points by 082349872349872 5 years ago

a book on authoritarian followers, which (at least when I'd read it pre-2016[1]) had some surprising-to-me suggestions for deradicalisation: https://theauthoritarians.org (pp. 240-245, by numbering, not by pdf page)

Bonus fable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frogs_Who_Desired_a_King

[1] in its current incarnation, it, like much of the world, may have become obssessed with a particular authoritarian leader. I hope not. Pages 240-245 seem to be as I remembered. See https://theauthoritarians.org if you wish to see how it's currently positioned.

scottlocklin 5 years ago

I read the bits you listed, then had to scan back to figure out what "RWA" means. Correct me if I am wrong, but this book seems to have recycled the ridiculous Theodore Adorno/Frankfurt school nonsense pathologizing Christian Western civilization. The entire idea that people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses, rather than the defective WEIRD[0] emotional pattern that literally only appears in some fraction of highly educated Westerners seems .... a bit questionable. I'd posit that "RWA" is a contradiction in terms in the sense it seems to be used.

I mean I get where Adorno was coming from: a bunch of seemingly normal people had just massacred a bunch of his cousins. That doesn't mean I have to take his insane response seriously; particularly when current year WEIRD non-authoritarians so casually massacre members of neurotypical civilizations[1]. The persistence with which people cling to this nonsense indicates it must scratch some psychological itch. It is, however, nonsense.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEIRD#WEIRD_bias

[1] I dunno, nobody seems to give a shit we've been blowing up "barbarians" in the middle east for the last 20 years in hopes of making them more .... tolerant.

  • 082349872349872 5 years ago

    Adorno sounds familiar, so you're probably right about the source influence. I recall RWA being distinct from "people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses", so I'll check that later and leave it here in an edit.

    Agreed on the middle east situation, but I've written elsewhere on HN about the catch-22 that I believe has produced a Baptists and Bootleggers dynamic in what Orwell would call the disputed territories.

    Edit: the RWA score is from a survey on pp11-12.

        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.  Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.
    5.  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
    6.  Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly.
    7.  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.
    8.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.
    9.  Our country needs free thinkers who have the courage to defy traditional ways, even if this upsets many people.
    10. Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs.
    11. Everyone should have their own lifestyle, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences, even if it makes them different from everyone else.
    12. The “old-fashioned ways” and the “old-fashioned values” still show the best way to live.
    13. You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting for women’s abortion rights, for animal rights, or to abolish school prayer.
    14. What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.
    15. Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religion, and ignoring the “normal way things are supposed to be done.”
    16. 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.
    17. 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.
    18. A “woman’s place” should be wherever she wants to be. The days when women are submissive to their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past.
    19. 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.
    20. There is no “ONE right way” to live life; everybody has to create their own way.
    21. Homosexuals and feminists should be praised for being brave enough to defy “traditional family values.
    22. 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.

    Responses given on a -4 to 4 scale, and after scoring the possible results are 20 to 180.

    Page 14 states: "Introductory psychology students at my Canadian university average about 75. Their parents average about 90. Both scores are below the mid-point of the scale, which is 100, so most people in these groups are not authoritarian followers in absolute terms. Neither are most Americans, it seems. Mick McWilliams and Jeremy Keil administered the RWA scale to a reasonably representative sample of 1000 Americans in 2005 for the Libertarian Party and discovered an average score of 90. Thus the Manitoba parent samples seem similar in overall authoritarianism to a representative American adult sample. My Manitoba students score about the same on the RWA scale as most American university students do too."

    (as to church-going, about 400 of those 1000 sampled probably go to church on their relevant day of the week.)

    • jfengel 5 years ago

      It feels weird that they'd pay any attention to the 100 midpoint. These questions feel like they're written to make the authoritarians look unreasonable. Which I feel they are, too, but the way it's written the only way to give the more authoritarian answer would be to be either truly delusional or performing as if one were.

