The fantasies about Jewish bankers and money-lenders have their
biblical
arche- type in the story of Jesus driving the usurers from the Temple.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
?
Maybe take a hundred years-we are working gradually to- ward it.
"
It is a question whether the idea of a gradual development is compatible with the theory of dialectical materialism officially accepted in Russia, or whether it is indicative of a dubious element in the subject's appreciation
of the "wonderful experiment. " It should be noted that the idea of socialism
as an "experiment" stems from the vernacular of middle-class "common sense" and it tends to replace the traditional socialist concept of class struggle with the image of a kind of joint, unanimous venture-as if society as a whole,
as it is today, were ready to try socialism regardless of the influence of existing property relations. This pattern of thinking is at least inconsistent , with the very same social theory to which our subject seems to subscribe. \ Anyway, he, like any of our other subjects, goes little into matters orJ
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Marxian doctrine or of specific Russian issues, but c. ontents himself with rather a summary positive stand.
Arid then there is the idea of the "greatest power. " That this idea is not exceptional among low scorers, in other words, that a positive stand toward Russia may have something to do with the Russian successes on the battle- fields and in international competition, rather than with the system, is cor- roborated by the San Quentin inmate M6z9, who scores low onE and F but. high on PEC, the man who does not believe in any real utopia:
"Well, Russia is undoubtedly one of the most powerful nations in the world today. They've risen to power in the last few years and made more progress than any other country. "
Our general impression concerning our subjects' attitude towards Russia may be summed up as follows. ~ the vast majority of Americans, the very existence of the Soviet Union constitutes a source of continuous uneasiness. The emergence and survival of a system that has done away with free enter- prise seems to them a threat to the basic tenets of the culture of this coun- try, to the "American way," by the mere fact that it has shattered the belief in liberal economy and liberal political organization as a "natural" eternal phenomenon which excludes any other rational form of society. On the other hand, the success of Russia, particularly her performance during the war, appeals strongly to the American belief that values can be tested by the outcome, by whether they "work"-which is a profoundly liberalistic idea by itse~The way our subjects cope with this inconsistency of evaluation differentiates between high and low scorers. To the former, the Soviet Union, incompatible with their frame of reference, should be done away with as the extreme expression of the "foreign," of what is also in a psychological sense "strange," more than anything else. Even the fact that Russia has proved successful in some respects is put into the service of this fantasy: frequently, Russian power is exaggerated, with a highly ambivalent l! ~dertone com-:_, parable to the stereotypes about "Jewish world power. " To the low scorerll Russia is rarely Ips "strange"-an attitude which has doubtless some basis in reality. But theyj try to master this sense of strangenes0in a different way,~by taking an objecnve attitude of "appreciation," coriibining understanding with detachment and a dash of superiority. When they express more out- spoken sympathies for the Soviet Union, they do so by implicitly translating Russian phenomena into ideas more familiar to Americans, often by present- ing the Russian system as something more harmless and "democratic" than it is, as a kind of pioneering venture somehow reminiscent of our own tradi- tion. Yet indices of a certain inner aloofness are rarely missing. The low scorers' pro-Russian sympathies seem to be of a somewhat indirect nature, either by rigid acceptance of an extraneous "ticket" or by identification based on theoretical thinking and moral reflections rather than on an imme-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MATERIAL 723
diate feeling that this is "my" cause. (Their appraisal of Russia frequently assumes an air of hesitant, benevolent expectancy-let us see how they will manage. This contains both an element of authentic rationality and the po- tential of their swinging against Russia under the cover of handy rationaliza- tions if pressure of public opinion should urge such a chang~
5. COMMUNISM
The complex, Russia, is closely associated with the complex of communism in the minds of our subjects. This is all ? the more the case since communism has ceased to be in the public mind an entirely new form of society, based on a complete break in the economic setup, and has become bluntly identified with the Russian government and Russian influence on interna- tional politics. Hardly any reference to the basic issue of nationalization of the means of production as a part of the communist program has been found in our sample-a negative result which is significant enough with regard to the historical dynamics to which the concept of communism has been sub- jected during the -last two decades.
Among the high scorers the only feature of the old idea that seems to have survived is the "bogy" of communism. The more the latter concept is emptied of any specific content, the more it is being transformed into a receptacle for all kinds of hostile projections, many of them on an infantile level somehow reminiscent of the presentation of evil forces in comic strips. Practically all features of "high" thinking are absorbed by this imagery. The vagueness of the notion of communism, which makes it an unknown and inscrutable quan- tity, may even contribute to the negative affects attached to it.
Among the crudest expressions of these feelings is that of our insect toxi- cologist M zo8, by whom the problem of communism is stated in terms of plain ethnocentrism:
(Why is he against communism? ) "Well, it is foreign. Socialism, o. k. -you re- spect a man who is a socialist but a communist comes from a foreign country and he has no business here. "
Fzzz, who scores high onE, middle on F, and low on PEC, is a young girl who wants to become a diplomat because she is "mad at England and Rus- sia. " Her idea of communism has an involuntarily parodistic ring:
(Political outgroups? ) "Fascists and communists. I don't like the totalitarian ideas of the fascists, the centralization of the communists. In Russia nothing is private, everything goes to one man. They have violent ways of doing things. "
To the mind of this woman, the idea of political dictatorship has turned into the bogy of a kind of economic supra-individualism, just as if Stalin claimed ownership of her typewriter.
