The Anti- Authoritarian Revolution
By • 5/23/07 |
The last gasp of the Authoritarian Personality. |
The last column on the Inverted World, “The Origin of the Myth,” used the work of Theodor Adorno to illuminate the effect of the Holocaust on the West’s image of itself. Adorno blamed the Holocaust on basic Western traditions, values, and institutions, including science, capitalism, Christianity, patriotism, and white racial identity. In the 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality, Adorno argued that conservatism and ethnocentrism among white Americans were examples of “pre-fascist tendencies” that threatened a resurgence of Nazism. The effect was to pathologize normal and healthy behaviors.
The Authoritarian Personality proved enormously influential. Sociologist Nathan Glazer said of the book in 1954, “No volume published since the war in the field of social psychology has had a greater impact on the direction of actual empirical work being carried on in universities today.”1 The influence of the book, which soon became a classic, continued long after the 50s: between 1966 and 1984, The Authoritarian Personality was cited in over 1,800 publications in the human sciences.2
The Authoritarian Personality, along with other work that criticized right-wing authoritarianism in the post-World War II period,3 also had a strong influence on American society. Though Adorno’s ideas were radically opposed to those of contemporary mainstream America, they found easy acceptance in the overwhelmingly liberal communities of American human scientists and intellectuals. Due to skyrocketing rates of university education, the ideas of intellectuals have played an increasingly powerful role in shaping American attitudes since the 1950s. The massive shift in American attitudes that took place in the late 1960s and 1970s, especially among young, college-educated people, were an anti-authoritarian revolution. Previous articles on the Inverted World have examined the rise of the “whites as cancer” myth in the 70s. It is important to understand that the demonization of whites was part of a wider rebellion against the Authoritarian Personality.
The basic trait that characterizes the Authoritarian Personality is ethnocentrism, or the belief in the superiority of one’s own group and a strong sense of racial identity. Highly ethnocentric people in the survey that the book was based on supported segregation, the maintenance of white social dominance over blacks in the US, and American dominance in world politics. They also thought whites were inherently more intelligent and civilized than blacks.4
The authors of the study found that other personality traits were likely to accompany ethnocentrism, and these traits collectively made up the Authoritarian Personality. Among the other traits characterizing the type were:
Conventionalism, or a rigid adherence to conventional, middle-class values. Conventional people reject intellectualism and support what today would be known as “family values.”
Authoritarian submission, or a submissive, uncritical attitude towards the moral authorities of the ingroup.
Authoritarian aggression, or a tendency to be on the lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values. Hostility to homosexuals was typical of this trait.
Stereotypy, or the disposition to think in rigid categories.
Anti-intraception, or the opposition to the subjective, the imaginative and the tender-minded.
Power and “toughness”, or the identification with powerful figures and exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness.5
The origin of the Authoritarian Personality is explained in a weird and obscure Freudian jargon that could mean more or less anything. However, the basic story seems to be that the personality type is the result of a disciplinarian upbringing at the hands of a strict, punitive, and moralistic father. Adorno accepted dogmatically the absurd, and now discredited, Freudian idea that young boys feel sexual attraction for their mothers. The stern father puts a taboo on these romantic feelings, thus causing a life-long sexual repression. Boys raised in this environment come to hate their fathers but cannot admit it, so they project their hatred outward onto minorities. At the same time, they accept the father’s word as absolute law and never develop a critical attitude towards it. The need to believe in moral authorities is augmented by fear of an insecure and changing world.6 The overall effect of Adorno’s book is to associate the perfectly rational belief in racial differences and a healthy adherence to white group interests with fear, insecurity, sexual repression, and blind faith in authority.
Hostility to all aspects of the Authoritarian Personality marked the 1970s. It was the period in which white ethnocentrism lost the last remnants of legitimacy in American public life and the whole of the American political class became officially committed to non-discrimination and racial equality. The government took draconian steps, such as busing and affirmative action, to eliminate the vestiges white racial solidarity.