      That doesn't mean it's useless, but it does mean that the midpoint is arbitrary. If nobody scores above 100 it says more about your test than it does about people.

      • 082349872349872 5 years ago

        We might both think that giving the more authoritarian answer would be performing as if one were delusional, but the "high RWA" population he writes about evidently think it's correct.

        A mean score of 90 doesn't imply nobody scores above 100, just that the ones below overbalance the ones above. I'd guess (it may be time to hit primary sources?) that when he says "high RWA" he doesn't mean as low as 110, either.

        There are footnotes on pp.36-46 discussing the design of the scale. They include why he believes Adorno's design was flawed (it gave high scores to people who simply agreed with every statement), as well as:

        (p.43) > "What is a “high RWA”? When I am writing a scientific report of my research I call the 25% of a sample who scored highest on the RWA scale “High RWAs” with a capital-H. Similarly I call the 25% who scored lowest “Low RWAs,” and my computer runs wondrous statistical tests comparing Highs with Lows. But in this book where I’m describing results, not documenting them, I’ll use “high RWAs” more loosely to simply mean the people in a study who score relatively highly on the RWA scale, and “low RWAs” will mean those who score relatively low on the test."

    • scottlocklin 5 years ago

      Yeah, see, I don't think any of this has a single, solitary thing to do with "authoritarianism." It's just testing for normal human attitudes, rather than urban WEIRD attitudes.

      I'm doing "that internet guy" again, but it's necessary here; from m-w[0] the definition of "authoritarian"

      1: of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority had authoritarian parents

      2: of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people

      There's nothing about our forefathers, homosexuals, feminists, theism, women, sexual preferences, pornography, sinfulness or any of the other bullshit in those questions that has a single, solitary thing to do with the definition of authoritarianism. Until the 1990s, most Americans, indeed most Westerners outside of (maybe) Holland and Sweden would have been considered "authoritarian" by those lights. Do you believe Westerners were "authoritarian" for all of human history until ... say, 1997 or whatever? I was alive back then: it was very obviously less authoritarian on almost every level. And mind you, I score fairly "non authoritarian" (aka not so conservative) on this test.

      Anyway, I appreciate your constructive engagement, but I am extremely allergic to bullshit which dehumanizes normal people. I mean, we decided as a society that dehumanizing gay people and feminists was bad: the reality is people who are don't think the last 10 years of modernity is an amazing success are not particularly authoritarian, but dehumanizing them absolutely is.

      [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoritarian

      • 082349872349872 5 years ago

        You're welcome. Thank you as well.

        I'll write more tomorrow, it being wee hours here. In the meantime, please consider that:

        > I score fairly "non authoritarian" (aka not so conservative) on this test.

        means you (or for that matter any normal conservative) neither have a high RWA score nor are the subject matter of the book.

        Edit: compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795611

      • 082349872349872 5 years ago

        From bottom to top:

        Last 10 years of modernity - as said last night, you are obviously not high RWA. A very high RWA person might agree the last decade has not been an amazing success, but would not limit themselves to that perception, and instead might claim things took a wrong turn with the Enlightenment[1], and people who behave as they ought not deserve lashing[2].

        Also, the author has been using the RWA scale since the 1970s, the main primary papers he recommends are from (p.6) the 1990s, and most of the examples he gives in what I have reread are from the younger Bush period. So I doubt he's talking about 1997 and especially not anything more recent than 2010.

        (Finally, I haven't a clue if you mean something specific by mentioning this decade? Over here, not much has happened in the last ten years, the last notable event before the pandemic having been the 2008 financial crisis.)

        Dehumanisation — IIRC, the author doesn't dehumanise high RWA groups (otherwise he might be advocating pushing them out of helicopters instead of simply giving them the opportunity to meet, or even engage in shared tasks with, the Other.) If you could point out a dehumanising passage in the book please do.

