Why some people are ok with authoritarianism

cross-posted from: lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17079522

To keep it short the reason why some people are ok with authoritarianism is because most structures that we deal with on a daily basis are authoritarian.

Here is evidence that shows a significant amount of people are ok with authoritarianism:

pewresearch.org/…/sr_24-02-28_authoritarianism_1/

This should be concerning.

And the thing is that it makes sense once you look at what are the most common systems that people interact with the most.

A clear example would be the Boss-Worker relationship. The boss creates a set of objectives/tasks for the worker and the worker sees them out. Rarely does the worker get the chance to set the higher level direction of what they are supposed to be doing with their time leaving them obedient to the boss and their demands.

Another example would be some Parent-Child relationships. Some parents treat their children as people that should show absolute respect towards them just because they are the parents not because they have something that is of value to the child (experience).

Even in the places where we do make democratic decisions those are usually made in ways that are supposed to be supplemental to authoritative decision making. An example would be how we don’t vote on decisions but instead how we vote on others to make decisions for us.

Once you add up all the experiences that someone has throughout their whole life you will see that most of them come into direct contact with authoritarian systems which means it makes that kind of way of thinking familiar and therefore acceptable.

Unlike democracy which is an abstract concept and something we only really experience from time to time.

If we want people to actually stop thinking authoritarianism is ok then we as a society are gonna have to stop using these kinds of systems / ways of thinking in our daily lives.

RobotToaster,
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

One overlooked reason was highlighted by the Milgram experiments. Authority doesn’t just command, it takes away the responsibility for needing to think about, and live with, the morality of ones actions. The authority can claim to be acting for a higher authority (god, the state, the corporation), and for it to absolve you of your crimes all you have to do is follow orders.

Even if that sin is murder, as long as you follow orders the authority promises to save you from damnation, or at least prison. Sometimes those orders are an old fashioned crusade, sometimes it’s fitting substandard aircraft parts.

frog,

For the vast majority of people currently saying they support authoritarianism, particularly in western countries, it’s not because of parent-child relationships or boss-worker relationships or the fact that we elect representatives to make decisions rather than have a referendum on every decision (which is unworkable in countries of millions of people). It’s purely because the democratic system in their country isn’t working for them.

There was some polling in the UK last year, where a bunch of people were asked about their preferred form of government, and the demographic that had the strongest support for “a strong leader that makes decisions without parliament or courts getting in the way” were the 18-30 age bracket. And it’s not because this group inherently think that having some authority figure telling everyone what to do is a good thing, because they’re of the age when they should be more independent, not less. But they know the democratic system isn’t working, because there are decisions that need to be made on jobs, housing, childcare, healthcare, public transport, climate change, etc, and those decisions aren’t being made. So when people answer a question about whether they want a “strong leader”, they’re not really saying they want authoritarianism (and everything that goes with it). They’re saying “the decisions that need to be made aren’t being made, so we need stronger leaders”.

“Supporting authoritarianism” isn’t really support for the horrors of authoritarianism for the majority. It’s a symptom of economic inequality and politicians who have been captured by vested interests. I note that in the research you linked to, one of the individual comments from respondents was listed:

They need to listen to the working class and the poorer classes. They should not think about profit first and instead focus more on homeless people and the veterans. We should use the money we pay in taxes for the NHS and emergency services and do more for families – affordable resources for child care, more affordable housing…

An authoritarian leader isn’t going to listen to the working class, or do any of the things that person said they wanted (which are all things a lot of people in the UK want). The relationships you described, boss-worker and some parent-child relationships, are not known for the authority figure listening to the subordinate one. The kind of people supporting authoritarianism right now aren’t looking at their boss, who refuses to listen to them about the problems the workplace, employees, and customers are facing, and thinking “yeah, we need more of this”. They’re not looking back fondly at the childhood where their parents refused to listen to them, and just ordered them around.

The only thing they’re thinking is that the economic system they live in is rigged against them, and politicians have stopped listening. They think (incorrectly, in my view) that if the leader of the country was strong enough, they could make the right decisions without being influenced by hedge fund managers and fossil fuel executives and all the other people with economic motivation to prevent those decisions being made. I think if the surveys used a followup question of “is a strong leader who doesn’t listen to the working class, and just uses their power to benefit themselves and their friends, a good way to run a country?” (which is the reality of what authoritarianism is), support for authoritarianism would drop like a stone.

Danterious, (edited )

You are bringing up many good points.

I agree that if decisions that benefited the public were being made under our current system then less people would be in favor of “strong leaders”.

I also agree that people don’t look at the authoritative systems in their lives in a good light most of the time.

The thing is that you don’t have to like a system to be able to accept it. Just having repeated exposure makes you more willing to go along with stuff you might usually be opposed to.