By a similarly irrational twist another high scorer, lvf664B, an uneducated
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and unintelligent sex offender of the San Quentin group, with high scores on all scales, simply associates communism with the danger of war:
"If labor keeps getting more power, we'll be like Russia. That's what causes wars. "
The complete irrationality, not to say idiocy, of the last three examples shows what vast psychological resources fascist propaganda can rely. on when denouncing a more or less imaginary communism without taking the
,trouble to discuss any real political or economic issues. ' ~If representatives of this attitude enter upon any argumentation at all, it is, the last examples indicate, centered in the facile, though not completely spurious identification of communism and fascism which displaces hostility
against the defeated enemy upon the foe to be.
Low scorers are not immune in this respect. Thus the low-scoring student-
minister M910 is of the following opinion:
(How do you feel about R? ssia's government? ) "I think there is very little dif- ference between fascism and communism as it's practiced in Russia. The 1936 Constitution is a marvelous document. I think it's five hundred years ahead of our Constitution because it guarantees social rights instead of individual rights but when man hasn't any rights except as a member of the Communist Party. . . . I think it's capitalistic. . . . (What is the nature of your objections to Russia? ) Well, first of all, I think it was Russia that carried the ball in entering this veto power into the UNO which I think will be the death of the thing right now. . . . Russia has got the things right where she wants them. We think we're the leaders but we fool ourselves. . . . " (Subject objects strongly to deceitful diplomacy. )
High scorers who make less intellectual effort simply find communism not individualistic enough. The standard phraseology they employ contrasts nicely with the belief in spiritual independence which they profess. We quote as an example Fzo6, a high scorer of the Public Speaking Class group, a young teacher:
(Political outgroups? ) "Communists have some good ideas but I don't think too much of them. They don't give the individuals enough mind of their own. "
Sometimes the identification of communism and fascism is accompanied by paranoid twists in the Elders of Zion style. M345, our radar field engi- neer:
(What do you think of the P. A. C. ? ) "Never found any definite information on the C. I. O. . . . but . . . C. I. O. seems the agency to turn international, certainly has got all the earmarks, not because of being labor union, but just because of the way they compare. " (Subject compares communism to Hitler in Mein Kampf, telling exactly what planned to do and how, and then doing it. ) "C. I. O. has fol- lowed the lines of action very similar to pronounced policies of Comintern-even their name, Congress for Industrial Workers; not much faith in the communists succeeding. Their aim is tight little control of their own group. "
The mix-up of Comintern, CIO, and Mein Kampf is the appropriate climate for panic, and subsequent violent action.
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 725
But this climate by no-means prevails. There is one quite frequently noted way of dealing with the problem of communism which safeguards the aspects of detached objectivity while allowing for good-natured rejection. It reminds one of the story of the boy who, when offered some very sour dish and asked whether he liked it answered: "Excellent-when I'll be grown up. " Communism is a good thing for the others, particularly for "those foreigners," from whom it has been imported anyway. This technique is employed by both high and low scorers. 5008, the liberal-minded Jefferson descendant:
"The communists may be able to do something in the Soviet Union, but they would utterly fail here. "
In M zz5, the low-scoring fraternity man, the argument has a noticeable taint of contempt for the have-nots. This is the man who wants "none of this Marxian stuff. "
". . . but in poorer countries, like in Russia, Germany, etc. , it's necessary in some modified form; but not in America. W e have too much here already, that is we are too developed already. "
The subject is not struck by the idea that a collectivistic economy might be easier in an industrially highly advanced, mature country, rather than more difficult. To him, communism is simply identified with enhancement of ma- terial productive powers through more efficient organization. He seems to be afraid of overproduction as if this concept would still make sense in an economy no longer dependent upon the contingencies of the market.
Even the extreme low scorer M z206a, of the Maritime School group, who believes that America will eventually become a socialistic country,
thinks that Russia has a wonderful system of government-for Russia-"though I don't think we could transplant its system to this country . . . though we should watch her and get ideas to build our own country better. "
In this case the argument is mitigated by an element of thoughtfulness which is in accordance with the stand taken by this subject with regard to the Communist Party in this country:
"Well, I don't know a great deal about it. I believe that if a man wants to be a communist, that's not only his privilege, but his duty . . . to try and convince as many people as he can. . . . "Subject objects vigorously to red-baiting tactics.
"I think that Russia will be the most democratic country in the world in time. . . . Joe has been a little ruthless at times, but. . . . "
Sometimes the argument is fused with the idea that socialism would not be "practical," for purely economic reasons which are mostly taken from the very sphere of a profit system which is supposed to be replaced under socialism by an economic organization moulded after the needs of the population. F359, the previously (pp. 6r6, 69o) quoted high-scoring account- ant in a government department:
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Subject thinks that communism is all right for Russia, but not for this country, although the trend seems to be more and more that way. She believes in private ownership of property and the private enterprise system. She considers it more efficient. She is not so sure about government ownership of public utilities such as water, etc. She thinks that they probably operate better under private ownership, that the costs are lower.
The interviews of other subjects show an unmistakably condescending overtone of this same argument, such as M107, a medical student who scores high onE but middle on F and PEC:
"We can cooperate with Russia; if they want communism they have to have it. "
This type of liberal approach, of which, incidentally, the Hitler regime profited during the whole Chamberlain era of noninterference, is not as broad-minded as it may appear. It often hides the conviction that there is no objective truth in politics, that every country, as every individual, may
\ behave as it likes and that the only thing that counts is success. It is precisely LJ:bis pragmatization of politics which ultimately define's fascist philosophy.
