The Inverse Authoritarian Personality

I recently wrote a post stating that I ordered the book, Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the Left. Well, it finally came and I have spent some interesting hours reading about studies done with Jewish and Christian leftist radicals in the 1970's and 80's. Please bear the age of these studies in mind when I talk about some of the information I gleaned from the book. Yes, this is old stuff but I think in discussing some of the traits of radicals on the left, much of it still holds true. I do not believe these traits are necessarily pathological--but they are descriptive in helping to understand those who follow extreme left-leaning thought.

The book discusses the classic authoritarian who adopts conservative ideas to defend himself against his underlying conflicts and insecurity--of course the authoritarian personality was first formulated by scholars who were quintessential outsiders: "leftist, internationalist, deracinated Jewish academics who were refugees from resurgent German nationalism, political reaction and virulent anti-Semitism." To read more about the authoritarian personality, read Theodor Adorno's work on the topic--it is beyond the scope of this post.

The authors of the book, Stanley Rothman & S. Robert Lichter spend chapters discussing how the same conflicts that underlie the authoritarian can be turned inside out. "The traditional authoritarian deflects his hidden hostilities onto outsiders and outgroups. The inverse (my italics) authoritarian unleashes his anger directly against the powers that be while taking the side of the world's 'victims' and 'outcasts.'" The authors ask an important question about the inverse authoritarian: "Was it not possible that the 'liberated generation' was bound to potentially dangerous unconscious personality dynamics no less than its forebears?"

The authors set about to study the new left in the 1970's with a variety of psychological tests and clinical interviews. I am certainly simplifying their work for the sake of space, but they found through testing that the inverse authoritarian rejects social authority out of hand and aligns himself with militant opponents of the established order. "These identifications give moral legitimacy to his desire to act out aggressive impulses by preaching or practicing 'revolutionary' confrontation and violence. Thus he identifies potency with force and militancy, projecting fantasized power and vitality onto society's outcasts and outsiders. At the same time, he scorns his own bourgeois intellectual background as impotent, a projection of the weakness he fears in himself."

Without going into too much detail, here are a few other things they found. Conservatives--particularly Jewish Conservatives--were found to be lowest on the need to feel powerful, followed by liberals but the need to feel powerful rose sharply among the New Left radical group--it was especially high in the Jewish radicals. Jewish conservatives, liberals, and radicals were all more affiliative (defined as a concern to establish, maintain and restore positive emotional relationships) than their non-Jewish counterparts.

What I carried away from the book is that there is no difference in the rigidity between fighting against outsiders or outgroups and fighting against the establishment---both are a form of rebellion that is based not on what is right, but on how one chooses to rebel. Basing politics and policy on how they fullfill our need for power, affiliation or hostility cannot be the best way of deciding what is right for our country.

Update: And, sometimes, being angry and stupid is not enough.