Moroever, the decade saw an unprecedented attack on traditional American moral authorities. One of the most distinctive phenomena of the 1970s was the rise of “investigative journalism,” whose goal was to throw a spotlight on corruption and unlawfulness in the American government. Journalists exposed not only the Watergate wiretapping and cover-up, but many other instances of government mendacity and criminality. As a consequence, Americans’ faith in political institutions plummeted.7
The 70s were also a time of unabashed rejection of conventional behaviors and glorification of individualism. One of the decade’s most successful self-help books, Your Erroneous Zones, advocated the abrogation of even the most basic restraints on individual desires. The book declared, for example, that the obligation to attend the weddings and funerals of family members was oppressive and crimped the free spirit.8 The popularity of The Village People, who publicly celebrated their homosexuality, makes clear the decade’s penchant for the non-traditional.9
The Village People were part of the sexual revolution that seized the 70s. It was a decade when being “repressed” was the ultimate sin. Feminists like Germaine Greer, for example, preached that women could break their subjection to men through promiscuity; by the end of the decade, a majority of women said there was nothing wrong with pre-marital sex for the first time in American history.10
Americans came to favor the subjective, imaginative, and tender-minded over the objective and rational. As David Frum says in his excellent history of the decade, How We Got Here, “It was in their feelings that the Americans of the 1970s put their trust.”11 It was the golden age of therapy, when people paid good money to gush about their neuroses to trained professionals. The decade also saw the rise of the sensitive, emotional “New Man,” epitomized by Alan Alda.12
The primacy of the subjective over the objective created a revulsion against science and technology that was in the spirit of Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, discussed in “The Origin of the Myth.” As Frum writes:
The man in the white coat had been the hero of the hour in the 1940s and 1950s. His radar saved Britain in 1940, his atomic bombs compelled Japan’s surrender … . Twenty-five years later, that same scientist stood arraigned for defoliating and napalming Vietnam, and one best showed one’s opposition to that war by turning one’s back on modern science and its works.13
Nowhere is the decade’s reaction against the Authoritarian Personality more evident than in the situation comedy All in the Family, which first hit the airwaves in 1971 and was the most popular television program for several years. Archie Bunker, the sputtering, loud-mouthed buffoon who is the lead character of the series, embodies the type. Ethnocentrism is the keynote of his character: he holds forth constantly about Spades, Spics, Hebes, and Chinks. Also prominent is his earnest and pathetic patriotism. These two traits of his personality frequently come into conflict with another, as America had already been defined as a “proposition nation” based on freedom and tolerance rather than race. Says Archie:
Here in America—the land of the free where Lady Liberty holds her torch sayin’ send me your poor, your deadbeats, your filthy … so they come from all over the world, pourin’ in like ants … like your Spanish, your P.R.s from the Carribuan [sic], your Japs, your Chinamen, your Krauts and your Hebes and your English fags … all of them free to live together in their own little separate sections where they feel safe, and break your head if you go in there. That there is what makes America great!14
Archie possesses a robust belief in the superiority of his own group; he tells his daughter, “Gloria, you married the laziest white man I ever saw.”15 He has the authoritarian’s reverence for the authorities of the ingroup. He avidly defends Richard Nixon against his detractors, and, in one episode, pens a letter to him beginning “Dear Mr. President, your honor, sir:” He is censorious towards non-conventional values, continually berating atheists and communists. He shows his orientation towards power and toughness by constantly shouting at his family, and his distaste for the sentimental and tender, by chastising his daughter and her husband for displaying affection.
