{"id":575835,"date":"2022-03-27T08:55:42","date_gmt":"2022-03-27T08:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=238042"},"modified":"2022-03-27T08:55:42","modified_gmt":"2022-03-27T08:55:42","slug":"re-reading-theodor-adornos-the-authoritarian-personality-in-an-age-of-authoritarianism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/03\/27\/re-reading-theodor-adornos-the-authoritarian-personality-in-an-age-of-authoritarianism\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Reading Theodor Adorno\u2019s The Authoritarian Personality in an Age of Authoritarianism"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_238045\" style=\"width: 690px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-238045\" class=\"wp-image-238045 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/jorgen-haland-QVeRgFErOPs-unsplash-680x453.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"453\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-238045\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@jhaland\">J\u00f8rgen H\u00e5land<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>We live in an era where authoritarians are on the march in Hungary, Russia, Brazil, India, Turkey, the United States, and a disturbingly long list of other countries. Russia\u2019s brutal ongoing invasion of Ukraine demonstrates that many authoritarians won\u2019t stop at their own borders. The authoritarian wave of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s offers us an obvious parallel. In August 2019, Verso released a new edition of The Authoritarian Personality\u00a0(1950), a study conducted after World War II by social psychologists including the noted Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno. The observations about authoritarian psychology that it contains have notable resonances with the present and are worth a second look. Before we get started, it\u2019s important not to make the common mistake of conflating electoral support for authoritarians with authoritarianism as a psychological phenomenon. Not everyone who voted for Trump necessarily has an authoritarian personality; anyone who\u2019s a diehard Trumpist certainly is.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, what commonalities did people with authoritarian personality profiles exhibit in Adorno\u2019s study? They didn\u2019t believe that they personally benefited from a progressive administration like FDR\u2019s. They disliked progressive governments for being too weak \u2013 in the sense of being friendly towards socially disadvantaged groups and in foreign affairs \u2013 even as they simultaneously expressed fear of a strong, overbearing government: in the words of Adorno and his coauthors, \u201cresentment of government interference is fused with the \u2018no pity for the poor\u2019 complex.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"woocommerce\">\n<div class=\"woocommerce-info wc-memberships-restriction-message wc-memberships-message wc-memberships-content-restricted-message\">\n\t\t\t\tTo read this article, log in <a class=\"always-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/my-account\/\">here<\/a> or subscribe <a class=\"always-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/subscribe\/\">here<\/a>.<br \/>\n<br \/>In order to read CP+ articles, your web browser must be set to accept cookies.\t\t    <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\t\t <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2022\/03\/27\/re-reading-theodor-adornos-the-authoritarian-personality-in-an-age-of-authoritarianism\/\">More<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The post <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2022\/03\/27\/re-reading-theodor-adornos-the-authoritarian-personality-in-an-age-of-authoritarianism\/\">Re-Reading Theodor Adorno\u2019s The Authoritarian Personality in an Age of Authoritarianism<\/a> appeared first on <a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/\">CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2022\/03\/27\/re-reading-theodor-adornos-the-authoritarian-personality-in-an-age-of-authoritarianism\/\">CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image by J\u00f8rgen H\u00e5land.<\/p>\n<p>We live in an era where authoritarians are on the march in Hungary, Russia, Brazil, India, Turkey, the United States, and a disturbingly long list of other countries. Russia\u2019s brutal ongoing invasion of Ukraine demonstrates th&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1738,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,229,230],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575835"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1738"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575836,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575835\/revisions\/575836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}