Secondly as the saying goes “with great power comes great responsibility” and right now we are concentrating power in the hands of these leaders so people believe that it is up to these individuals to fix our problems for us because they are responsible for us (which include them making the right decisions).

Edit: specifically they believe that as individuals they don’t have the power to affect the world therefore they are putting the responsibility in the hands of the people that do have that power which is the only way they have been taught they can affect the world.

Danterious,

As an extra tidbit the link I put in the post shows that the USA and Australia are the only place where people who are centrist are more likely to accept authoritarianism than both left and right leaning voters.

Make of that what you will.

politicalcustard,

I will always recommend the classics…

  • Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm
  • The Authoritarian Personality, Theodor Adorno

I read Escape from Freedom 20 years ago when I was trying to understand the Holocaust and then again a few years ago when it was clear we were seeing another rise in fascism and authoritarianism. Thanks for the link, I will read it later, I’ve only just got up and on my first cup of tea… 😅

Danterious,

I just noticed you are new to Lemmy. Welcome 😊.

Edit: Also I haven’t read those before so I’ll check them out thx.

politicalcustard,

Thank you. 🤗

Maeve,

Thanks for that. I just searched and found the Fromm book. Commenting so I can find this and read Adorno, later.

t3rmit3, (edited )

It’s interesting in these comments to see some people who are conflating leadership with authority. Leadership is about directing an effort. Authority is not inherently about directing anything, it’s simply a claim to power over something. It is often used to direct efforts, often badly.

A king can sit on a throne and do nothing, and their claim to authority (e.g. ‘Divine Right’) is not diminished, whereas a project manager who does not actually manage anything will be, by project manager standards, a failure. Of course, many leaders are granted authority, but it is usually contingent on them fulfilling their role as a leader, which is very different than an Authoritarian leader, where this is no one else they must answer to.

A team can select a team lead for a project to direct efforts, without needing to create the kind of structures of authority that exist in a large corporate setting, and this happens every day.

Someone in another comment mentioned watching a 9-person group at a university fail to make progress on a project because they lack a leader, and then suggested that authority was in fact what was missing… but no university group project members actually have authority over each other. The successful groups select a leader, not an authority figure. The group leader they select cannot fail the members, or kick them out of the group, or do anything else without the agreement of the other members or involving the professor (who actually has authority), and yet every day groups of students complete projects just fine, sans authority.

I highly recommend this piece from The Anarchist Library for a decently in-depth discussion of Authority (the piece is a critique of Engel’s “On Authority”, and dives into authority and hierarchy and the necessities of them for organization of social systems.

Authoritarianism is a fundamentally immature mindset. Every child thinks they could do things best, and should be in charge, and could fix it all if they had absolute power. But don’t take my word for it, Trump himself- the ultimate man-baby- has stated a couple times that he wants to be “dictator for a day” because he’d be able to achieve the stuff he keeps promising if he just had the sole authority to force everyone to do so:

I said I want to be a dictator for one day. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill.

But as we grow up, we (hopefully) come to understand that mutual agreement/ co-operation is the best way to achieve difficult outcomes. Authority is always based on a threat of some kind, and it inherently creates an antagonistic relationship, which is why most people think of a “good boss” as one that “leads”, like a coach, and a “bad boss” as one who “orders”, like a dictator. Good leaders build consensus, because consensus is how goals are most effectively achieved, and while authority can impose a false consensus under duress (e.g. the threat of job loss), it can’t make you want to achieve a goal.

Danterious, (edited )

I just want to say that I agree with the sentiment and want to point out that a leader is (at least from the way you framed it) just a conduit for the beliefs and goals of the group.

That’s why if the leader doesn’t align enough with what the group believes then over time they eventually get ignored and attentions shifts over to someone else that better represents the groups beliefs.

I believe that that is one way of organizing a group however I also think that we have the technology to circumvent even the need for leadership since the benefit of a leader comes from them being an outward expression of the group’s values that everyone can coordinate with, which can be replaced with specific communication technologies.

Nemo,

There’s one huge problem with your critique: You are conflating heirarchy with authoritarianism. The structures you described above are all heirarchies, but are not always, and should not be, authoritarian.

I think your insights are cogent; but you need to separate out the two concepts to get to the heart of the discussion.

I’ve saved this post and will come back to it when I have get off work; thanks for starting an interesting conversation.

Danterious, (edited )

Thanks for your response. Also I sort of didn’t separate the idea of hierarchy and authoritarianism on purpose because I think it is more about the structure of how decisions get made that is important.

If in most cases an individual isn’t making certain decisions and instead those decisions are being handled by others then people aren’t going to have the capacity to make those kinds of decisions themselves.

And with the kinds of hierarchy that we see in our daily lives are stifling our ability to make the decisions that would also be removed under an authoritarian political system.

