The Authoritarians MUST READ!! online book

[Cassandra]

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

So you say you want to know why those right wingers are so scared, so willing to be led around by the nose, so violent, so impervious to reason? This man will explain it to you in a way that is very easy to read and understand. This professor provided John Dean with a lot of his material for his recent book and has now written his own and is publishing it online so that it is more available to the general public than a social science book would ordinarily be.
It's not about the ideology, it's about a psychological need! Really.

[SpiralHawk]

1. Kick - have started reading. Very interesting.

But this is a reading project. Will have to come back to it later with more time...

So far it seems very worthwhile.

I wish it were possible to copy and paste from the pdf files, so that I could post a juicy snippet or two here in this thread....

Thanks, Cassie...

[raccoon]

7. It is possible to copy and paste from the pdf files.

--in the pdf toolbar, click the button that looks like a capital "I" with a black triangle beside it (the Select tool)l

--Click and drag over the text you want to copy.

--Right-click the mouse and click "Copy" or "Copy to clipboard" (whichever it says)

--Go into your Reply, right-click and click "Paste."

(I had to remove line breaks to make it more readable.)




"Chronically frightened authoritarian followers, looking for someone to attack because fighting is one of the things people do when they are afraid, are particularly likely to do so when they can find a moral justification for their hostility. Despite all the things in scriptures about loving others, forgiving others, leaving punishment to God, and so on, authoritarian followers feel empowered to isolate and segregate, to humiliate, to persecute, to beat, and to kill in the middle of the night, because in their heads they can almost hear the loudspeakers announcing, “Now batting for God’s team, his designated hitter, (their name).” "

[SpiralHawk]

11. Cool. Thanks for the pdf lesson, raccoon !

eom

[Cassandra]

19. I think it's really sweet when someone calls me Cassie...

considering my name isn't Cassandra, just my life experience. ;-)

[Sir Jeffrey]

2. Thank you for finding this...

reading instead of working this morning. K & R

[Cassandra]

3. I tripped over the link on Ornicus...

which is always looking to explain eliminationist behavior. I was so riveted, I went through the available chapters in two days, including downloading Adobe Reader 8 on dial-up. The discussions about the global simulations and the way the participants behaved are just fascinating. The discussion makes clear, however, that there will always be some 25-30% of the population that is fearful and needs black and white thinking because they are too uncomfortable any other way. They are not like this because of their ideology; they seek out an ideology that makes them comfortable because it's the only way they can deal with the world. This is manageable when they are not dominating politics but when they are, we get the demagoguery and incompetence that we've seen. Trying to convince them of facts does not work with the most hardcore among them.

[atommom]

4. K&R. It's good reading.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Bookmarked to read at leisure. Thanks.

[Extend a Hand]

6. thx for the link

reading now :)

[Jonathan50]

8. Here's a snippet from chapter four

2. Fundamentalism and Right-Wing Authoritarianis
The first thing you need to know about religious fundamentalists, in case you
haven't inferred it already, is that they usually score very highly on the RWA scale.
10, 11 A solid majority of them are authoritarian followers. The two traits,
authoritarianism and fundamentalism, go together so well that nearly everything I
have said about high RWAs in the previous chapters also applies to high Religious
Fundamentalists.

Since authoritarianism can produce fundamentalism if one grows up
submissively in a religiously conservative family, and (conversely), fundamentalism
can promote authoritarianism with its emphases on submission to religious authority,
dislike of out-groups, sticking to the straight and narrow, and so on, one immediately
wonders which is the chicken and which is the egg.

The evidence indicates authoritarianism is more basic. The RWA scale
correlates better than the Religious Fundamentalism scale does with acceptance of
government injustices, hostility toward homosexuals, willingness to persecute
whomever the government targets, and most other things. (The big exception naturally
comes when one raises distinctly religious issues.) So the problem's not so much that
some people are fundamentalists, but that fundamentalists so definitely tend to be
authoritarian followers. But as I just said, religious fundamentalism does promote
authoritarianism in some ways. And you can certainly see the influence of right-wing
authoritarianism in many things that religious fundamentalists do.

3. Fundamentalism as a Template for Prejudice
Let me ask you a personal question: Who are you? What makes up your
identity? How would you describe yourself?

You would probably list your gender fairly quickly, your age, your nationality,
marital status and your job--unless you are a student, in which case you'd say you're
poor and going deeply into debt. Would you mention a religious affiliation? You
almost certainly would if you are a high fundamentalist. Furthermore, except for
converts, this has probably been true of fundamentalists for all of their lives. They
report that their parents placed a lot of emphasis on their religious identification as
they were growing up. For example, "You are a Baptist," or "We belong to the
Assembly of God." It would have become one of the main ways they thought of
themselves. By comparison, they say their gender and race were stressed much less.