Obviously, the relationship between anticommunism and fascist potential as measured by our scales should not be oversimplified. In some of our earlier studies the correlation between anti-Semitism and anticommunism was very high,8 but there is reason to believe that it would not be so high today, not, at least, at the surface level. During the last several years all the propaganda machinery of the country has been devoted to promoting anticommunist feeling in the sense of an irrational "scare" and there are probably not many people, except followers of the "party line," who have been able to resist the incessant ideological pressure. At the same time, during the past two or three years it may have become more "conventional" to be overtly opposed to anti-Semitism, if the large number of magazine articles, books, and films
with wide circulation can be regarded as symptomatic of a trend. The under- lying character structure has little bearing on such fluctuations. If they could be ascertained, they would demonstrate the extreme importance of propaganda in political matters. Propaganda, when directed to the antidemo- cratic potential in the people, determines to a large extent the choice of the social objects of psychological aggressiveness.
s Cf. Levinson and Sanford (71).
? CHAPTER XVIII
SOME ASPECTS OF RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY AS REVEALED IN THE INTERVIEW MATERIAL T. W. Adorno
A. INTRODUCTION
The relationship between prejudice and religion played a relatively minor role in our research. This may be due in a large part to the nature of our sample. It did not include any specific religious groups nor was it drawn from geographical areas such as the Bible Belt or cities with a heavily concentrated Irish-Catholic population in which religious ideology has considerable social importance. If research along the lines of the present work should be carried through in such areas, the religious factor might easily come to the fore to a much greater extent than in the present study.
Apart from this limitation, there is another and more fundamental one. Religion does not play such a decisive role within the frame of mind of most people as it once did; only rarely does it seem to account for . their social attitudes and opinions. This at least was indicated by the present results. The quantitative relationships obtained (Chapter VI) are not particularly strik- ing, and although part of the interview schedule was devoted specifically to religion, it cannot be said that the material gathered in this part of the inter- views is very rich. On an overt level at least, religious indifference seems to put this whole sphere of ideology somewhat into the background; there can be no question but that it is less affect-laden than most of the other ideological areas under consideration and that the traditional equation be- tween religious "fanaticism" and fanatical prejudice no longer holds good.
Yet, there is reason enough to devote some close attention to our data on religion, scarce though they may be. The considerable part played by actual or former ministers in spreading fascist propaganda and the continuous use they make of the religious medium strongly suggest that the general trend toward religious indifference does not constitute altogether a break between religious persuasion and our main problem. Although religion may no longer stimulate open fanaticism against those who do not share one's own belief,
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we are led to suspect that on a deeper, more unconscious level the religious heritage, the carry-over of old belief and the identification with certain denominations, still make themselves felt.
Our approach was guided by certain theoretical considerations inherent in our general frame of reference. In order to give relief to the focus of our observations, it is appropriate to indicate the more fundamental of these theoretical reflections.
It was expected from the very beginning that the relations between religious ideology and ethnocentrism would be complex. On the one hand the Christian doctrine of universal love and the idea of "Christian Humanism" is opposed to prejudice. This doctrine is doubtless one of the major historical presup- positions for the recognition of minorities as sharing equal rights with ma- jorities "in the sight of God. " The Christian relativization of the natural, the extreme emphasis on the "spirit," forbids any tendency to regard natural characteristics such as "racial" traits as ultimate values or to judge man according to his descent.
On the other hand, Christianity as the religion of the "Son" contains an implicit antagonism against the religion of the "Father" and its surviving witnesses, the Jews. This antagonism, continuous since St. Paul, is enhanced by the fact that the Jews, by clinging to their own religious culture, rejected the religion of the Son and by the fact that the New Testament puts upon them the blame for Christ's death. It has been pointed out again and again by great theologians, from Tertullian and Augustine to Kierkegaard, that the acceptance of Christianity by the Christians themselves contains a prob- lematic and ambiguous element, engendered by the paradoxical nature of the doctrine of God becoming man, the Infinite finite. Unless this element is con- sciously put into the center of the religious conception, it tends to promote hostility against the outgroup. As Samuel ( ro I) has pointed out, the "weak" Christians resent bitterly the openly negative attitude of the Jews toward the religion of the Son, since they feel within themselves traces of this nega- tive attitude based upon the paradoxical, irrational nature of their creed-an attitude which they do not dare to admit and which they must therefore put under a heavy taboo in others.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that many of the usual rationalizations of anti-Semitism originate within Christianity or at least have been amal- gamated with Christian motives. The fight against the Jews seems to be mod- eled after the fight between the Redeemer and the Christian Devil. Joshuah Trachtenberg (I I9) has given detailed evidence that the imagery of the Jew is largely a secularization of the medieval imagery of the Devil.
The fantasies about Jewish bankers and money-lenders have their biblical arche- type in the story of Jesus driving the usurers from the Temple. The idea of the Jewish intellectual as a sophist is in keeping with the Christian denuncia- tion of the Pharisee. The Jewish traitor who betrays not only his master but
? RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
also the ingroup to which he has been admitted, is Judas. These motifs are enhanced by more unconscious trends such as are expressed in the idea of the crucifix and the sacrifice of blood. Although these latter ideas have been more or less successfully replaced by "Christian Humanism," their deeper psychological roots have still to be reckoned with. l
In attempting to evaluate the influence of such elements of religion upon the existence or absence of prejudice today, one has to take into considera- tion the position in which Christianity presently finds itself: it is faced with an "indifference" which often seems to make it altogether unimportant. The Christian religion has been deeply affected by the process of Enlightenment and the conquest of the scientific spirit. The "magical" elements of Chris- tianity as well as the factual basis of Christian belief in biblical history have been profoundly shaken. This, however, does not mean that Christian religion has been abolished. Although largely emasculated in its profoundest claims, it has maintained at least part of the social functions acquired throughout the centuries. This means that it has largely become neutralized. The shell of Christian doctrine, above all its social authority and also a number of more or less isolated elements of its content, is preserved and "consumed" in a haphazard way as a "cultural good" like patriotism or traditional art.
