Why does he keep on about this book ‘The Authoritarians’? What has it to do with sustainability and resilience? The answers are all there in the book: The personality condition known as Authoritarian Follower (RWA) and their counterparts the Social Dominance Oriented (SDO) leaders are what lead to Hitler’s Germany and many other violent and murderous socio-political systems. It also threatens our planet.
And as the author Prof. Bob Altemeyer explains so well in this book, things appear to be moving that way again over the past couple of decades in America. I would add that it seems to be emerging more generally in the West. Recall that it was both Bush’s and Blair’s authoritarian single-mindedness that prepared and precipitated the Iraq war. People like them are known as ‘double highs’ they are both RWA and SDO and tend to look like sociopaths. But sociopathy is a misreading, if we understand the elements of the RWA/SDO embrace we can more effectively identify how their dynamic works – and we might potentially find ways to counter its highly damaging and disproportionate influence in our world.
Read the book and you will see the authoritarian spectre writ large in or societies and in smaller ways among the people all around you. Understanding the Authoritarian dynamic is to me one of the keys for humanity to survive this century. As Altemeyer’s experiments showed, the RWA/SDO embrace leads to just the kind of geo-political conflict that we see all around us; but when you put low RWA-SDO people in charge of the simulation more intelligent collective decisions are made. I will go so far as to put it in bold: In a century starting with Fear the authoritarian condition can potentially spread like an epidemic. This may already be happening.
My personal interest in the Authoritarian Personality has a lot to do with my green perspective. Green is not really political in the sense that it is about the factual state of the limited physical planet we live on and what we must do in order to find biological equilibrium with our home planet and all the members of our household (ecology = the studying the home). Authoritarians however, have very little interest in such matters. They see environmentalism and ecology as irrelevant, as if somehow we can live without a planet at all. The illogic of that proposition barely registers in their narrow minds. Their SDO leaders are motivated by personal power, and their RWA followers motivated by ethnocentric group cohesion, certainty, aversion to fear, and a might-makes-right stance that simply cannot be reasoned with. They do not understand climate change, they do not understand complex topics like ecology. They as Sheeple only think in terms of the simple truths and lies repeated by their leaders who use a particular set of tools in order to achieve this control dynamic. These tools and the RWA-SDO embrace deserve everyone’s attention.
Read The Authoritarians (free online at http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/) with a foreword by republican Sen. John Dean, and understand why many people you engage with every day think and act as they do; from their comments on world events, to family dynamics, reluctance to think and discuss with any depth, child abuse, the way the media works, and on and on. You will also quickly start to spot the authoritarian style in political and other group leaders – people like your boss (double highs) and their RWA lieutenants. Authoritarians are a minority (about a third of the population) but their aggressiveness, dogmatism, inability to reason, reluctance to look at facts, and blind self-centred single-mindedness has the power to control us all as has so often happened in the past and to push us over the precipice socially (unnecessary wars), economically (wealth imbalances), and ecologically (I risk sounding like an authoritarian by saying this is our ‘biggest problem’ – read the book). I also recommend a version audio book narrated by Bob Altemeyer (Cherry Hill Publishing). This is a highly engaging and accessible performance of his life’s work on Authoritarianism. I listened to it three times in succession, I do highly recommend this version.
Solutions
For my green and social activist friends Prof Altemeyer offers suggestions in dealing with these people who will not be reasoned with or even look at facts: Embrace them and find super-ordinate goals, that is join their group, don’t directly challenge them, let them experience you as a person not an environmental activist and quickly their sense of group-civic responsibility will have you working together on issues which unite you. They can’t be reasoned with, but if you show a little leadership on little things – as Altemeyer illustrates, some basic neighbourhood environmental tasks like garbage clearing – and you will have won them over without proselytising. In time you can become a leader, they respect and will then readily follow those they perceive to be strong people, strong leaders and protectors of their need for certainty. Can you step up to that role of leadership without losing your integrity?
Do not make distinctions between the political left and right, or say green versus capitalist. Conservatism and Progressivism both include authoritarians although there tend to be more of them among conservative thinkers, and more of them among capitalist than green thinkers. Accept that we all have degrees of this trait in us which can easily switch on to become vicious and murderous, understand and accept it in yourself ‘My name is Alastair and I am a potential Nazi’ -a paraphrasing from the book. Bob Altemeyer points out that our society gives us almost no training in resisting obedience to [I would add here ‘illegitimate’] authority. Quite the opposite given the general state of our contemporary education systems.
As Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo discovered , some two thirds of us will give in and commit potentially horrific actions when authority gives us the orders and permissions. Never fall into the trap of believing that you would not be susceptible – Milgram’s experimental participants all thought they could never go as far as to execute someone under orders but the carefully manipulated experiment showed that 62% were prepared to do just that. Learning how to say no and carefully (very carefully) lead others into the No group is a key part of the solution.
People in North Africa have just stood up so bravely and hopefully successfully against authoritarian systems. It can be done, and with greater awareness we could sideline its effects everywhere and develop some kind of truly representative intelligent democracy or better. There has been a diminution in respect for illegitimate authority during the second half of the 20th century, probably connected with the way we have been able to move, communicate aside of authority-hierarchy, and find real education, and this mature approach is increasing. However, if you Google ‘respect for authority’ you will see a strong backlash emerging, the Religious Right (both Christian and Islamic fundamentalists) as analysed in the book is one hot spot of this backlash. After reading Altemeyer’s book you will likely quickly identify that backlash as originating in the minds and groups of RWA’s and their SDO leaders. We need to be fully aware of what drives Authoritarianism and how to emasculate it if we are to make the world a more peaceful, democratic, sustainable home.
With greater awareness of the authoritarian dynamic our world could be led towards taking more effective collective and consensual decisions, away from conflict and partisan self-destructiveness. If anyone would like to join me in developing a taxonomy of the most effective education and training in resisting illegitimate authorities: this a current project of mine, as is the use of George Lackoff’s reframing theory in order to disarm the power that SDO’s have in leading the mass of RWA’s. Please get in touch alastairmcgowan@live.co.uk There is also a Facebook group Authoritarian Watch.
Finally, I would also like to make reference to a related audio book from Cherry Hill Publishing, The Philadelphia Report in which aspects of the RWA-SDO embrace can be seen in a Catholic child abuse abomination. http://www.cherryhillpublishing.com/About%20Philadelphia%20Report.htm