        Other bullshit in questions - see the footnote (p.39) discussing question 16:

            “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.”

        the operative parts of this question are neither abortion, nor pornography, nor marriage, but strictly followed, too late, and strongly punished.

        Definitions - I was also alive last century[3] and believe the m-w definition is fine for its purpose, but although it shares a strong correlation, it's not the RWA[2] definition the book uses (which, the author takes pains to point out, can, and has in the ex-FSU case, applied mutatis mutandi to politically left wing authoritarian followers[4]).

        Another last-century example, beyond the cousin posts: high RWA 1990s beliefs led to Srebrenica.

        Normal human attitude - It's easy to argue that "Burn the Heretic!" has been normal for much of the last 6'000 years and probably tens of thousands, but I think in the west[5] it started going out of style after the wars of religion[6]. For some pre-1997 evidence, consult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_of_1899_and_...

        [1] among the behaviours he found correlating with high RWA was acceptance of the notion (p.19) that the US Bill of Rights leads to immorality so it should be repealed.

        Although this specific example comes from the fictional Ignatius J. Reilly, the idea is seriously presented in Evola's Cavalcare la tigre. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24785596

        [2] (p.52) "Since followers do virtually all of the assaulting and killing in authoritarian systems--the leaders see to this most carefully--we are dealing with very serious matters here. Anyone who follows orders can become a murderer for an authoritarian regime. But authoritarian followers find it easier to bully, harass, punish, maim, torture, “eliminate,” “liquidate,” and “exterminate” their victims than most people do."

        [3] although I am in an area that's historically been so strongly catholic (our idea of a cocktail party is centred on bread and wine) that people here are far more interested in following the Golden Rule than in making a tribe of their religion (our muslims also enjoy these same cocktail parties). YMMV.

        [4] as a literary left wing example, the dogs in Animal Farm are a high RWA group, being content to be servile to the pigs as long as they get to be arrogant to all the other animals.

        [5] pace twentieth century literal exceptions, and under the caveat: only between "us" westerners

        [6] which did more to determine who was left than who had been right.

        • scottlocklin 5 years ago

          I agree that "burn the heretic" has been normal human behavior for a long time: you can see it at work now, mostly among left wing authoritarians. You might have noticed them: they've been hard at work forming mobs firing people for expressing opinions, and lately tearing down statues (literal iconoclasm: a la Calvinism in the 16th century, or Taliban now) and burning down American cities. They'd all be extremely low in RWA score, which is why I assert that this "measurement" is simply a republican (aka classical liberal) detector.

          Classical liberals are not meaningfully authoritarian in any sense of the word; though of course there have been historical aberrations (pre-Salazar Portugal could have been considered both Authoritarian and classical liberal, as I suppose were some post-war governments).

          I agree that the book doesn't use a meaningful definition of "authoritarian." That's all I'm trying to say here. The author is some kind of nut attempting to demonize the half of America that doesn't vote his way as being "authoritarians." He also wants to "cure" them. That seems .... kind of authoritarian.

          On those details: Evola ... I mean, the man is about as influential as Miguel Serrano or any other fascist crank who persisted too long into the 20th century. Who cares what he says? It's burbling nonsense. Toole's character was a farce designed to make fun of Evolan types (pretty sure anyway; maybe it had an element of self mockery). And Dreher is a hipster ding dong whose hipsterness consists in having read "Confederacy of Dunces."

          I know actually right wing and actually religious people who would score high on this "RWA" scale. They're not authoritarian at all! Much more accepting of divergences from their beliefs than even modern American centrists.

          • 082349872349872 5 years ago

            I agree that online virtual bullying mobs[1] are only a few steps[2] away from offline physical lynching mobs. Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24798617 for my thoughts on how to filter for authoritarian followers of whatever political persuasion.

            How can "would score high" and "accepting of divergences from their beliefs" not be disjoint?

            As far as I can tell, the author is not advocating to "cure" people for not voting his way, he's advocating to "cure" people who are tempted to use the bullet box instead of the ballot box[3] to make him live their way. I'm pretty sure classical liberals, being live and let live, would score very low on this test.