This neutralization of religious beliefs is strikingly exemplified by the fol- lowing statement of Mzog, a high-scoring Roman Catholic who attends church regularly. He writes on his questionnaire that he considers religion a
"thoroughly important part of existence, perhaps it should occupy 2 to 5 per cent of leisure time. "
The relegation of religion, which was once regarded as the most essential sphere of life, to "leisure," as well as the time allotment made for it and, above all, the fact that it is subsumed under a calculated time schedule and referred to in terms of per cent is symbolic of the profound changes which have taken place with regard to the prevailing attitude towards religion.
It may be assumed that such neutralized residues of Christianity as that indicated in M zag's statement are largely severed from their basis in serious belief and substantial individual experience. Therefore, they rarely pro- duce individual behavior that is different from what is to be expected from the prevailing patterns of civilization. However, some of the formal proper- ties of religion, such as the rigid antithesis of good and evil, ascetic ideals, emphasis upon unlimited effort on the part of the individual, still exercise considerable power. Severed from their roots and often devoid of any spe- cific conte? nt, these formal constituents are apt to be congealed into mere formulae. Thus, they assume an aspect of rigidity and intolerance such as we expect to find in the prejudiced person.
1 A detailed theoretical analysis of the relationship between Christianity and anti- Semitism has been contributed by Max Horkheimer and T . W . Adorno (53).
? THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
73?
The dissolution of positive religion and its preservation in a noncommittal
ideological form are due to social processes. \Vhile religion has been deprived of the intrinsic claim of truth, it has been gradually transformed into "social cement. " The more this cement is needed for the mai~tenance of the status quo and the more dubious its inherent truth becomes, the more obstinately is its authority upheld and the more its hostile, destructive and negative fea- tures come to the fore. The transformation of religion into an agency of social conformity makes it fall in line with most other conformist tendencies. Adherence to Christianity under such conditions easily lends itself to abuse; to subservience, overadjustment, and ingroup loyalty as an ideology which covers up hatred against the disbeliever, the dissenter, the Jew. Belonging to a denomination assumes an air of aggressive fatality, similar to that of being born as a member of one particular nation. Membership in any particular religious group tends to be reduced to a fairly abstract ingroup-outgroup re- lationship within the general pattern brought out by the foregoing discus- sion of ethnocentrism.
These theoretical formulations are not intended as hypotheses for which crucial tests could be provided by our research; rather, they furnish some of the background against which the observations now to be reported may plausibly be interpreted.
B. GENERAL OBSERV A TIONS
There is much in the interview material to support the view, suggested by findings from the questionnaire, that the more religion becomes conveQtion- alized, the more it falls in line with the general outlook of the ethnocentric individual. An illustration of this point is afforded by the following excerpt from the interview of F5o54, a woman who scored high on the ethnocentrism scale.
The subject seems to have accepted a set of rather dogmatic moral codes which makes her regard people, especially "youngsters who call themselves atheists" as falling outside the circle in which she wants to move. She made a point of admitting (confidentially) that one of the main reasons she was looking forward to moving away from Westwood was that she could thereby get her youngest daughter away from the influence of the neighbor's boy, who is an atheist because his father tells him "religion is a lot of hooey. " She is also distressed, because her eldest daughter "just won't go to church. "
From the above it is evident that she is quite in agreement with organized religion and tends to be a conformist in religious matters. Christian ethics and its moral codes are regarded as absolutes; and deviations are to be frowned upon or punished.
This account suggests that there is a connection between conventional religious rigidity and an almost complete absence of what might be called personally "experienced" belief. The same holds for the high-scoring man
? RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
731
5057, a person who sticks to the Church although he "does not believe in a personal God. "
The subject believes that most Protestant religions are very much the same. He selected Christian Science because "it is a quieter religion than most. " He started going to Unity sunday school while living with his grandparents and liked the Unity Church, which, in his estimation, presents a mild form of Christian Science. He joined the Christian Science Church when he married, inasmuch as his wife's family and his wife are all Christian Scientists. "Religion should not be allowed to interfere with the ordinary essentials. However, religion should restrain you from overindulgences of any kind, such as drinking, gambling, or anything to excess. "
A high-scoring young woman, F103, says "My parents let us make our own choice; just so we go to church. " There we see the lack of any interest in the content of religion; one goes to church because "it's the thing to do" and because one wants to please one's parents. A final example is afforded by an- other prejudiced young woman, F104, who remarks "I have never known any people who were not religious. I have known one fellow who was waver- ing, and he was a very morbid person. " The idea here seems to be that one goes to church in order to express one's normality or at least to be classed with normal people.
