Authoritarianism and democracy

[ks.234]

I thought she was pretty clear that by conservatives she was using the word in it traditional sense - those who oppose change. They help to reduce the rate of change in a society which helps to prevent the triggering of the authoritarian predisposed.

Stenner provides much to think about, but challenging the status quo is the precise problem. If the status quo is acceptable then there’s no problem, but as accepted norms move further right, how long does compromise with them work? At what point does compromise fail and challenge become necessary? How successful would Stenner’s solution work in 30’s Germany. If 30’s Germany is an extreme example, what are the limits of the Stenner solution? Didn’t Blair adopt a Stenner solution to short term political gain, but hasn’t that short term solution led to precisely the long term problems we now face?

 

[russel]

but surely the overriding point from Sternner is that is not a left/right issue

I thought it provided a very good explanation of why Labour lost the red wall.

 

[russel]

Stenner provides much to think about, but challenging the status quo is the precise problem. If the status quo is acceptable then there’s no problem, but as accepted norms move further right, how long does compromise with them work? At what point does compromise fail and challenge become necessary? How successful would Stenner’s solution work in 30’s Germany. If 30’s Germany is an extreme example, what are the limits of the Stenner solution? Didn’t Blair adopt a Stenner solution to short term political gain, but hasn’t that short term solution led to precisely the long term problems we now face?

Not really, if you look at one of the driving factors of Brexit which was immigration they totally fvcked up. Labour had no interim period and allowed those who did come to the U.K. to immediately claim benefits, now we all know overall that immigration was a net economic benefit but those that abused the system were gold to the right wing which they exhaustively mined. In Sweden for instance no one can claim benefits unless they have paid into the system, and there was a years period where those from the newly integrated former Comecon countries were not allowed in as they were in the U.K.,o if you look at labours projections it was expected 20,000 from former Comecon countries, instead a million rocked up, it didn’t bother me but I can see why some people got upset.

 

[richardg]

Further Conservative authoritarianism here in a redrawing of the official secrets act with no ‘public interest’ defence (BBC). Yet another step towards an all-powerful one-party state with zero tolerance for whistle-blowers.

Interesting. I signed the Official Secrets Act whilst working for the DTI. And I whistle blew when I saw corruption in the issue of contracts, only to find DTI rejected all 11 of my points. Basically, they were in on it.

 

[Kirk]

Listened to this today and it made a lot of sense, well worth the time.



Karen Stenner and the authoritarian predisposition
The Spark
Helen Lewis interviews people offering solutions for our times. Political psychologist Karen Stenner explains how liberal democracy can tackle the challenge of authoritarianism.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y7sq

Good post, thanks. Interesting research and perspective, particularly re: the left.

 

[Seanm]

Despite similar reservations about Helen Lewis, I gave it a go. I tried to keep an open mind but it really is as terrible as you might expect. Among the contentious claims are (my sarky comments in brackets):

Conservativism is a bulwark against authoritarianism (what, actually existing conservativism?)
Conservatives and liberals are natural allies against authoritarianism (what, actually existing liberals?)
1/3 of the population is genetically predisposed to authoritarianism (citation needed)
"Superwoke" is a variety of left-wing authoritarianism (neglects power relations)
Lack of cognitive capacity... stupid people are more likely to be authoritarian (define stupidity)
It's our responsibility to help those people to make peace with "liberal democracy" (how liberal and democratic are we?)
Shared values and shared authority - normative threats = loss of confidence in leaders + loss of sense of shared vaues (gee, how does that happen?)
Journalists are "by definition" more open to experience - love diversity, complexity, mising with different kinds of people... (frankly, this is beyond parody)
Diversity and complexity is overwhelming to some people (but not us sensible liberal types, oh no)
If you're in favour of diversity you should stop "banging on about it". Create a feeling of "oneness and sameness". (don't be too "uppity")
The left needs to get over its wariness of patriotism (yeah, that's worked well so far, hasn't it)
If only we could talk about immigration more freely (Christ, it's all we've talked about for over a decade!)
Steady as she goes - make politics boring again (What like successful politicians like Trump, Farage, Johnson?)

It's worth noting that the guest operates outside academia (she has her own consultancy business) - make of that what you will.

