delivering their vote rightwards: 80% voted for Trump.
If you combine this with the math from earlier, that is a core of ~28 million. https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-race-and-ethnicity-elections-7433585aae55ea0cadd9ea5f0eb00a62
"Hey, you changed some of these numbers on us, that math doesn't follow (other detail)."
Yeah, I noticed it too. One of the problems with analyzing this group is that they're fairly amorphously defined! But also I have been eliding a distinction for brevity:
Yeah, I noticed it too. One of the problems with analyzing this group is that they're fairly amorphously defined! But also I have been eliding a distinction for brevity:
Non-white and especially Black Christians often will identify as "born-again" but will try to avoid the specific term "evangelical", though they have a similar meaning, but some surveys group the two. Big shocker: Black "evangelical" Christians trend towards voting Democrat.
Nuances in Christianity that may seem unimportant to an increasingly agnostic USA populace cannot be ignored if you want to understand our political situation.
e.g. Trump carried a much lower 60% of Catholic voters in 2016, and only 50% in 2020. Christian, but far less robotic.
e.g. Trump carried a much lower 60% of Catholic voters in 2016, and only 50% in 2020. Christian, but far less robotic.
This is partly because in Evangelicalism, each church leads itself. There is no common culture of accountability, so they fall to the same problems. You get news about abuse in other Christian sects because larger networks can remember and reveal it. e.g. https://apnews.com/article/b768d035ed8443ad97d193a5c36e240c