What's the effect of emphasizing the family's religious affiliation to a child?
Well, by creating this category of what the family is, you instantly create the category
of people who are not that, who are different. You're laying down an in-group versus
out-group distinction. Even if you never say a nasty word about other religions, the
enormous human tendency to think in ethnocentric terms will create a preference for
"people like me." Throw in some gratuitous nasty words about Jews, Muslims,
Methodists, atheists, and so on, and you've likely sown the seeds of religious
prejudice in a four-year old. Perhaps more importantly in the long run, you've given
your child early training in the wonderful world of "Us versus Them"--training that
may make it easier for him to acquire racial, sexual, and ethnic prejudices later on.12

There can be little doubt that, as adults, Christian fundamentalists harbor a
pointed dislike of other religions. Here are some items from my Religious
Ethnocentrism scale that fundamentalists tend to agree with.
Our country should always be a Christian country, and other beliefs should be ignored in our public institutions.
Nonchristian religions have a lot of weird beliefs and pagan ways that Christians should avoid having any contact with.
All people may be entitled to their own religious beliefs, but I don't want to associate with people whose views are quite different from my own.
At the same time, fundamentalists tend to disagree with:
If there is a heaven, good people will go to it no matter what religion they belong to, if any.
You can trust members of all religions equally; no one religion produces better people than any other does.
People who belong to different religions are probably just as nice and moral as those who belong to mine.

[Jonathan50]

9. Another snippet from chapter four

Yep, it's Us versus Them. Religious prejudice does not draw as much attention
or produce as much hatred in North America as it does in (say) the Middle East and
southern Asia, but it's still dynamite looking for a place to explode because it's so
often accompanied by the self-righteousness that releases aggression. And it runs deep
in Christian fundamentalists because religion is so important to them.

News that they score relatively highly on racial prejudice scales often stuns
white fundamentalists. They will usually reply, "You must be mistaken. We're not
prejudiced. Why, we accept black people in our church." And indeed, if you ask a
white fundamentalist if he'd rather spend an evening with a black member of his
church or a white atheist, he will almost certainly choose the former.

But fundamentalists still hold more racial prejudices than most people--a fact
known to social scientists for over fifty years. White churches were open to just white
folks for generations in America, and many pastors found justification in the Bible for
both slavery and the segregation that followed the demise of slavery. Vestiges of this
remain in fundamentalist religions. Bill McCartney, the founder of the evangelical
men's movement called Promise Keepers, tells the story of what happened on a
nation-wide speaking tour when he finished up his stock speech with a call for racial
reconciliation:

"There was no response--nothing...In city after city, in church after church, it
was the same story--wild enthusiasm while I was being introduced, followed by a
morgue-like chill as I stepped away from the microphone." 13

Ironically, most fundamentalists say they believe in "the brotherhood of all
mankind." "We are all God's children." "Jesus loves you"--whoever you are. It says
so in their mental boxes. But they still like best, by a long shot, the people who are
most exactly like themselves. Where did this crushing rejection of others come from?
Its earliest roots appear buried in the person's religious training.

[Cassandra]

20. This is good, too

"When the authorities say, "Go get 'em," the high RWAs saddle up.
Who can 'em be? Nearly everybody, it turns out. I started with a proposition to
outlaw Communists and found authoritarian followers would be relatively likely to
join that posse. Ditto for persecuting homosexuals, and ditto for religious cults,
"radicals" and journalists the government did not like. So I tried to organize a posse
that liberals would join, to go after the Ku Klux Klan. But high RWAs crowded out
everyone else for that job too. Then I offered as targets the very right-wing Canadian
Social Credit Party, the Confederation of Regions Party, and the mainstream
Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. These were the parties of choice for most
authoritarian followers at the time, yet high RWAs proved more willing to persecute
even the movements they liked than did others.
Finally, just to take this to its ludicrous extreme, I asked for reactions to a "law
to eliminate right-wing authoritarians." (I told the subjects that right-wing
authoritarians are people who are so submissive to authority, so aggressive in the
name of authority, and so conventional that they may pose a threat to democratic rule.)
RWA scale scores did not connect as solidly with joining this posse as they had in the
other cases. Surely some of the high RWAs realized that if they supported this law,
they were being the very people whom the law would persecute, and the posse should
therefore put itself in jail. But not all of them realized this, for authoritarian followers
still favored, more than others did, a law to persecute themselves. You can almost hear
the circuits clanking shut in their brains: "If the government says these people are
dangerous, then they've got to be stopped.""