There are a few small crumbs of insight:

Don't call political opponents stupid and racist (bit late for that, really)
Possibility of unifying behind a vision of reducing inequality, UBI etc - good, but this is barely explored (patriotism and addressing legitimate concerns about immigration get more bandwidth)

But these ideas have all been explored more persuasively elsewhere.

In short, the analysis is shallow, ahistorical and psychologistic. It ignores power relationships (especially economic power) and is completely silent about the role of the press in creating division.

It is interesting, how liberal journalists’ love of new experiences, diversity and complexity keeps leading them to encounters with people who reflect their dumbass theories back at them, time and time again. Very few problems in the world that can’t be explained with reference to people being stupid, the left being authoritarian and, I dunno, genetics or something.

 

[richardg]

It is interesting, how liberal journalists’ love of new experiences, diversity and complexity keeps leading them to encounters with people who reflect their dumbass theories back at them, time and time again. Very few problems in the world that can’t be explained with reference to people being stupid, the left being authoritarian and, I dunno, genetics or something.

To be fair, agreeing with most of what you say, I feel the left can be just as authoritarian as the right. Particularly here in France.

 

[Seeker_UK]

@droodzilla

Some more academic rigour here:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.676093/full

 

[russel]

It is interesting, how liberal journalists’ love of new experiences, diversity and complexity keeps leading them to encounters with people who reflect their dumbass theories back at them, time and time again. Very few problems in the world that can’t be explained with reference to people being stupid, the left being authoritarian and, I dunno, genetics or something.

Perhaps if you understood how a predisposition to authoritarianism, genetics, cognitive ability, economics and human beings all interacted you wouldn’t keep getting handed your backside on a plate in elections.

 

[russel]

Further Conservative authoritarianism here in a redrawing of the official secrets act with no ‘public interest’ defence (BBC). Yet another step towards an all-powerful one-party state with zero tolerance for whistle-blowers.

There is no way Johnson would be security cleared given his past behaviour, this classic cover up behaviour.

 

[Cav]

No one has to "sign" the Official Secrets Act anymore. There was never, so far as I remember, a public interest defence either.

Those old enough might recall the Clive Ponting trial where the trial judge went to great pains to instruct the jury that the crime was absolute and there was no public interest defence in law - the jury gave a not guilty verdict.

 

[Debs]

No one has to "sign" the Official Secrets Act anymore. There was never, so far as I remember, a public interest defence either.

No one has ever 'signed the Official Secrets Act'. It's a myth. One signs as being aware that one is subject to the Act.

Whether you sign as aware or not, you are subject to the Act,

End Of.

 

[Cav]

No one has ever 'signed the Official Secrets Act'. It's a myth. One signs as being aware that one is subject to the Act.

Whether you sign as aware or not, you are subject to the Act,

End Of.

Well, when I joined the Civil Service in 1973 one did have to sign a document that said, in effect, that one had been made aware of the implications of the Official secrets Act. Not signing the Act itself, which would have been nonsensical, but even that action of signing an acknowledgement of it disappeared decades ago.

But thank you for womansplaining that to me.

 

[slavedata]

When I did work placements from my University sandwich course in Applied Physics back in the 70s I did the final one at Farnborough. We all had a one to one talk from the Security Officer. The pitch went something like "We are aware of the russians out there, they don't exactly hang around the gate but they are about and listening in. Be careful talking down the pub and be wary of strangers palling up with you." We did the ritual signing of awareness of the act as stated above. It was valid advice as I was staying in the on site hostel and it was fairly lonely. I remember the hostel seemed to be full of aging Ukraineans who hadn't wanted to go back after WWII and were still working at Farnborough. The department I worked in was inertial navigation systems for aircraft as fitted to the then called MRCA - Tornado in service- and also to Concorde.

I also remember neighbours at home telling me of strange chaps turning up on the doorstep and asking questions about me so they did take vetting seriously.

 

[Millennium]

Her analysis is correct as you might expect though I suspect her reasons for coming to it were very difficult to ingest, and her subconscious is still working that out

 

[Kirk]

Perhaps if you understood how a predisposition to authoritarianism, genetics, cognitive ability, economics and human beings all interacted you wouldn’t keep getting handed your backside on a plate in elections.