The show attributes Archie’s authoritarianism to the usual causes: sexual repression and fear of change. In one episode, revealingly titled “The Threat,” the Bunker family receives a visit from the spectacularly well-endowed wife of one of his friends, and Archie cannot keep his eyes off the lady’s barely covered breasts. This tabooed attraction throws him into such confusion that he accuses the lady of trying to seduce him, resulting in her indignant departure and the expected loss of his friend. Archie’s liberal son-in-law Michael (or “Meathead” as Archie calls him) duly points out the Freudian lesson to his wife: we have to be able to accept our urge to ogle and fantasize, or our instincts will turn destructive. Similarly, Meathead regularly accuses Archie of being motivated by fear:
You know why we got a breakdown of law and order in this country, Archie, because we got poverty, real poverty, and we got that because guys like you are afraid to give the black man and the Mexican-American and all the other minorities their just and rightful share of the American dream.16
In fact, the producer of the series, Norman Lear, attributed Archie’s personality to “fear—fear of change, fear of anything he doesn’t understand.”17
Archie is also a fool who is never allowed to be right or to score a point against Meathead, who always states the ideologically correct position. Reviewers of the show called Archie a “loser,” (75), a “blusterer,” an “ignoramus,” (200) and a “Neanderthal” (83).18 One demonstrated how far Adorno’s ideas had penetrated into American society by damning him as a “proto-fascist.”
The anti-authoritarian revolution transformed Adorno’s slur on white racial identity into a commonplace. The age created a stereotype that still causes people to dismiss arguments for the race realist perspective without even listening to them. Henceforth, anyone who spoke out against the principles of non-discrimination and racial equality would be automatically linked with sexual repression, fear, and uncritical authoritarianism. Our goal must be to break these associations and show the world that it is we who are the truly critical spirits today and liberals the unthinking bigots.
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- Nathan Glazer, “New Light on The Authoritarian Personality: A Survey of Recent Research,” Commentary 17 (March 1954): 289-97. ↑
- Gidi Rubinstein, “Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Political Affiliation Religiosity, and Their Relation to Psychological Androgyny,” Sex Roles: A Journal of Research 33, no. 7-8 (1995) [database on-line]; available from Questia, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=5000373559; Internet; accessed 21 May 2007. ↑
- Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics [book on-line] (New York: Norton, 1991, accessed 22 May 2007), 445-64; available from Questia, http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=101069829; Internet. ↑
- Theodor W. Adorno and others, The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper & Row), pp. 105-7. ↑
- Ibid., pp. 228-32. ↑
- Ibid., pp. 754-62. See also David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 144-45. ↑
- David Frum, How We Got Here: The 70s, The Decade That Brought You Modern Life (For Better or For Worse) (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 26-53. ↑
- Ibid., p. 102. ↑
- Ibid., p. 210. ↑
- Ibid., p. 192. ↑
- Ibid., p. 115. ↑
- Ibid., p. 203. ↑
- Ibid., p. 119. ↑
- Quoted in Richard P. Adler, “Introduction,” in All in the Family: A Critical Appraisal, ed. Richard P. Adler (New York: Praeger), xxxv. ↑
- Norman Lear, “Meet the Bunkers” (broadcast Jan. 12, 1971) in Adler, p. 17. ↑
- ”Meet the Bunkers,” p. 12. ↑
- Norman Lear, “As I Read How Laura Saw Archie,” New York Times 10 October 1971. Quoted in Adler, p. 107. ↑
- Various contemporary reviews of All in the Family in Adler, pp. 75, 83, 200. ↑
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Oh I see now. So this rebellion against the authoritarian personality gave rise to the infamous boomer generation gap, hippies and various liberation movements. Thanks for tying it all together.
BTW, I’m glad I found this site.
By on 5/23/07 at 1:59 pm
Something isn’t accurate here. Archie, despite the fact that he is indeed portrayed as a morally flawed character, and of course, a bigot, never the less remains the protagonist, who usually came through for people when they really needed him too. All in the Family, a prime time sitcom, would never have been as successful if Archie was really presented quite as unredeemable as you are claiming. His character was the most interesting and colorful one on the show, and his curmudgeonly put-downs as funny as they were caustic.
By on 5/23/07 at 8:19 pm
Revolutions always hold one problem, for those that think “The Revolution’s” undulations and ripples, will not engender a reaction or counterrevolution? Dangerous trends to that revolution of the first order, are always at the mercy of the center orders and lower orders.