These examples help us to understand why persons or groups who "take religion seriously" in a more internalized sense are likely to be opposed to ethnocentrism. What proved to be true in Germany, where "radical" Christian movements, such as the dialectical theology of Karl Barth, coura- geously opposed Nazism, seems to hold good beyond the theological "elite. " The fact that a person really worries about the meaning of religion as such, when he lives in a general atmosphere of "neutralized" religion, is indicative of a nonconformist attitude. It may easily lead toward opposition to the "regular fellow," for whom it is as much "second nature" to attend church as it is not to admit Jews to his country club. Moreover, the stress on the specific content of religion, rather than on the division between those who belong and those who do not belong to the Christian faith, necessarily ac- centuates the motives of love and compassion buried under conventionalized religious patterns. The more "human" and concrete a person's relation to religion, the more human his approach to those who "do not belong" is likely to be: their sufferings remind the religious subjectivist of the idea of martyrdom inseparably bound up with his thinking about Christ.
To put it bluntly, the adherent of what Kierkegaard, a hundred years ago, called "official Christianity" is likely to be ethnocentric although the religious organizations with which he is affiliated may be officially opposed to it, whereas the "radical" Christian is prone to think and to act differently.
However, it should not be forgotten that extreme religious subjectivism, with its one-sided emphasis on religious experience set against the objectified
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Church, may also under certain conditions fall in line with the potentially fascist mentality. Religious subjectivism that dispenses with any binding prin- ciples provides the spiritual climate for other authoritative claims. Moreover, the sectarian spirit of people who carry this outlook to an extreme sometimes results in a certain affinity for the aggressive ingroup mood of movements generally condemned as "crack-pot," as well as for those underlying anarchi- cal trends which characterize the potentially fascistic individual. This aspect of religious subjectivism plays an important role in the mentality of fascist agitators who operate in a religious setting. 2
Among those who reject religion, a number of significant differences may be noted. As our quantitative results have shown, no mechanical identification of the non- or anti-religious person with the "low scorer" can be made. There are, to be sure, "agnostic" or "atheistic" persons whose persuasions are part and parcel of a universally progressive attitude which holds for minority questions. The actual meaning of this "progressiveness," however, may vary widely. Whereas anti-religious progressives are definitely opposed to preju- dice under present conditions, when it comes to the question of susceptibility to fascist propaganda, it makes all the difference whether they are "ticket thinkers" who subscribe wholesale to tolerance, atheism, and what not, or whether their attitude toward religion can be called an autonomous one based on thinking of their own.
Moreover, it may turn out to be an important criterion of susceptibility whether a person is opposed to religion as an ally of repression and reaction, in which case we should expect him to be relatively unprejudiced, or whether he adopts an attitude of cynical utilitarianism and rejects everything that is not "realistic" and tangible, in which case we should expect him to be preju- diced. There also exists a fascist type of irreligious person who has become completely cynical after having been disillusioned with regard to religion, and who talks about the laws of nature, survival of the fittest and the rights of the strong. The true candidates of neo-paganism of the fascist extreme are recruited from the ranks of these people. A good example is the high-scoring man 5064, the Boy Scout leader, discussed in Chapter XVI. Asked about reli-
gion, he confesses to "worshiping nature. " He exalts athletics and camp col- lectivity, probably on the basis of latent homosexuality. He is the clearest example we have of the syndrome involving pagan pantheism, belief in "power," the idea of collective leadership, and a generally ethnocentric and pseudoconservative ideology.
It is against the background of these general observations on the structure of the relationship between religion and modern prejudice that the following, more specific observations may_ be understood.
2 The interaction between revivalism, religious subjectivism, and fascist propaganda has been analyzed in detail by T . W . Adorno (3).
? RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
733
C. SPECIFIC ISSUES
1. THE FUNCTION OF RELIGION IN HIGH AND LOW SCORERS
Evidence in support of our hypothesis concerning "neutralized" religion is offered by a trait which seems to occur rather frequently in our interview material. It is the disposition to view religion as a means instead of an end. Religion is accepted, not because of its objective truth, but on account of its value in realizing goals that might also be achieved by other means. This at- titude falls in line with the general tendency toward subordination and re- nunciation of one's own judgment so characteristic of the mentality of those who follow fascist movements. Acceptance of an ideology is not based upon understanding of or belief in its content but rather upon what immediate use can be made of it, or upon arbitrary decisions. Here lies one of the roots of the stubborn, conscious, and manipulative irrationalism of the Nazis, as it was summed up by Hitler's saying: "Man kann nur fur eine Idee sterben, die man nicht versteht. " (One can die only for an idea which one does not under- stand. ) This is by its intrinsic logic tantamount to contempt for truth per se. One selects a "Weltanschauung" after the pattern of choosing a particularly well advertised commodity, rather than for its real quality. This attitude, applied to religion, must necessarily produce ambivalence, for religion claims to express absolute truth. If it is accepted for some other reason alone, this claim is implicitly denied and thereby religion itself rejected, even while being accepted. Thus, rigid confirmation of religious values on account of their "usefulness" works against them by necessity.
Subordination of religion to extrinsic aims is common in both high and low scorers; by itself, it does not appear to differentiate between them. It seems, however, that prejudiced and unprejudiced subjects do differ with respect to the kinds of goals that are emphasized and the ways in which religion is utilized in their service.
High scorers, more often than low scorers, seem to make use of religious ideas in order to gain some immediate practical advantage or to aid in the manipulation of other people. An example of the way in which formalized religion is adhered to as a means for maintaining social status and social rela- tionshibs is afforded by the highly prejudiced young woman, F2oz, who is very frankly interested in "a stable society" in which class lines are clearly drawn.
"I was brought up in the Episcopalian Church through going to a school for girls. It's nice. My friends go. It's more of a philosophy (than Christian Science); it raises your standards. The philosophy of the Episcopalian Church follows the pattern of all Protestant churches. It takes in the upper classes and gives them a religion or makes it a little nearer. "
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Ethnocentric subjects frequently think of religion as a practical aid in the
mental hygiene of the individual. The statement of F109 is characteristic.