The left seemed to be caught in an infinity loop of learned helplessness.

 

[h.g.]

Must confess I bailed out after a few minutes but recognised where much of it was coming from. Here in the UK we liberals experienced a WTF moment when large numbers of apparently sane people voted for Johnson despite his unsuitability even to conservatives. In the US the equivalent WTF moment was more GW Bush rather than Trump even though the latter was an even more extreme example of unsuitability to govern. It prompted a fair amount of academic research in the soft sciencies to help understand what had happened and one of the results was a freely redistributed easy-to-read book called The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer. Read the original 10-15 years ago, no idea about the revision, website and what may have grown around it since.

Anyway, if interested in the how and why rather than recipes and soundbites it may well be a good place to start. Obviously the practical threat today is from the right but authoritarianism is primarily a way of reasoning and it distinguishes hard left from the soft left in just the same way as hard right from soft right. I have tended to use the word faith in past posts. It also helps to some extent in understanding subjective audiophiles, objective audiophiles and those that look to science to reason about home audio hardware.

 

[Seanm]

Must confess I bailed out after a few minutes but recognised where much of it was coming from. Here in the UK we liberals experienced a WTF moment when large numbers of apparently sane people voted for Johnson despite his unsuitability even to conservatives. In the US the equivalent WTF moment was more GW Bush rather than Trump even though the latter was an even more extreme example of unsuitability to govern. It prompted a fair amount of academic research in the soft sciencies to help understand what had happened and one of the results was a freely redistributed easy-to-read book called The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer. Read the original 10-15 years ago, no idea about the revision, website and what may have grown around it since.

Anyway, if interested in the how and why rather than recipes and soundbites it may well be a good place to start. Obviously the practical threat today is from the right but authoritarianism is primarily a way of reasoning and it distinguishes hard left from the soft left in just the same way as hard right from soft right. I have tended to use the word faith in past posts. It also helps to some extent in understanding subjective audiophiles, objective audiophiles and those that look to science to reason about home audio hardware.

I just think it would be good if liberals could begin with that WTF moment: why *was* all this such a shock to them, when the “hard left” had been sounding the alarm for years (not least about the psychology of authoritarianism)? Until they acknowledge their own contribution to the current situation all liberal attempts to explain it are going to be exercises in exculpation, with the displaced blame going on all the usual suspects (faith-driven left, a public unfit in one way or another for the franchise etc.) In particular I’m not interested in any account of the rise of authoritarianism from Helen Lewis that doesn’t have the title “My role in the rise of authoritarianism”.

 

[Tony L]

I just think it would be good if liberals could begin with that WTF moment: why *was* all this such a shock to them, when the “hard left” had been sounding the alarm for years (not least about the psychology of authoritarianism)?

So who exactly are the “hard left” in the UK? It sure as hell isn’t anything to do with Labour as they’ve driven authoritarianism every time they have had even a slight sniff of power. In the HoC it tends only to be the Lib Dems, SNP, PC and Greens who will vote against such measures. Labour as a block tends to push even the most extreme Tory policy through, e.g. Overseas Ops, Spycops etc, plus obviously all the oppressive civil liberty-eroding crap from Blunkett, Straw etc etc the last time they were in power.

 

[molee]

So who exactly are the “hard left” in the UK? It sure as hell isn’t anything to do with Labour

Absolutely, part of Labour's political purpose is to bookend one end of the spectrum of acceptable political discourse in this country. Present the public with a coherent alternative (from a progressive if radical, non authoritarian position) and you will find them rabid and vicious in an onslaught that they wouldn't dream of inflicting on their Liberal and Conservative colleagues. Their success in this role is evidenced by the absence of a viable challenge from the left in the 'redwall' constituencies that were thus gifted to the Conservatives. It has been shown elsewhere (at a council ward level) that with a modicum of organisation and some hard work, it is ridiculously easy to oust complacent Labour councillors. It is a small step up to the parliamentary level from there. On an individual level, being associated with this 'hard' left has social and economic consequences that go further than the spycops that you mention, through blacklisting and beyond, why would one bother?