            Thanks for reassuring me about Dreher and Evola[4], I was introduced to them via HN, so I have no idea how widespread their thought may be offline. Agree that Toole was writing a parody version of the question of political or theoretic lives which was treated in a serious manner by Boethius in Consolation of Philosophy and Hesse in The Glass Bead Game. I wouldn't be surprised if Dr. Talc (a substance useful when changing diapers?) didn't also have elements of self mockery.

            [1] did I forget to mention that apparently former CPSU members scored highly on RWA? Examples of questions I think left wing authoritarian followers might score highly on in the current context: 1, 5, 7, 17, 19, 22. Maybe for the current times the author, who notes in the first chapter that in the early twenty-first century the times of quoting Chairman Mao were long over, ought to ask about the appropriate use of Madame Guillotine?

            [2] In the context of online cancellation mobs, moving from "harassment" through "punish", "maim", and "torture", on to "liquidate". To me it seems the easiest way to address mob cancellation is to only allow termination for cause, but even that wouldn't have saved the NYT editor (who had published Cotton's OpEd sight unseen).

            [3] bullet box metaphor lifted from an FBI indictment. For my sanity, I should stop reading those things. (but they're horribly fascinating: over here people bring rifles to the range, not to demos.)

            [4] I get Ubuntu from Evola because he's always rabbiting on about the atomisation of modernity. I'm not sure quite what he's for, as he seems to take it for granted his readers already do, but given the expressed love of hierarchy, I think he's big on social relations:

                Left wing ubuntu: symmetric, transitive, and reflexive 
    Right wing ubuntu: antisymmetric, transitive, and reflexive

            not to mention keeping relations up not only with those alive today but also with those of our Tradition.

            • scottlocklin 5 years ago

              >How can "would score high" and "accepting of divergences from their beliefs" not be disjoint?

              Simple: the scale, as I keep saying, is total bullshit. Someone's opinion on nudism or sexual dimorphism doesn't influence their day to day behavior or tendency to throw people out of helicopters in the way the author of the scale thinks they do. Hell; the Nazis were pro-nudist and an awful lot of them were screechingly gay (and all of them accepting of their screechingly gay comrades) ... in the 1920s and 30s, when that sort of thing was a lot less popular.

              • 082349872349872 5 years ago

                (a) which question has anything to do with sexual dimorphism?

                (b) someone who is always clothed in company themselves but doesn't mind if others are sky-clad in private gatherings (such as a classical liberal, an economic conservative, or a normal republican) would answer +4 to:

                    8.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.

                Given that I believe private nudity is legal in the US[1], why should anyone respond otherwise, unless unaccepting of divergence from their beliefs?

                (As for Nazis, what references do you have? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge#... shows the stereotypical pink triangles. For nudity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikörperkultur is a general german thing, not particularly Nazi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives#SA_le... was 1934.)

                [1] based on my twentieth century experiences in US hot tubs and springs.

                Q. how many californians does it take to screw in a light bulb?

                A. (rot13) Abar, pnyvsbeavnaf fperj va ubg ghof.

                • scottlocklin 5 years ago

                  Ernst Röhm was the 2nd most important nazi before the night of the long knives and was an out homosexual[0]. The gayness of the nazis was a source of jokes and criticisms from the beginning. The pro-homosexual bias of fascists are so obvious, there are even books, generally by religious people, which assert, with considerable evidence, that fascism was entirely a homosexual phenomenon. This sort of thing doesn't fit the preposterous bias of the book you quote, which again is simply a list of the prejudices of the authors; more or less, the prejudices of late 20th century shitlibbery, against traditional christian people.

                  As for nazi nudity: go watch the movie "Olympiad." Or ... hell, just look at photos of the era[1]. A good fraction of them were neopagans as well; they probably invented the phrase "sky-clad."

