What is Authoritarianism?

In the introduction to Bob Altemeyer’s book, The Authoritarians (available as PDF or ePub, for free), he starts a brief discussion of what authoritarianism is, as follows:

“Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves.”

Authoritarianism is a kind of folie à deux (French: madness for two), but instead of a one-to-one relationship, it is a one-to-many relationship, and rather than an induced psychosis it’s more like mass hypnosis, one where the inducer relies upon the recipients to be psychological authoritarians. In the above quote, however, Altemeyer is talking more about authoritarianism in the political sense rather than the psychological.

One problem with the use of the word authoritarianism in the political media, is that it fails to take into account the gulf of difference between what an authoritarian leader is and what an authoritarian follower is (more from Bob on that later, but see also Tim Snyder’s term sadopopulism). All too often authoritarian is used interchangeably with autocratic. However, while all authoritarian regimes are autocratic, so are some monarchies (the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or Tsarist Russia). Similarly, fascist and authoritarian are often used interchangeably. Wikipedia discusses the difference as follows:

“Fascist leaders often maintain a cult of personality and seek to generate enthusiasm for the regime by rallying massive crowds. This contrasts with authoritarian governments, which also centralize power and suppress dissent, but want their subjects to remain passive and demobilized.”

 

There is an overlap, of course, and we are witnessing a fascist/authoritarian overlap right now. A cult of personality, with a subset of the electorate continuing to be enthusiastic followers. Those followers, especially those recently released from prison, can, with a show of force, keep the rest of the “subjects… passive and demobilized.” Indeed, it is usually the followers that engage in brutality. Often because they think it’s what the leader wants.

 

Many higher-ups in the Nazi party and the various arms of the SS encouraged their underlings to use their initiative to further the cause. This has benefits for the regime. Firstly, untethered from consequence, underlings try out new approaches to the well-understood goals of the regime, and this can lead to novel solutions to the problems the regime faces. Secondly, even if the actions taken are not conducive to the goals of the regime in and of themselves, they have the benefit of keeping the populace unsure as to what to expect from the regime, making it harder to muster the personal courage, let alone one’s neighbours, to fight back; and villagers with pitchforks and a sense of decency are no match for the Gestapo, armed with a collection of Mausers and Walthers, much less a Waffen-SS detachment armed with MG 42s.

The German MG 42
(image from Warfare History Network)

 

The psychological Authoritarian is the authoritarian follower. As Bob Altemeyer points out:

“We know an awful lot about authoritarian followers. … We have a pretty good idea of who they are, where they come from, and what makes them tick … we know little about authoritarian leaders because we only recently started studying them. That may seem strange, but how hard is it to figure out why someone would like to have massive amounts of power?”

It is the authoritarian follower we’ll be discussing over the coming weeks and months, as I dive into The Authoritarians again. In the next post I’ll look at Bob’s definition of what an authoritarian is, from a psychological point of view, as opposed to the merely political definition discussed above.