"I don't understand religion. It's like a fairy tale to me. I don't know if I believe in God. There must be one but it is hard to believe it. Religion gives you something to hold on to, to base your life on. "
If religion only serves the need for something "to hold on to," this need may also be served by anything which provides the individual with absolute au- thority, such as the fascist state. There is a strong probability that fascism played exactly the same role with German womanhood which was formally exercised by their belief in positive religion. Psychologically, fascist hier- archies may function largely as secularizations and substitutes of ecclesiastical ones. It is not accidental that Nazism arose in Southern Germany with its strong Roman-Catholic tradition.
M zz8, a moderately high scorer, shows clearly the element of arbitrari- ness in his religious belief, mixed up with pseudoscientific statements which take the stamina out of this belief.
"I am willing to believe in the existence of a God. Something I can't explain any- way. Was it Darwin who said the world started with whirling gas? Well, who created that? Where did the start of it come from? That of course has little to do with church ritual. " (He has stated just before that the church "is pretty im- portant. ")
There is no logical i~terconnection between this reasoning and the subject's adherence to positive Christianity. Consequently the continuation of the passage reveals by its sophistry the aspect of insincerity in conventionalized religion which leads easily to malicious contempt for the values one officially subscribes to. M zz8 goes on to say:
"I believe in the power of prayer even if it's just in the satisfaction of the indi- vidual performing it. I don't know if there is any direct communication but it helps the individual, so I'm for it. It's also a chance for introspection; to stop and look at yourself. "3
The approach to religion for extraneous reasons is probably not so much an expression of the subject's own wants and needs as an expression of his opinion that religion is good for others, helps to keep them content, in short, can be used for manipulative purposes. Recommending religion to others makes it easier for a person to be "in favor" of it without any actual identifica- tion with it. The cynicism of the central European administrators of the
3 This attitude, that of a homespun psychologist as it were, can also be found in low scorers. The characteristic configuration to be found in high scQrers, however, seems to be the unresolved contradiction between a critical attitude toward religion as an objectiv- ity and a positive attitude toward it for purely subjective reasons. It is characteristic of the prejudiced mentality as a whole that he stops thinking at certain contradictions and leaves them as they are, which implies both intellectual defeatism and authoritarian sub- missiveness. This mechanism of arbitrarily giving up processes by command of the ego, as it were, is often misinterpreted as "stupidity. "
734
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735
nineteenth century who taught that religion is a good medicine for the masses, seems to have been to a certain extent democratized. Numerous mem- bers of the masses themselves proclaim that religion is good for the masses, whereas they make for themselves, as individuals, a kind of mental reserva- tion. There is a strong similarity between these appreciations of religion and a trait which played a large role in Nazi Germany. There, innumerable per- sons exempted themselves privately from the ruling ideology and talked about~"they" when discussing the Party. The fascist-minded personality, it seems, can manage his life only by splitting his own ego into several agencies, some of which fall in line with the official doctrine, whilst others, heirs to the old superego, protect him from mental unbalance and allow him to maintain himself as an individual. Splits of this kind become manifest in the uncon- trolled associations of uneducated and naive persons, such as the rather me- dium-scoring man M62g, who is serving a life sentence in San Quentin
prison. He makes the extraordinary statement:
"I believe, personally, I have a religion that hasn't been defined so far as I know in any books yet. I believe that religion has a value for people who believe in it. I think it's used as an escape mechanism by those who use it. "
The illogical way in which this man has made a sedative of religion can be accounted for without much psychological interpretation by the fact that he spent nineteen months in condemned row.
More sophisticated persons sometimes have to deal with the same conflict. An example is the moderately high woman, 5059, who rejects atheism because "an atheistic funeral was so cold. " She simply denies any contradictions be- tween science and religion, calling the idea of a contradiction a "malevolent invention," thus apparently projecting her own uneasiness about this conflict upon those who speak it out. This is similar to the mentality of the Nazi who puts the blame for social defects on the critique of our social order.
It must now be pointed out that low scorers also often accept religion, not because of any intrinsic truth that it may hold for them, but because it may serve as a means for furthering human aims. An example of such practical religion is the following excerpt from the interview with a woman student of journalism, F126, who obtained extremely low scores on both the A-S and the E s,cales.
Family were moderate church-goers. She rarely goes now. However, she has much respect for religion and seems to feel that it might be developed into some- thing that would give people that faith and understanding for each other that is lacking. "I don't know what else could give people something to hold onto, some purpose in life. They seem to need something to believe in. Some of us seem to have a love for people without that, but not very many. "
In one sense this way of looking at religion has something in common with the externalized attitudes described above. However, it is our impression that
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY 1
l when the practical approach to religion appears in the thinking of the low l
'
scorer its content, or its context, can usually be distinguished from what is found in the thinking of the high scorer. Thus, although the young woman just quoted believes that religion is good for people, gives them "something to hold onto," she seems to mean that they need it at least for a humane and ideal purpose, that is, so that they may have more "understanding for each other," not simply in order to get along better or to function more efficiently. Low as well as high scorers are likely to consider that religion contributes to the mental hygiene of the individual; but whereas the high scorers charac- teristically indicate that it is good for other people because they are chronically weak, and possibly good for themselves in times of acute external stress ("fox-hole religion"), the low scorers are more likely to think of religion in internalized terms, as a means for reducing hatred, resolving inner conflicts,
relieving anxiety, and the like. Practically never do we encounter a low scorer who conceives of religion primarily in terms of external practical utility-as an aid to success, to status and power, or to a sense of being in accord with conventional values.