or this about the simulation:
"The High RWA Game
The next night 68 high RWAs showed up for their ride, just as ignorant of how
they had been funneled into this run of the experiment as the low RWA students had
been the night before. The game proceeded as usual. Background material was read,
Elites (all males) nominated themselves, and the Elites were briefed. Then the
"wedgies" started. As soon as the game began, the Elite from the Middle East
announced the price of oil had just doubled. A little later the former Soviet Union
(known as the Confederation of Independent States in 1994) bought a lot of armies
and invaded North America. The latter had insufficient conventional forces to defend
itself, and so retaliated with nuclear weapons. A nuclear holocaust ensued which
killed everyone on earth--7.4 billion people--and almost all other forms of life which
had the misfortune of co-habitating the same planet as a species with nukes.
When this happens in the Global Change Game, the facilitators turn out all the
lights and explain what a nuclear war would produce. Then the players are given a
second chance to determine the future, turning back the clock to two years before the
hounds of war were loosed. The former Soviet Union however rebuilt its armies and
invaded China this time, killing 400 million people. The Middle East Elite then called
for a "United Nations" meeting to discuss handling future crises, but no agreements
were reached.
At this point the ozone-layer crisis occurred but--perhaps because of the recent
failure of the United Nations meeting--no one called for a summit. Only Europe took
steps to reduce its harmful gas emissions, so the crisis got worse. Poverty was
spreading unchecked in the underdeveloped regions, which could not control their
population growth. Instead of dealing with the social and economic problems "back
home," Elites began jockeying among themselves for power and protection, forming
military alliances to confront other budding alliances. Threats raced around the room
and the Confederation of Independent States warned it was ready to start another
nuclear war. Partly because their Elites had used their meager resources to buy into
alliances, Africa and Asia were on the point of collapse. An Elite called for a United
Nations meeting to deal with the crises--take your pick--and nobody came.
By the time forty years had passed the world was divided into armed camps
threatening each other with another nuclear destruction. One billion, seven hundred
thousand people had died of starvation and disease. Throw in the 400 million who
died in the Soviet-China war and casualties reached 2.1 billion. Throw in the 7.4
billion who died in the nuclear holocaust, and the high RWAs managed to kill 9.5
billion people in their world--although we, like some battlefield news releases, are
counting some of the corpses twice.
The authoritarian world ended in disaster for many reasons. One was likely the
character of their Elites, who put more than twice as much money in their own pockets
as the low RWA Elites had. (The Middle East Elite ended up the World’s Richest
Man; part of his wealth came from money he had conned from Third World Elites as
payment for joining his alliance.) But more importantly, the high RWAs proved
incredibly ethnocentric. There they were, in a big room full of people just like
themselves, and they all turned their backs on each other and paid attention only to
their own group. They too were all reading from the same page, but writ large on their
page was, "Care About Your Own; We Are NOT All In This Together.""

Even shown that their aggression produces no winning, they just can't look beyond their immediate fears.

[Jonathan50]

10. Get freeware pdf to text converter here

This is what I'm using to convert pdf to text..

http://www.tucows.com/preview/402625

[Cassandra]

26. For some reason I was able to copy and paste...

using Adobe reader 8 with no other program. Some of the punctuation needed to be tweaked but it worked. :shrug:

[Hamlette]

12. kick

[Tansy_Gold]

13. This looks very interesting. There was another long article

written two or three years ago about psychological profiles of political conservatives. I don't remember if I got it off the internet(s) or as a hand-out in school. I'll see if I can find it later on and post the details. . . .

Ah, I found it quickly, hard copy anyway --
"Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition" by John T Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski, and Frank J. Sulloway.
and google provided me with www.wam.umd.edu/~hannahk/bulletin.pdf

[meldroc]

14. K&R! This should be MANDATORY reading for anyone here.

The Authoritarians has much of the source material that John Dean used in Conservatives Without Conscience. This book goes into the Right Wing Authoritarian and Social Domination Orientation personality types in more detail, and explains much more why people who are both Right Wing Authoritarian and Social Domination Oriented (the "Double-Highs") are such scary, destructive people.

Conservatives Without Conscience and The Authoritarians both explain very well why I will NEVER, EVER vote Republican ever again. The Double-Highs like Cheney, Delay, Frist, etc. are literally fascists. No exaggeration, no hyperbole. They are profoundly evil men. These guys want nothing less than the destruction of our democracy, so they can steal all the power, and all the wealth for themselves, and will become at least as bad as Hitler and Stalin if we let them. And this book explains why roughly 30% of the population will gleefully drink their Kool-Aid and fight for them, and even kill for them. We must struggle with every fiber of our being to force these sons-of-bitches out of the halls of power, and make sure they can never, ever return.

