[extropy-chat] italian football victory

[steven mckenzie]

may I ask, do you feel that possibly people who follow
such psychology give up "rational thinking" and follow
the herd due to laziness or fear?

--- Martin Striz <mstriz at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/11/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> 
> > Same thing with Germany. That Hitler incident was
> a rather radical cure.
> > The more jarring to suddenly see lots of
> aggressive flagwaving everywhere.
> >
> > I think the immunization has started to wear off.
> But I'm genuinely
> > worried about people elsewhere yet immunologically
> naive in respect
> > to nationalism. Let me tell you, that shit can
> really ruin your day.
> 
> How a propos.
> 
> John Dean published a book today about
> authoritarianism and how it
> effects political affiliation.  Dean was a counsel
> to Nixon and a
> self-styled Goldwater conservative.  During the
> Republican takeover of
> the American Congress in 1994, he had many
> conversations with
> Goldwater about the strange turn that the Republican
> Party was making.
>  It was only later, after years of research, that he
> came upon
> information that is still not well publicized:
> decades of social
> science research and hundreds of studies have
> revealed that people
> with "authoritarian personalities" tend
> overwhelmingly to be
> conservative in their political beliefs.
> 
> Having an authoritarian personality doesn't mean
> that one is a
> dominating, authority-type figure.  It means that
> one prefers to have
> authority or authority figures in one's life. 
> Although a small
> percentage of such people are leaders, most of them
> are followers, and
> like to be.  These are people who are rule-bound and
> like structure,
> law and order, police, and (authoritarian) religion.
>  Social
> conservatives in America have risen to dominance by
> virtue of this
> personality type.
> 
> Since whole populations tend to move toward and away
> from such
> authoritarian convictions, Dean (as well as others)
> believe that it is
> partly under environmental control.  Dean suggests
> that such
> personalities like to have enemies, and that having
> perceived enemies
> can foment authoritarian personalities.  It's why
> social conservatives
> can always use some bogeyman (gay marriage, flag
> burning, terrorism,
> etc.) to fire up their followers.  He believes that
> the Cold War
> provided a common enemy which fueled the rise of
> modern conservativism
> in America, and which has given it its particular
> authoritarian,
> social conservative flavor.  Terrorism has been a
> further boon to
> authoritarian people.  These folks will always
> invent enemies for the
> United States.
> 
> He also points to other instances in history when
> this has happened,
> such as Germany and Italy in the 1930s, where plenty
> of enemies were
> invented.  Authoritarian type people need a leader
> in whom they
> believe completely and do not question.  Life is
> black and white.
> There are no shades of gray ("you're either with us,
> or you're against
> us").
> 
> G. Gordon Liddy once said that he would rather be
> shot than snitch on
> Nixon (or was it Reagan?), even if he knew they did
> something wrong.
> That's a rather glaring example of the authoritarian
> mentality.
> Today, many people in American politics ask for
> unquestioning support
> of Bush.  Critics of the president or the country
> are castigated as
> unpatriotic.  There was certainly a dampening of
> public debate after
> 9/11.
> 
> Dean suggests that the authoritarian mentality is
> veering the United
> States dangerously in the direction of other fascist
> countries in the
> past.  Luckily, that meme has only caught 51% of the
> population and
> not 60 or 70%.  Further, the fact that Bush's
> approval ratings are so
> low now may be a sign that the crest of this
> movement has passed.
> 
> As a person who has made no secret of my criticisms
> of Bush and
> conservatives, I have to be careful in considering
> such information.
> Is it easy for me to accept the premise because it
> provides a simple
> explanation for why I think some people are wrong? 
> Certainly reality
> is far more complicated, but the fact that an actual
> conservative
> (someone who held conservative convictions long
> before so-called
> movement conservatism arose in the United States) is
> promulgating this
> view should be worth something.  It certainly fits
> with their
> behavior.
> 
> It's no secret that American conservativism is an
> unholy marriage
> between fiscal and social conservatives, but this
> information puts it
> into a new light.  American conservatism is an
> unholy marriage between
> ideological and personality-driven conservatives.
> 
> Martin
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