In George Orwell’s book “1984;” this was after all, the point of Emanuel Goldstein’s tome, “The Theory And Practice Of Oligarchical Collectivism” in that novel. Forever are the revolutionary forces of nobility, “plagued” by a middle that wishes to replace them, and a lower class that is happy to aid the process and eventually replace them, in time. INGSOC resolves the conflict apparently, by allowing the upper strata, “The Inner Party,” to persecute “The Outer Party,” and leave “the proles” to their near animalistic state of existence. As Winston Smith himself notes in his thoughts on the topic: “If there was hope, it lay in the proles!” Or put another way, Winston gives up on his middle classes’ ability to revolt or react, and depends on the lowest classes’ ability to “liberate” him from the persecutions from above?
Here, I will ask two questions Comrade Smith, why and how? Why would they do that, when there is a “Ministry of Plenty?” How can they do that, when there is a “Ministry of Love?” Perhaps, “The Animal Farm” has answers, but I would seriously doubt that?
Here I will now reflect upon a thesis statement, that I believe answers the above in many ways? It does so, by not openly advocating oppressing the middle and ignoring the lower echelons of our society, but by acknowledging that their alliance, against the alien and oppressive is optimal.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the lower and middle classes found their positions’ compromised by the old and “new” elite orders, and have sought to redefine or reclaim, at their very least in this struggle, a balance in this equation? If the 70s represent the “triumph of countercultural” ethos, the 1980s through 2007 were and are gearing up for a counter-countercultural pathos? If not, an outright reactive and truculent gemots, and just what that might hold?
When I was approximately 16, in the year 1988, I read a book called, “The Ominous Parallels,” by Dr Leonard Peikoff. It did forever change and redirect, the way I view the world. In many was, this is unalterable and telling, since I have long approached “politics” from a healthy racially collective perspective, and not a lost emaciated racially egalitarian view, before reading the book. Objectivism plays a role in the argument, but only so far? Or put another way, yet again, applied to whom and by whom, and in what contexts?
In many ways, Dr Peikoff answers these questions, but “the many” don’t want to hear them?
“Here are the ominous parallels.
Our universities are strongholds of German philosophy disseminating every key idea of the post-Kantian axis, down now to old-world racism and romanticist technology-hatred. Our culture is modernism worn-out but recycled, with heavy infusions of such Weimarian blends as astrology and Marx, or Freud and Dada, or ’humanitarianism’ and horror-worship, along with five decades of corruption built on this kind of base. Our youth activists, those reared on the latest viewpoints at the best universities, are the pre-Hitler youth movement resurrected (this time mostly on the political left an addicted to drugs.)” (Peikoff, pages 292 to 294, 1982.)
Here, I will end for tonight, except for one point:
“Also, the character of Archie Bunker who was designed to stereotype and degrade patriotic blue collar American males, ironically remains a hero of sorts to them. The even greater irony being that they do so while consciously acknowledging his similarity to themselves and his situation. This being while they are reviled for their ‘bigotry’ and ‘jingoism,’ they are expected to pay the way for the Meatheads, Dingbats, and Jeffersons of this world and be made to feel guilty about not liking it too.
Archie Bunker also does have a current (and very popular) television doppelganger in one Mafia Don and family man, Tony Soprano. While in many ways different from Archie (particularly in terms of fidelity to his spouse, grudging willingness to seek out psychiatric interventions, and the way he makes a living,) Tony does represent the conception of the modern American male as ‘bigoted,’ ‘over nostalgic,’ and ‘hopelessly’ devoted to maintaining traditions seen as passé. While he is perfectly willing to deal with blacks in his “business” activities, he most certainly does not want his daughter Meadow (interestingly, who along with his nephew Christopher seems to fill the “liberated” PC Meathead role on the show) dating them.” (my remarks to “The Origin of the Myth,” by The Realist.)
How does the middle and gutter classes interact?
Don’t ask Archie, ask Tony; or Caesar Anthony, as he might just reflect, the remolding or revamping of, “The Totalitarian” personality or ethic redefined?
By on 5/23/07 at 11:51 pm
This article makes a very good, and very important point.