I'm looking forward to reading the final chapter next week.

[Cassandra]

15. I had the thought some years ago...

that Cheney was thoroughly amoral and I appeared to be right. It was very interesting to see the discussion of religion on the cheap and the other discussion that old-line Communists in the Soviet Union were that society's "rightwingers".
The later simulation with just the authoritarian followers participating showed how unimaginative and whimpering they can be without leaders. Hardly any independent thought at all.

[hfojvt]

16. mandatory?

That sounds kinda authoritarian.
Are there left wing authoritarian types?
And why is it 30%? That seems kinda high for fundies.

Perhaps beyond religion and ideology is the fact that our society is all authoritarian. Teachers are authoritarian over students, and principals over teachers. Parents are (or can be) authoritarian over children. Almost all the adults a kid encounters from daycare workers to nurses to librarians, etc. is going to be authoritarian. "Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?" When they learn about government from the media, senators and representatives and Presidents will be called 'leaders' (which is 'fuehrer' auf Deutsch) instead of 'public servants'. Work, of course, is arranged that way too, especially if one works for the military (or sees it on TV) or the police. There are officers and bosses and they are in charge.

[Cassandra]

17. It's not just fundies.

Some people get their follower satisfaction from being a low level corporate drone or in other highly structured environments where independent thinking is not required or even valued. It's not all about religion; I was just mentioning the percentage since we do seem to have that many true believers (in Bush, the GOP, the RW) in our population right now and there doesn't seem to be any way to reach them.

[meldroc]

18. OK, let me revise my percentage.

I just googled, and found this transcript from Countdown with Keith Olbermann where John Dean is being interviewed about Conservatives Without Conscience. Dean said that about 23% of the U.S. population are Right Wing Authoritarians.

That's still disturbing in my book. Walk down the street and count people. One out of every four or five people has that Kool-Aid drinking, fascist mentality. I used to believe that only a very few crazy people would believe that way, but it's actually very common.

Oh, and as far as this being mandatory reading... Well, it's mandatory if you want to know what you're talking about. ;)

[RaleighNCDUer]

21. kick

to read when I get home

[PerfectSage]

22. k & r

I had a hard time getting through the 22 questions without LMAO at the absurdity of them. LMAO still.

[Jonathan50]

23. A snippet from the introduction

The second reason I can offer for reading what follows is that it is not
chock full of opinions, but experimental evidence. Liberals have stereotypes
about conservatives, and conservatives have stereotypes about liberals.
Moderates have stereotypes about both. Anyone who has watched, or been a
liberal arguing with a conservative (or vice versa) knows that personal opinion
and rhetoric can be had a penny a pound. But the arguing never seems to get
anywhere. Whereas if you set up a fair and square experiment in which people
can act nobly, fairly, and with integrity, and you find that most of one group
does, and most of another group does not, that's a fact, not an opinion. And if
you keep finding the same thing experiment after experiment, and other people
do too, then that=s a body of facts that demands attention. Some people, we
have seen to our dismay, don't care a hoot what scientific investigation reveals.
But most people do. If the data were fairly gathered and we let them do the
talking, we should be on a higher plane than the current,

[Morgana LaFey]

24. Wow

Yeah, I think I must read this.

[me b zola]

25. k&r

:thumbsup:

[seabeyond]

27. people not confident making their own choices, or trusting others

to be able to make their own choices. need list of rules to walk life. i personally find that pathetic....

[Cassandra]

28. It is pathetic but it's not exactly a choice they've made.

It's part hard-wiring and part decisions they made about the world in early childhood. With help some can climb out of the hole they've dug for themselves, but not all can or will shft their thinking.

[seabeyond]

29. i do believe it is part of character. i have two boys....

my hubby family extreme in the authoritarian, my side in rebellious. one child inherited hubby side, one child inherited my side.....

we have addressed this for a decade now. both extreme, bringing both to balance and valuing the other, appreciating the good of it, yet understanding the flaw of extremism and the repercussion. a continue discussion on this. just this morning on the way to school, boys and i went over it all thru examples of their behavior in the car. not about dissing or being disresptful... but the funny in it, .... it is the authoritarian that automatically is disrespectful, just because of who they are to the other. i tell him, you will never see me in battle because of what you do, ... the only time i become aggressive or argue, (in battle) is when another is telling me who i am....