2. BELIEF IN GOD, DISBELIEF IN IMMORTALITY
The neutralization of religion is accompanied by its dissection. Just as emphasis on the practical uses of religion tends to sever religious truth from religious authority, so the specific contents of religion are continually sub- mitted to a process of selection and adaptation. The interview material sug- gests that the tendency to believe selectively in religion is a distinguishing feature of our prejudiced subjects. A fairly common phenomenon among them is belief in God accompanied by disbelief in immortality. Two examples
follow. In the case of 5009, a devout Baptist, the interviewer reports: sincerely feels deeply religious, believes in God, but has, as an educated man,
occasional doubts concerning the life after death. And in the case of 5002:
still is :i "Christian," believes in God, would like to believe in life after death, but has doubts and thinks that a sincere religious revival or a new religious myth would be a good thing for the world.
Particularly common are statements to the effect that interviewees regard themselves as religious, as followers of the church, but disagree with "some of its teachings," which sometimes refers to miracles, sometimes to immor- tality. This outlook seems corroborative of an underlying pattern of consid- erable significance the elements of which have been established in our psycho- logical analyses. The abstract idea of God is accepted as an expansion of the father idea, whereas general destructiveness makes itself felt in a reaction against the hope for the individual expressed by the dogma of immortality. Subjects with this point of view want a God to exist as the absolute authority
? RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY IN INTERVIE"W MA TERIAL
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to which th<';y can bow, but 'they wish the individual to perish completely. The concept of God underlying this way of thinking is that of the absolute essence of punitiveness. It is therefore not astonishing that religious leanings of this particular brand are frequent in the high scorers among our group
of prison inmates . (cf. Chapter XXI).
M627, who is serving a life sentence for rape, is "having trouble with reli-
gion" and does not believe that "there should be a set way of worship. " But he believes, in spit~ of an undertone of religious rebelliousness,
"that every man should have his own way of worship as long as he believes in a power greater than himself. "
This power has the form of external authority, but remains completely ab- stract, nothing but the projective concept of power as such.
"Well, I have heard so many fellows talk about the powers they believed in . . . and I tried to recognize the power in myself and just couldn't . . . read all kinds of religious books . . . but still kind of foggy. "
The same line of thought is expressed by M656A, who is serving a term for forgery, "Robert" in Chapter XXI.
It is a question whether the idea of a gradual development is compatible with the theory of dialectical materialism officially accepted in Russia, or whether it is indicative of a dubious element in the subject's appreciation
of the "wonderful experiment. " It should be noted that the idea of socialism
as an "experiment" stems from the vernacular of middle-class "common sense" and it tends to replace the traditional socialist concept of class struggle with the image of a kind of joint, unanimous venture-as if society as a whole,
as it is today, were ready to try socialism regardless of the influence of existing property relations. This pattern of thinking is at least inconsistent , with the very same social theory to which our subject seems to subscribe. \ Anyway, he, like any of our other subjects, goes little into matters orJ
? 722
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Marxian doctrine or of specific Russian issues, but c. ontents himself with rather a summary positive stand.
Arid then there is the idea of the "greatest power. " That this idea is not exceptional among low scorers, in other words, that a positive stand toward Russia may have something to do with the Russian successes on the battle- fields and in international competition, rather than with the system, is cor- roborated by the San Quentin inmate M6z9, who scores low onE and F but. high on PEC, the man who does not believe in any real utopia:
"Well, Russia is undoubtedly one of the most powerful nations in the world today. They've risen to power in the last few years and made more progress than any other country. "
Our general impression concerning our subjects' attitude towards Russia may be summed up as follows. ~ the vast majority of Americans, the very existence of the Soviet Union constitutes a source of continuous uneasiness. The emergence and survival of a system that has done away with free enter- prise seems to them a threat to the basic tenets of the culture of this coun- try, to the "American way," by the mere fact that it has shattered the belief in liberal economy and liberal political organization as a "natural" eternal phenomenon which excludes any other rational form of society. On the other hand, the success of Russia, particularly her performance during the war, appeals strongly to the American belief that values can be tested by the outcome, by whether they "work"-which is a profoundly liberalistic idea by itse~The way our subjects cope with this inconsistency of evaluation differentiates between high and low scorers. To the former, the Soviet Union, incompatible with their frame of reference, should be done away with as the extreme expression of the "foreign," of what is also in a psychological sense "strange," more than anything else. Even the fact that Russia has proved successful in some respects is put into the service of this fantasy: frequently, Russian power is exaggerated, with a highly ambivalent l! ~dertone com-:_, parable to the stereotypes about "Jewish world power. " To the low scorerll Russia is rarely Ips "strange"-an attitude which has doubtless some basis in reality. But theyj try to master this sense of strangenes0in a different way,~by taking an objecnve attitude of "appreciation," coriibining understanding with detachment and a dash of superiority. When they express more out- spoken sympathies for the Soviet Union, they do so by implicitly translating Russian phenomena into ideas more familiar to Americans, often by present- ing the Russian system as something more harmless and "democratic" than it is, as a kind of pioneering venture somehow reminiscent of our own tradi- tion. Yet indices of a certain inner aloofness are rarely missing. The low scorers' pro-Russian sympathies seem to be of a somewhat indirect nature, either by rigid acceptance of an extraneous "ticket" or by identification based on theoretical thinking and moral reflections rather than on an imme-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MATERIAL 723
diate feeling that this is "my" cause. (Their appraisal of Russia frequently assumes an air of hesitant, benevolent expectancy-let us see how they will manage. This contains both an element of authentic rationality and the po- tential of their swinging against Russia under the cover of handy rationaliza- tions if pressure of public opinion should urge such a chang~
5. COMMUNISM
The complex, Russia, is closely associated with the complex of communism in the minds of our subjects. This is all ? the more the case since communism has ceased to be in the public mind an entirely new form of society, based on a complete break in the economic setup, and has become bluntly identified with the Russian government and Russian influence on interna- tional politics. Hardly any reference to the basic issue of nationalization of the means of production as a part of the communist program has been found in our sample-a negative result which is significant enough with regard to the historical dynamics to which the concept of communism has been sub- jected during the -last two decades.
