Wisdom Without Zealotry - Authoritarians and their Followers

 That didn't happen. 

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did, you deserved it.

I recently read two works by wise folks who are studying authoritarians. The first work I read was the free ebook "The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer. It takes several things I have been posting in my blog, under the Wisdom Without Zealotry heading, and brought it to an elevated clarity on authoritarian followers and leaders, what they believe, why they believe it, and what they are capable of doing. He backs this up by decades of studies and research in the Western world as a University of Manitoba professor. He describes his refinement of the research first done at the University of California as well as his research and growing concern of those whom are authoritarian followers and the authority figures that lead them. 

Authoritarians and their followers are defined by three traits: submissiveness (defer to a societal model they consider legitimate), aggression (hostility towards those whom their leader(s) determines to be the enemy), and conservatism (abidance to traditional rules determined by their society and leaders). Over the decades he has refined his analysis and question bank to measure RWA or Right-Wing Authoritarianism. His book is short and a link is available at the end of the article.

 

An RWA score is high when giving a strongly agree or very strongly agree answer to the following questions within a series of questions given to a group. 

    1.     The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just “loud mouths” showing off their ignorance.

    2.     Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married.

    3.     Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.

    4.     It is always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubt in people’s minds

    5.     The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.

    6.     Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs.

    7.     The “old-fashioned ways” and the “old-fashioned values” still show the best way to live.

    8.     What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.

    9.     God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished.

    10.  There are many radical, immoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action.

    11.  Our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the “rotten apples” who are ruining everything.

    12.  This country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group’s traditional place in society.

 

How many authoritarians have you seen or read about that would score high on these beliefs? The followers who puppet them? Read the opening sequence of statements that authoritarians go through when responding to something bad that they or people under their sway have done. Bob Alemeyer was particularly concerned about the USA in recent decades, which is backed up by studies of more than double the high RWAs than any other G7 country. It was 25.6% prevalence in a 2021 Morning Consult study, to name one.

 

Some associations with high RWAs are that they exhibit illogical thinking, are dogmatic, and have contradictory beliefs which are linked to taking the beliefs from their group rather than thinking things through critically (see my post on “The Righteous Mind” on why people of all kinds adhere to their belief system). 

High RWAs also do not have a significant awareness of world events or general knowledge, are unaware of people who are different from them, are bullies when they have power over others, help cause and inflame intergroup conflicts, seek dominance over others by being competitive and destructive in situations requiring cooperation, and are easily put off by things they consider disgusting. They also believe they have no personal failings, avoid learning about their personal failings, be highly self righteous, and use religion to erase guilt over their acts to maintain their self-righteousness.

This is very odd because the main religion in the Western world is Christianity and last I looked in the New Testament of the bible there was lots about forgiveness and loving of others and leaving the punishment up to God. There was nothing in there about persecuting, isolating, segregating, humiliating, beating, and killing others because you feel your "side" is entitled to do so. The fearful high RWAs have fallen into the trap of zealotry and chauvinism. I say fearful because of the next researcher.

 

Abner Fog, in his 1999 book “Cultural Selection”, and later refined in 2017, determined that high RWAs are only aggressive when there is an environment of fear and conflict. They need that threat to begin responding and follow a rigid hierarchy, with authoritarian leaders, to solve the current crisis. In peaceful and safe times, high RWAs will adhere to a tolerant and egalitarian society. 

So why have I spoken of all this so far? A large part of it is the media machines that are currently out there and that high-RWAs embrace and the fuel they use...fear. Politicians, news, and social media prey on the authoritarian follower's mindset by building on fear/hate of what is different or threats to their social order. It creates echo chambers so that they are in a continuous state of fight or flight, but mostly fight. It is emboldening these authoritarian leaders to say they have a plan and like-minded people had better listen and obey them because (fill in the blank) is a scourge to those same like-minded people. Those authoritarian leaders demand someone does something about it because this scourge is evil and sub-human.

During World War two, the Reserve Police battalion 101 was formed from German people from Hamburg and under control of the SS. Already indoctrinated to obey "rightful authority" of the Nazi party, their first activities were to guard Polish peoples and expel Polish people from their homes for "resettlement actions" around Poznan and Lodz. This was done to make room for German colonists. This escalated to small mass killings, then more mass killings, then large killings like 33,000 Jewish persons at Babi Yar, Ukraine, over two days. Also horrible were the mass killings of persons were at three concentration camps by a group of less than 500 men of this unit over one day to the total of 43,000 people. At the start of these mass killings, there were persons of various ranks who refused to shoot unarmed civilians, and they were removed from the firing lines but enough were left to continue to slaughter. There is a strong need amongst people to belong to a group, to not make waves, that powerfully affect all people to do awful things. This is particularly true of authoritarian leaders, the initial rush of authoritarian followers, and the meek who go with the mob.

