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America’s Authoritarian Slide

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorBill Jones
Published date01 March 2022
Date01 March 2022
DOI10.1177/20419058221091637
34 POLITICAL INSIGHT • APRIL 2022
America’s
Authoritarian Slide
From QAnon to the ‘Big Lie’, US politics has bec ome increasingly
unmoored from reality. Bill Jones traces this growing authoritarianism
– and asks if the US could be on the verge of a second civ il war.
T
he Authoritarian Personality
,
a 1000-page study written by
German social theorist Theodore
Adorno and his colleagues,
first appeared in 1950. The tome was
immediately hugely influential – and highly
controversial as social scientists argued
over its methodology. Adorno et al’s aim
was to explain the reasons why Nazism
had emerged in Europe, culminating in
the tragedy of six million Jews killed in the
genocidal Holocaust. Based on extensive
social surveying in the US, the authors
concluded that there exists a personality
type particularly receptive to fascism:
those most drawn to authoritarianism
believe that people will lie, cheat and steal
if they possibly can; strong leadership is
consequently required to maintain order;
simple answers solve social problems;
and conventional ideas are superior to
those which challenge them. The US, it
transpired, contained a large number of
such personality types, suggesting the US
itself could be vulnerable to a lurch into
fascism.
© PACIFIC PRESS / Alamy Stock Photo
Political Insight April 2022 BU.indd 34Political Insight April 2022 BU.indd 34 01/03/2022 10:2801/03/2022 10:28

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