                  >Given that I believe private nudity is legal in the US, why should anyone respond otherwise, unless unaccepting of divergence from their beliefs?

                  Are you joking? There are lots of things which are legal but which people might not be all together comfortable with. For example: gambling, smoking, eating live shellfish, having unprotected sex with 100s of people, going to Church on Sundays (I guarantee you there are people who see something wrong with this), remaining a virgin until you're married (ditto), getting falling down drunk, eating only vegetables: the list is endless. Nudism certainly falls into the category of something all kinds of people might not be all together comfortable with; both authoritarian and non-authoritarian; and in this case both American right wing and left wing people. Do you think Susan Fowler would have been happy if Uber had done its corporate retreats and a nudist camp? Don't tell me it's "inappropriate" -because if "there is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps" -how can it possibly be inappropriate to hang out with your colleagues with your junk hanging out?

                  [0]https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/holocaust-remembrance-day/.pr...

                  [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturism_in_Germany

                  • 082349872349872 5 years ago

                    I'm not joking. For instance, gambling[1] is something I don't do, but I would +4 the hypothetical question:

                        8': There is absolutely nothing wrong with casinos.

                    Indeed, my wife and I used to eat at the casino, because their kitchen was open late. If I had more reservations, say related to addiction potential[2], maybe I'd only +1 it, but I wouldn't give it a high negative score, which would be necessary to score an overall high RWA.

                    I don't smoke[3] either but (enclosed public smoking being illegal here) I would also agree with the hypothetical:

                        8'': There is absolutely nothing wrong with smoking clubs.

                    I also won't join them, but don't mind if traditional christian people meet and do traditional christian things together[4], so I would also agree with the hypothetical:

                        8''': There is absolutely nothing wrong with cathedrals[5].

                    All these things diverge from my beliefs, but I accept others have their own beliefs[6]. Why should I not?

                    "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor."

                    Na du deting to du xeta, fo mang kapawu to. (...to your shipmate)

                    [1] beyond the undiversifiable risks any capitalist runs

                    [2] ID is required in our casinos, so I wouldn't be surprised if problem gamblers were 86ed.

                    [3] except on those rare occasions when either my pyromania gets out of hand or my campfire skills are weak

                    [4] although St Benedict makes it sounds like traditional christian people are a bunch of super-commies who gave up personal as well as private property. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ananias_and_Sapphira#Story_sum...

                    [5] My local one, from the seventh century, has chapels for both St Barbara and St George, two of my favourite christian saints.

                    [6] "il faut de tout pour faire un monde" (the world is diverse) Desh fosho kowlting fo du da belek.

                    Bonus clip (casino): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swvzItnFtCw

                    • scottlocklin 5 years ago

                      You're engaging in solipsism here; the point isn't whether or not you think pre-marital chastity is acceptable or not (I bet there's a question in this goofball RWA book asserting that it's not OK) -the point is the nazis were nudists[0] and homophiles, making absolute nonsense of those questions as any kind of meaningful measurement of "RWA." Again, as I said in the first place; this seems to be a simple list of late 20th century center left bigotries about what American religious people are like rather than anything to do with "authoritarianism."

                      Despite people who tell me about the TEETH CHATTERING ATROCITIES of the nazi pork butchers ... saying things on twitter ... every sign of authoritarianism I see; from corporate fascism, to the idiots burning the cities down and toppling statues: every last one of them would have scored more like you on that scale as very open minded and accepting people, and less like some random Pentacostal who thinks foamy buttsex is kind of gross, but who doesn't bother anyone and who this scale would denounce as "authoritarian." If words like "authoritarian" are to retain their ordinary meanings, your scale goes into the dumpster, and you must refrain from ever referring to it again. It is a simple measure of WEIRD[1] psychological tendencies. Not "authoritarianism."

                      [0] better reference: referring to Nazi nudist societies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freik%C3%B6rperkultur#Naturism...

                      [1] again: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/10/joseph-...