So it’s more about making it more familiar rather than the actual systems that we have now being completely authoritarian already.

Nemo,

There’s a reason for that: Making decisions is exhausting. Contemporary adults in our very individualist society often complain of decision fatigue, and whole books have been written about the invisibility of cognitive labor.

Now I’m not saying the cute for that is authoritarianism, or even heirarchy in general. It’s perfectly possible to divide up decision-making, cognitive labor, in an egalitarian manner, and whole books have been written about that, too.

But we as humans are just not equipped to make all the decisions about our own lives. We can do any of them, probably, but not the whole set. Whether we receive them from our superiors (parents telling kids what’s for dinner) or delegate them to our subordinates (restaurant patrons telling the waitress “surprise me”) or share them with a partner or partners (housemates taking turns planning meals), we need to spread it around or we burn out.

abbadon420,

The boss/worker relationship is not (supposed to be) authoritarian. In a big company the “boss” works on a different level. The worker works on an operational level, “doing the work”. The boss works on a strategical level, “setting the course”.

The boss determines the best course for the company, managers determine the best implementations, operational workers put it into practice. (Strategical/tactical/operational)

These layers are there for a reason, because it works. You don’t want a boss messing with opertional issues. Operational workers are experts who know best, the boss is not the expert and would make it worse. The boss has good insight into all current issues in the company across all departments and knows which company needs are most important right now. That way you won’t get a wild west situation where eveyone does whatever they think or like best and people end up not working towards the common goal.

That’s how it’s meant to work. Of course there are bad bosses and bad people and there is a matter of economical unfairness. The relationship is not inherently authoritarian.

Danterious,

To set something straight when I use the term “authoritarian” I’m using it in the more broad sense to talk about obeying an authority which would then include the boss-worker relationship.

Secondly I never said that the system doesn’t work, have any benefit, or would be better off if there wasn’t a boss (even though I do believe the last one) but I am saying that using that kind of system to run a business plants the seeds that make people ok with living in an authoritarian world.

Also thats the same argument with how people say that living under a benevolent dictator would be more efficient than democracy.

I mean yeah maybe (I’d even say it’s debatable) but that’s not a kind of system that we want.

abbadon420,

Than how would you like to see the boss/worker relatioship?

It is simply impossible to coordinate a hunderd employees into the same direction without some kind of management.

Try building an apartment complex with a 100 individual, self-employed contractors. It will be chaos. The dry wall guy will be doing his work before the electrician has pulled ll the wires throigh the wall.

There has to be a foreman to coordinate it all. But if that’s authoritarian, than how would you solve a big project like that?

Danterious,

I could argue with you on this for sometime but I’m not going to because that isn’t the point I’m making here.

To repeat myself

I am saying that using that kind of system to run a business plants the seeds that make people ok with living in an authoritarian world.

You aren’t actually refuting my point. You are just saying that it is impossible to not have an authority.

abbadon420, (edited )

No I am refuting your point. You imply that every form of authority is bad. I say it isn’t. If it wasn’t for authority and coordination, humanity would still be living in the stone age.

Since not every form of authority is bad, not every authority relationship makes people okay to live in an authoritarian world.

A good company has checks and balances. A union or some kind of employee committee, should be able to influence strategic level decisions. An authoritarian regime does not.

A authoritrian regime is bad, authority in a company is not. People can see the difference. Current political tendencies to the right are not a call for an authoritarian regime, but rather has cause in socio-economical dissatisfaction.

(Also, It’s a nice discussion. Better than most on discussions Lemmy)

millie,

Nothing about the division of labor into planning and operation requires any form of authority over the worker outside of the workplace. And yet, it’s common for employers to exert control over things like when they work (regardless of the work’s time sensitivity), whether a medical professional’s opinion is adequate to merit accommodations, and the amount of created labor value that’s extracted from the worker versus what they’re paid.

That all, to me, seems quieter inherently authoritarian. It rests on the premise that the planning folks need to be able to control the working folks’ lives, and that they deserve a much greater cut of the profits for their trouble.

To me it seems that such a system that props up authority as absolutely necessary, justified, and desirable can reasonably be labeled as authoritarian. I’d argue that it’s also necessarily exploitative in such a case, but that’s neither here nor there.

What is relevant though is that simply saying ‘it’s not always like that’ while decrying every example as not representative doesn’t really get us far. Whether authoritarianism is ‘good’ sometimes is immaterial to whether it trains people to be ready to accept tin pot strong man dictators and politicians who emulate them.

High fructose corn syrup can taste just fine and be ‘good’ in some recipes, but if it’s also giving us all diabetes it’s probably better to stop using it. Likewise, let’s not ignore roads that lead to fascism. I’d really rather not have to flee the country or die in a concentration camp.

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