This diary originally was a comment in a conversation about Egberto Willies post about Trevor Noah’s interview with Tomi Lahren, which I’ve expanded upon.
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Theodore Adorno’s research on Authoritarian Personality seems remarkably dead on today, with sixty million Americans voting for Trump, as it did over six decades ago. See if this sounds like any conservative politician or voter you’ve know your whole life:
a. Conventionalism. Rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values.
b. Authoritarian submission. Submissive, uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the ingroup.
c. Authoritarian aggression. Tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values.
d. Anti-intraception. Opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender- minded.
e. Superstition and stereotypy. The belief in mystical determinants of the individual's fate; the disposition to think in rigid categories.
f. Power and "toughness." Preoccupation with the dominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-follower dimension; identification with power figures; overemphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness.
g. Destructiveness and cynicism. Generalized hostility, vilification of the human.
h. Projectivity. The disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world; the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses.
i. Sex. Exaggerated concern with sexual "goings-on."
These variables were thought of as going together to form a single syndrome, a more or less enduring structure in the person that renders him receptive to antidemocratic propaganda.
These are not psychological features that are amenable to patient listening and reasoned discourse— in fact, patient listening and reasoned discourse are precisely the sort of displays that a conservative proto-fascist will respond to with disgust and hostility— (see items d., f. and g., above).
Try to understand them, reason with them, and you will be met with either dismissive contempt, or violent hate.
These are sixty million of your fellow citizens, and they don’t think any of us, not one person who calls themselves a progressive-- especially those who are not white heterosexual Christian males --deserve any place in society, are entitled to political representation, or equal protection of the law.
Believing otherwise, no matter how much you may want to, will get a lot of us imprisoned and killed. Because that was already happening before Trump’s election:
… regardless of whites’ “sincere fictions,”5 racial considerations shade almost everything in America. Blacks and dark-skinned racial minorities lag well behind whites in virtually every area of social life; they are about three times more likely to be poor than whites, earn about 40 percent less than whites, and have about an eighth of the net worth that whites have.6 They also receive an inferior education compared to whites, even when they attend integrated institutions.7 In terms of housing, black-owned units comparable to white-owned ones are valued at 35 percent less.8 Blacks and Latinos also have less access to the entire housing market because whites, through a variety of exclusionary practices by white realtors and homeowners, have been successful in effectively limiting their entrance into many neighborhoods.9 Blacks receive impolite treatment in stores, in restaurants, and in a host of other commercial transactions.10 Researchers have also documented that blacks pay more for goods such as cars and houses than do whites.11 Finally, blacks and dark-skinned Latinos are the targets of racial profiling by the police, which, combined with the highly racialized criminal court system, guarantees their overrepresentation among those arrested, prosecuted, incarcerated, and if charged for a capital crime, executed.12 Racial profiling on the highways has become such a prevalent phenomenon that a term has emerged to describe it: driving while black.13 In short, blacks and most minorities are “at the bottom of the well.”14 How is it possible to have this tremendous degree of racial inequality in a country where most whites claim that race is no longer relevant? (pp. 1-3, emphasis added)
For more on the use of ‘legal means’ to attack political opponents and suppress opposition, see here, here, here and here.
This isn’t something that ‘might happen’. This is something that has been happening for decades, and is now set loose without constraint.