In July of 1961, the Milgram experiment was conducted. It involved men aged 20 to 50 of various education and employment backgrounds for the role of teacher and learner. They were told that the teacher was to ask questions to a another study participant, the learner, and if the learner answered wrong, for the teacher to give them an electric shock. Subsequent wrong answers would be responded to by a larger electric shock, from 15 to 450 volts. The participants were also told of the danger zone of voltage for people. Payment would occur for their participation regardless of the outcome of the experiment. The role of teacher and learner was to be determined randomly. The only other person in the evaluating room was a man in a lab coat known as the evaluator. Once the experiment began and the questions answered wrong, the learner would yell in pain louder and louder as the electric charge was given. Towards the upper levels the learner would ask for the shocks to stop. If the teacher refused to administer the shock, the experimenter would declare "Please continue" or "Please go on". Further refusal would have escalating responses of "The experiment requires that you continue", "It is absolutely essential that you continue", and "You have no other choice. You must go on". If the teacher pressed the button to activate 450 volts three times or they refused after the fourth prompt, the experiment would stop. The interesting thing about the experiment was that the learner was not a volunteer but part of the experimenting group, both papers to pick who was the teacher or learner had teacher on both of them, and the device to shock didn't produce voltage.  Disappointingly all teachers gave 300 volt "shocks" or more and 63% went up to 450 volts. before the experiment, and in subsequent experiments, only zero to 3 percent of subjects thought that they would inflict maximum voltage. All participants in the original study stopped at least once during the experiment and would have to be prodded by the experimenter. This shows the power of an authority figure, high RWA or not.

So what can we simple humans do against things and people like I have discussed. Well, in the short term we can:

-Reduce fear because fear induces hate and therefore aggression;

-Reduce self-righteousness and promote costly grace over cheap grace. This encourages continual following of your religion's scripture rather than being one and done after you first step into your religious worship location's door or because, for example, your authoritarian charismatic religious leader tells you that for 10% or more of your paycheck, you will be saved. Being good takes continual effort to make it a habit and should be applied by everyone, religious or not;

-Reduce ethnocentrism by promoting the fact that we are all human beings first, then members of the overall religious framework that is followed, then of the sub-section, then of the sub-denomination, etc. This reduces the us and them mentality;

-Teach people not to trust authorities automatically but be skeptical. Not all authorities are bad but just knowing that they sometimes can limits blind trust;

-Have people read the links at the end but realize that high-RWAs will think it is about people who are not them; and

-Show authoritarian followers that they are being played for fools, which will likely not work because they have invested so much already.

Some long term solutions are tough as there is no special one shot cure. Try thinking about these though:

-Play on the desire for all beings to be normal, even high-RWAs. They do not want to be extreme but they have made their extreme their normal. Since we are all open to like minded people, find common ground and start on that. This will lead into them wanting to belong when they find out that others, whom are not like them, want many of the same things;

-Exposure to visible minorities, because the world is diverse and authoritarians promote fear of the "other". By making the "other" another human being it reduces that fear and encourages doubt in the fear mongering authoritarian;

-Higher education reduces a high RWA score by 15-20%, so it is no surprise that many authoritarians want to cripple or destroy the public school systems;

-Make laws to protect everyone and make it enforceable. The majority of high RWAs will follow laws they do not like;

-Oppose what is not right for everyone. Defiant role models inspire defiant followers and lack of opposition inspires bullies to grab for more power as long as they feel threatened. generally people will not acknowledge something is wrong because they think everyone knows it is wrong. It starts with one voice, one heart, one song;

-Engage in non-violent protest because if it is a violent one, high RWAs will see it as breaking the law and insulate themselves from the goal of the protest. Just look at the skewed angles far-right news organizations and talking heads used when speaking about Black Lives Matter protests, as they focus on the extremely small amount of violent incidents to paint the whole movement;

-Vote. In all levels of government, vote. Do research on the candidates and issues. Talk about them with others. The more people vote, the more accurate and reflective of the populace our representatives are. High RWAs are energized to vote out of fear and in recent years are more represented in government because most others do not feel their vote counts. It does when most of the population votes;

-When child rearing use authoritative not authoritarian methods; and

-Increase civic and debate classes in high schools. We need to better understand the history of laws and what our current laws are now. We also need the ability to converse about topics responsibly and rationally, not emotionally.

Wrapping up, there is a fear I have that democratic institutions are descending into authoritative rule with a thin façade that it is by the will of the people. It is not as it is increasing being made up of fearful and hateful high-RWAs who are being force fed more fear and hate by their leaders. With effort, we can make our institutions reflect the populace it serves and not that of select zealots. 

References and Inspirations

The book Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer

Right Wing Authoritarian Personality

Theory of Regal and Kungic Social Structures and Abner Fog's website on this with a free pdf or XML.