With some of the Covid-19 related restrictions lifted for our area, it would be natural to blog about the changes in the new life. But as with last week's Tuesday post, parts of the old life are still too haunting to ignore. The post last week was about racism and anger. This week's post is about something, like racism, we have had to suffer through from when settlers came from Europe to live here and even before that. This week's post is about authoritarianism.
To be specific, this article will be talking about the authoritarian personality type or authoritarian personalities. When discussing authoritarianism in that way, one is discussing not the mere disagreement with another person or with "conventional" beliefs, noting here that the term conventional is relative to a person's background, but how one reacts to dissent and disagreement (click here for traits of the authoritarian personality type).
To give a brief example, I remember being stopped because of an accident involving other people. I was there offering help to anyone who needed it. The police were already there trying to handle the situation. Then the son of one of the people who was in the accident parked too close to the accident for one police officer's comfort. The officer politely told the person to move their vehicle. The person ignored the officer's order not because he was defiant, but because he was preoccupied with the welfare of his parent. So the officer immediately switched gears into authoritarian mode by raising his voice and repeating the order to which the son ignored because, again, he was too preoccupied. The officer began to threaten, not physically, while raising his voice again. At that point, a neighbor told the person and the officer that the son could park his car on his property thus satisfying the order made by the police officer and the need of the son.
When we read about the traits of the authoritarian personality type, what becomes clear is that this personality type is driven by the fear of losing control over a situation or people. The authoritarian personality type is a driven by fear. Thus, when we read the traits, we see that hostility and aggression are immediate responses to challenges either to the orders of people in authority or to "conventional" beliefs.
It is important to note that what is called "conventional" beliefs be recognized as being relative to a person's background. That is because initially, the study of authoritarian personality type focused on conservatives because of the loyalty to Hitler and the Nazis demonstrated by many German civilians even during some of their worst times of the war. To know what drives people to be so loyal to leaders like Hitler would be important if we care about avoiding or minimizing the same support for such dictators in the future.
Later, because of the kind of loyalty given to Hitler was now being given to other tyrants, like Stalin, the study of the authoritarian personality type broadened its scope. Thus we should realize that no group or ideology has a monopoly on having this personality type.
We should also note the distinction made by Erich Fromm on the two kinds of the authoritarian personality. The active authoritarian is exhibited by the one who seeks to control others while the passive authoritarian unthinkingly supports the control of the right active authoritarians (click here).
What does all of this talk about authoritarianism and authoritarian personalities have to do with our current crisis in America? Authoritarianism is on immediate display in a area or nation where there is a societal hierarchy based on some perceived superiority. Such hierarchical structures rely on authoritarianism to keep those portrayed as being inferior in line. And since this nation was founded on white supremacy and still remains that way to a significant extent, there is a societal embracing of authoritarianism by enough people in order to maintain the status quo.
But there is another group that, because of their job responsibilities, is given to authoritarianism: the job of the police officer. One of their responsibilities is to take control over certain situations. So authoritarianism can be exhibited by police officers when civilians do not immediately comply with laws and police orders. But here we must also understand that the job of a police officer can be extremely difficult.
There are at least two less desirable ways by which those in authority could respond to the fear of losing control: intimidation and punishment. Those in authority who fear losing control use intimidation to preemptively prevent dissent or resistance. The fear of punishment is also meant to prevent dissent or resistance, but it is also used as a consequence for continued dissent and resistance. In the latter case, that punishment could be called revenge.
And isn't it those two responses to the fear of losing control what we most often see when the police abuse their positions? The police are suppose to be there to protect and to serve. But when we look at how the police dress and even how their vehicles designed to appear, we see that the appearance of the police is designed to intimidate from the beginning. And though appearance of some power to intimidate might be necessary for the police to gain a certain respect from those who would wantonly harm others, it appears that that appearance of power is all too often overdone.
I remember being at one anti-war protest a while back where the average age of the protesters was in the mid 50s if not older while the police, who were monitoring our protest, were dressed in riot gear. How does such intimidation invite us to ask for police assistance in case one needs help? And how does such intimidation invite the protesters to see the police as anything but an enemy? The next year, the police officers monitoring the protest were not arrayed battle gear and it helped facilitate a mutual cooperation with them.
Also, we need to talk about the punishment response to the fear of losing control. Unlike intimidation, the overuse of punishment is used by the police by how they physically interact with those they view as resisting and by lawmakers who seek to keep society in line while often excusing themselves from accountability. We need to talk about punishment because our nation has a mass incarceration problem. For not only does the US incarcerate more of its citizens than any other nation, it incarcerates a higher percentage of its own citizens than any other nation. And here we must remember the literal HELL that incarceration involves. For there is little if any protection for the inmates from violence and abuse from either other inmates or from the guards. And the attitude of some authoritarians on the outside to that HELL is to repeat a famous line from an old TV show: 'if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.'
In addition, we need to discuss the self-limited thinking of those with authoritarian personalities whether they be active authoritarians or passive ones. The tendency is for authoritarians to have a black-white worldview. There are good guys and there are bad guys and there is no one in between. Because there is no one in between, there is no identifying with those struggling to keep the law through life's trials. With the inability to identify with those who make legal mistakes, comes the tendency to externalize evil. And we should also note that this black-white worldview with all of its effects is held by conservative authoritarians, liberal authoritarians, and leftist authoritarians. But externalizing evil is not exclusively used for lawbreakers, it is often used, even by some police officers on those with different political views and ideologies. I have witnessed that from overhearing conversations that some officers had with each other.
But even without that black-white worldview, authoritarianism persuades people by relying on orders or the credentials of the source. Authoritarianism does not ask us to rationally think through a problem or viewpoint.
Thus, it is authoritarianism that most often divides us, not our ideologies or other differences.
Finally, we religiously conservative Christians need to take much of the blame for our nation's authoritarian culture. That isn't because most people in our nation are religiously conservative Christians, it is because the authoritarianism we Christians have practiced for so long has become a model for others to imitate or a reason to respond in kind.
Because our faith has put so much emphasis on how to respond to authority figures in many of our relationships, we have never learned how and when to turn that authority switch off. Because we tend to be authoritarians, we see the need for hierarchies where there should be equality. And we have misinterpreted Romans 13 on purpose of government and how it is there to punish the evildoer and reward the good person. The result is that too many of us believe that the government is only there to punish others and to give us a recognized position of privilege in society.
What we are seeing in our nation today are the chickens coming home to roost. And those chickens don't just represent the horrible white supremacy on which this nation has been based even to this day, they also represent our love affair with authoritarianism as a way to respond to our fear of losing control over those who are different from and who disagree with us.
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