The media, especially television, never shows the “old” stereotypes of blacks such as Stepin Fetchit, Little Black Sambo, etc. In fact, they go out of their way to do just the opposite, casting blacks in highly respected positions such as doctors, lawyers, judge, scientist, etc., in ridiculously higher proportion to the whole than exists in the real world. Given the number of hours the average American spends in front of TV, one must fear that many are coming to perceive the fairy-tale world in which black doctors far outnumber black janitors as “reality”
Even more damaging are the stereotypes that The Realist examines. Holding up Archie Bunker, and his many successors, for ridicule is a devilishly clever ploy. Unlike Stepin Fetchit, the stereotype of the ignorant, hateful, narrow-minded “racist” is not presented as the norm for whites; if it were, whites might even resent it. It is, however, shown as the only possible option for any racially conscious white. The implication is clear: the only way not to conform to the stereotype—or at least be perceived as such—is to give up all racial consciousness and be a good multiculturalist who celebrates “diversity.” Subtle, but very powerful coercion!
When The Realist concludes, “Our goal must be to break these associations and show the world that it is we who are the truly critical spirits today and liberals the unthinking bigots,” he is hitting the nail on the head. This is, incidentally, why I am uncomfortable with Mr. Raymond’s criticism, and especially, his marginalization, of Jared Taylor. Though I, too, wish Mr. Taylor would do more to unequivocally distance himself from the element that spewed their anti-Semitic vitriol at the last AR conference, I cannot help but be grateful for what he has done to undermine the very stereotypes addressed in this article. Mr. Taylor is well-educated, articulate, and would never stoop to the use of racial slurs. One can only hope that more individuals like him will come forward. There are many, many whites who, like him, care about their race, yet bear no resemblance to the stereotype. Unfortunately, though, they are often the very ones who most fear being tarred by it, and are cowed into silence.
By on 5/24/07 at 1:00 am
Archie was a straw man that was set up to express supposedly conservative opinions in a stupid way. He was then easily knocked down by meathead who always espoused the “intelligent” liberal bias of the show’s producers.
Archie was also meant to be a caricature of an ordinary American white middle-aged man. To Norman Lear and his Hollywood ilk that was and is the definition of an ignorant buffoonish selfish clod.
The way the stereotypical characters of Archie and the meathead were portrayed in the show was similar to the way George Bush and John Kerry were later portrayed in the news media.
Bush who has the outward charcteristics of an ordinary middle American was constantly portrayed as less intelligent (actually stupid) compared to Kerry the snobbish Liberal Genius.
By on 5/24/07 at 1:07 am
DK noted that Archie is a protagonist. That’s true, but he’s a minstrel. He’s essentially doing “white face”. Just as the laziness and ignorance of Southern Blacks was sanitized into loveable protagonists with the minstel shows, Archie’s bigotry and xenophobia is delivered in such a manner. His bigotry is a character flaw that we are all asked, as an audience, to forgive him for.
Archie was a straw man, as “James Lamb” notes. He was a foil that proposed paleoconservative values and opinions, which were either addressed directly by Meathead or were shown to be erroneous by the events unfolding in the show. A sort of inverted Archie Bunker could be created as an unrelenting egalitarian who retains his views while Blacks steal his television, Hispanics steal his hubcaps, and Asians steal his job.
It reminds me of one of my favorite Nietzsche quotes:
“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
By on 5/24/07 at 2:11 pm
Second Half of My Rant beginning 5/23/07 above—John PM:
I will continue my point regarding Archie Bunker and Tony Soprano, as being similar in reflecting cultural icons representing the “The Totalitarian” personality. However, I will also note some points of difference that I speculate loosely to reflect the differences between the 1960s through 1970s time period and the 1980s through 2007, and ultimately beyond. While I point out that Tony and Archie are similar in representing “over-nostalgic” and domineering heads of households, the key difference between the two is that while Archie Bunker represents an intended buffoonish obstruction to the countercultural revolution, Tony Soprano represents a rather hip, sympathetic, and deadly reaction to its modern mutation, multiculturalism. Oddly, almost with a reactively prophetical quality, Tony achieves this by coming from a upper middleclass Mafia perspective; Archie was after all, only a worker and taxpayer!
