"The Authoritarians" required reading to understand the teabaggers

[Locrian]

Teabaggers have a psychological makeup, and it's pretty scary. Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians free pdf is an important piece of work in understand what is happening, and what type of a person a TeaBagger is. Or a Michigan Militia member.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Don’t think for a minute this doesn’t concern you personally. Let me ask you, as we’re passing the time here, how many ordinary people do you think an evil authority would have to order to kill you before he found someone who would, unjustly, out of sheer obedience, just because the authority said to? What sort of person is most likely to follow such an order? What kind of official is most likely to give that order, if it suited his purposes? Look at what experiments tell us, as I did.

If, on the other hand, you’re way ahead of me, and believe the extreme right-wing elements in America are still working to take over the country despite the recent election--nay because of it--I think you can still get a lot from this book. The authoritarians aren’t going away.


The studies explain so much about these people. Yes, the research shows they are very aggressive, but why are they so hostile? Yes, experiments show they are almost totally uninfluenced by reasoning and evidence, but why are they so dogmatic? Yes, studies show the Religious Right has more than its fair share of hypocrites, from top to bottom; but why are they two-faced, and how come one face never notices the other? Yes, their leaders can give the flimsiest of excuses and even outright lies about things they’ve done wrong, but why do the rank-and-file believe them? What happens when authoritarian followers find the authoritarian leaders they crave and start marching together?

[tom_paine]

1. More than justthe Teabaggers. The Rushpublics who fund them have been formenting a RW Authoritarian

mentality in this country for at least 30 years.

It's only getting obvious now. And remember, the Teabaggers aren't independant at all, but part and parcel of the Republic Party.

[RKP5637]

2. +1000, n/t

[get the red out]

3. Well said

It is obvious these people just can't hear it when their authority figures prove themselves to be unworthy of trust, these people still listen to Limbaugh and still cling to the "family values" crap. They don't care if it's rational or not.

Frightening stuff.

[mrcheerful]

4. They were around when I was in school back in the 60's, they were the little whinny snots that

tattled and sucked up to teachers, who never questioned anything teacher said or the books said and argued with anyone that put out a different opinion. That is probably why I despise these people so much, they were snots then and the ones I run into today are the same snots they were back in grade school.

[RKP5637]

5. Same here. At one time I thought we, as a nation, had gotten beyond this and

they are still here. I think 8 years of Bush really invigorated them. They are the most obtuse people I've ever encountered.

[SharonAnn]

7. Yes, the Bush years made it cool to be ignorant, misinformed, and belligerent.

[Greyhound]

18. Maybe it was my age (very young), but I believe that the nation was well

along a path of change, I stopped hearing ethnic slurs on a regular basis and when I did the offender was made very uncomfortable, people in general were more accepting of the myriad changes, and things were getting better all around, far from perfect but improving.

The came Raygun and told us it was OK to be as horrible as they wished and the authoritarians did.

[RKP5637]

6. Thanks for posting this!!! n/t

[Vogon_Glory]

8. See also John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience

See also John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience. While it mostly describes the actions of the Dubya/Cheney administration and the Republican-controlled Congresses, it also describes the mindset ver, very well.

[Locrian]

9. sound familiar?

Bobs stuff is right on target:

Chapter 3 is particularly good.

They have not developed and thought through their ideas as much as most people have. Thus almost anything can be found in their heads if their authorities put it there, even stuff that contradicts other stuff. A filing cabinet or a computer can store quite inconsistent notions and never lose a minute of sleep over their contradiction. Similarly a high RWA can have all sorts of illogical, self-contradictory, and widely refuted ideas rattling around in various boxes in his brain, and never notice it.

[groovedaddy]

10. And now what? How do we stop this or do we? Is it possible? "Not all conservatives

are stupid people, but all stupid people are conservative."
Maybe it was the reaction to this among the "middle" that got Obama elected. There may be a recognition among thinking people who don't identify themselves as liberal/progressive, that the trend that put Bush in office (not elected him, because he wasn't)is the wrong way to go. In my mind, the only healthy aspect of conservatism is the questioning of proposed changes along the lines of "does this make sense, given the evidence at hand." Politically, given the quote about stupid people, the g.o.p. has to pander to that demographic and this is exactly what makes them extremely dangerous.

[Locrian]

11. chapter 7 give some good ideas

Question: Is it the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out this rot that
is poisoning our country from within? No, I hope it’s obvious that that’s no solution
at all. It may be just as obvious that social dominators will want to hang onto control
until it is pried from their cold, dead fingers in the last ditch. And authoritarian
followers will prove extremely resistant to change. The more one learns about the
problem, I think, the more one realizes how difficult it will be to change people who
are so ferociously aggressive, and fiercely defensive.

You’re not likely to get anywhere arguing with authoritarians. If you won every
round of a 15 round heavyweight debate with a Double High leader over history,
logic, scientific evidence, the Constitution, you name it, in an auditorium filled with
high RWAs, the audience probably would not change its beliefs one tiny bit.
Authoritarian followers might even cling to their beliefs more tightly, the wronger
they turned out to be. Trying to change highly dogmatic, evidence-immune, groupgripping
people in such a setting is like pissing into the wind.


Reducing fear
Reducing self-righteousness
Nipping the religious roots of ethnocentrism
Teaching children not to trust authorities automatically
Help the followers see how they’re being played for suckers

[RKP5637]

13. I seriously think it is a hard-wired brain function these people have. No amount of

logic and intelligent analysis of situations will change their minds IMO. They have rigid personalities and beliefs. Basically, RW robots manipulated by RW politicians, and this is extremely dangerous. They just march to orders and their rigid belief systems, never questioning or open to new ideas. This type of personality is fodder to grow and control in the hands of a skilled authoritarian dictator. We have seen evidence of this throughout history.

[Locrian]

14. we have

>>We have seen evidence of this throughout history.

Exactly. They are a large part of the population. Meaning they have to be understood and dealt with. The book gives some good advice on how to combat this.

[RKP5637]

15. I'll read it, quite interesting. Thanks again for posting it!!! n/t

[s-cubed]

12. IF YOU HAVEN"T READ THIS, PLEASE DO SO. n/t

[Locrian]

16. not just the followers

It also talks about the authoritarian leaders and their psychological make up. The followers do NOT lead, however with the right "leader" you get Nazi Germany.

[Greyhound]

17. "What is Authoritarianism?"

From the introduction;

Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want--which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I'm going to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.
<snip>
The last reason why you might be interested in the hereafter is that you might want more than just facts about authoritarians, but understanding and insight into why they act the way they do. Which is often mind-boggling. How can they revere those who gave their lives defending freedom and then support moves to take that freedom away? How can they go on believing things that have been disconfirmed over and over again, and disbelieve things that are well established? How can they think they are the best people in the world, when so much of what they do ought to show them they are not? Why do their leaders so often turn out to be crooks and hypocrites? Why do the followers accept the flimsy excuses and even obvious lies that their leaders proclaim, and cling to them so dogmatically? Why are both the followers and the leaders so aggressive that hostility is practically their trademark? Why are both so unaffected by the evil they do? By the time you have finished this book, I think you will understand the reasons. All of this, and much more, fit into place once you see what research has uncovered going on in authoritarian minds.