The Authoritarian Personality

27 Feb 2017 16:30

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Perhaps the most empirically-grounded idea to emerge from the Frankfurt School. (Its only competitor is Wittfogel's notion of "hydraulic despotism".) If it's right, it would seem to be only too relevant to our current (2016) predicament.

Recommended:
• Robert Altemeyer, The Authoritarians

To read:
• Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality [Online. Largely rendered obsolete by subsequent work by people like Altemeyer (q.v.), but interesting, and fascinating as an essay by Adorno at exactly the kind of empirical research under scientific protocols which The Dialectic of Enlightenment portrays as so horrid, and a mostly-successful one at that. I really should finish reading it one of these years.]
• Karen Stenner, Authoritarian Dynamic