Here, we must understand that the counterculture and multiculturalism both promote the irrational and alien, as being equal or superior to the tangible and traditional. In fact, to embrace either of these Marxist based mutations, requires a rejection of reality in favor of fantasy. Here, we find that while those who are of the working and middle classes reflect positively on Archie’s ability to “tell it like it is.” Tony is seen as being similar, with the qualifier that he also, “does what I would like to do, or what needs doing.”
A very big difference there, and one that I feel is lost on the “anointed?” In short, they may very well have set this country unto a path where their lunacies revolving around “utopia” in the Marxist context, beget a mentality of reaction that is equally violent but more popular in terms of Fascism’s appeals against their desired nonwhite “workers” paradise? Well, that is if popular culture, really does reflect national moods and trends?
Take for example, how “protests” by the “enlightened” and “enriching” were handeled on the two shows. In an episode of “All in the Family,” Archie is begged by the “Dingbat” and Gloria to rescue Mike the Meathead and Lionel Jefferson from an anti-Vietnam riot by the hippies they are participants in. Ultimately, Comrades Meathead and Lionel escape the debacle, with Archie being arrested in the police sweep. Very amusing to see Archie locked down with a bunch of freaks, in a jail cell; particularly as he banters, back and forth with them about religion and drugs. The decent, law abiding, taxpayer, subjected to yet another humiliation, by way of his “happening” underlings?
This is not the case with Tony Soprano. He reacts violently and effectively, to protesters from the “multicultural” and “entitled” hoards, he encounters. In an episode titled, “House Arrest,” he unleashes his legions against blacks disrupting a construction site under his control; and in another episode titled “Christopher,” his legions revolt and act on their own, to break up a “Native American” protest against the Montclair, New Jersey Christopher Columbus Parade? Bricks, pipes, bats, knives, guns, and simple guts face off against that which “enriches?”
Indeed:
“Here are the ominous parallels.
Our universities are strongholds of German philosophy disseminating every key idea of the post-Kantian axis, down now to old-world racism and romanticist technology-hatred. Our culture is modernism worn-out but recycled, with heavy infusions of such Weimarian blends as astrology and Marx, or Freud and Dada, or ’humanitarianism’ and horror-worship, along with five decades of corruption built on this kind of base. Our youth activists, those reared on the latest viewpoints at the best universities, are the pre-Hitler youth movement resurrected (this time mostly on the political left an addicted to drugs.)” (Peikoff, pages 292 to 294, 1982.)
Welcome to the Weimarian States of America, how it will all play out?
Only God knows for sure, may He help us all
By on 5/24/07 at 8:41 pm
I find it ironic and somehow refreshing that so many people have fond memories of the Archie character, but most people still loath “the meathead” after so many years. Rob Reiner still maintains that the totally PC character he played on “All In the Family” hopelessly typecast him as that persona for his entire career.
By on 5/24/07 at 9:48 pm
DK, I think the fact that Archie was portrayed as redeemable was part of the whole idea. He was not supposed to be a bad character as much as he was supposed to be ignorant and old fashioned for not being willing to get with the times. It was sort of an encouragment for others to look at what might be their long standing beliefs and see them as ridiculous through the Archie character.
By on 5/30/07 at 4:44 am
Yup. There definitely is a deep unanalyzed malaise in the minds of people today. Kind of like conditioning monkeys to be afraid of the color red, in the same way, these days, with humans its “Youre free to think and do anything you want - but dont approach these areas.
The fallacy is thinking these things - thinking freely, but reserving areas as off-limits, are entirely separate and mutually compatible. But as the percentage of things that matter being marked “No-go zones” has grown - there has been less and less room for “free thought”.
The fallacy is summed up quite succinctly in T. H. White’s wonderful fantasy novel “The Once and Future King”
In it the wizard Merlin changes the young King Arthur, into an ant and sends him exploring in an ant hill. Over the entrance of the ant hill young Arthur comes upon a large sign which reads (in ant language) “EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY!”. That, as it turns out, is an excellent description of the way things work in ant hills - and increasingly in human political, economic and social life.
Viva la Socialism! Viva la Marxism!
P.S I say this even as a non-White!
By on 5/23/07 at 6:42 am