Among the high scorers the only feature of the old idea that seems to have survived is the "bogy" of communism. The more the latter concept is emptied of any specific content, the more it is being transformed into a receptacle for all kinds of hostile projections, many of them on an infantile level somehow reminiscent of the presentation of evil forces in comic strips. Practically all features of "high" thinking are absorbed by this imagery. The vagueness of the notion of communism, which makes it an unknown and inscrutable quan- tity, may even contribute to the negative affects attached to it.
Among the crudest expressions of these feelings is that of our insect toxi- cologist M zo8, by whom the problem of communism is stated in terms of plain ethnocentrism:
(Why is he against communism? ) "Well, it is foreign. Socialism, o. k. -you re- spect a man who is a socialist but a communist comes from a foreign country and he has no business here. "
Fzzz, who scores high onE, middle on F, and low on PEC, is a young girl who wants to become a diplomat because she is "mad at England and Rus- sia. " Her idea of communism has an involuntarily parodistic ring:
(Political outgroups? ) "Fascists and communists. I don't like the totalitarian ideas of the fascists, the centralization of the communists. In Russia nothing is private, everything goes to one man. They have violent ways of doing things. "
To the mind of this woman, the idea of political dictatorship has turned into the bogy of a kind of economic supra-individualism, just as if Stalin claimed ownership of her typewriter.
By a similarly irrational twist another high scorer, lvf664B, an uneducated
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THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
and unintelligent sex offender of the San Quentin group, with high scores on all scales, simply associates communism with the danger of war:
"If labor keeps getting more power, we'll be like Russia. That's what causes wars. "
The complete irrationality, not to say idiocy, of the last three examples shows what vast psychological resources fascist propaganda can rely. on when denouncing a more or less imaginary communism without taking the
,trouble to discuss any real political or economic issues. ' ~If representatives of this attitude enter upon any argumentation at all, it is, the last examples indicate, centered in the facile, though not completely spurious identification of communism and fascism which displaces hostility
against the defeated enemy upon the foe to be.
Low scorers are not immune in this respect. Thus the low-scoring student-
minister M910 is of the following opinion:
(How do you feel about R? ssia's government? ) "I think there is very little dif- ference between fascism and communism as it's practiced in Russia. The 1936 Constitution is a marvelous document. I think it's five hundred years ahead of our Constitution because it guarantees social rights instead of individual rights but when man hasn't any rights except as a member of the Communist Party. . . . I think it's capitalistic. . . . (What is the nature of your objections to Russia? ) Well, first of all, I think it was Russia that carried the ball in entering this veto power into the UNO which I think will be the death of the thing right now. . . . Russia has got the things right where she wants them. We think we're the leaders but we fool ourselves. . . . " (Subject objects strongly to deceitful diplomacy. )
High scorers who make less intellectual effort simply find communism not individualistic enough. The standard phraseology they employ contrasts nicely with the belief in spiritual independence which they profess. We quote as an example Fzo6, a high scorer of the Public Speaking Class group, a young teacher:
(Political outgroups? ) "Communists have some good ideas but I don't think too much of them. They don't give the individuals enough mind of their own. "
Sometimes the identification of communism and fascism is accompanied by paranoid twists in the Elders of Zion style. M345, our radar field engi- neer:
(What do you think of the P. A. C. ? ) "Never found any definite information on the C. I. O. . . . but . . . C. I. O. seems the agency to turn international, certainly has got all the earmarks, not because of being labor union, but just because of the way they compare. " (Subject compares communism to Hitler in Mein Kampf, telling exactly what planned to do and how, and then doing it. ) "C. I. O. has fol- lowed the lines of action very similar to pronounced policies of Comintern-even their name, Congress for Industrial Workers; not much faith in the communists succeeding. Their aim is tight little control of their own group. "
The mix-up of Comintern, CIO, and Mein Kampf is the appropriate climate for panic, and subsequent violent action.
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 725
But this climate by no-means prevails. There is one quite frequently noted way of dealing with the problem of communism which safeguards the aspects of detached objectivity while allowing for good-natured rejection. It reminds one of the story of the boy who, when offered some very sour dish and asked whether he liked it answered: "Excellent-when I'll be grown up. " Communism is a good thing for the others, particularly for "those foreigners," from whom it has been imported anyway. This technique is employed by both high and low scorers. 5008, the liberal-minded Jefferson descendant:
"The communists may be able to do something in the Soviet Union, but they would utterly fail here. "
In M zz5, the low-scoring fraternity man, the argument has a noticeable taint of contempt for the have-nots. This is the man who wants "none of this Marxian stuff. "
". . . but in poorer countries, like in Russia, Germany, etc. , it's necessary in some modified form; but not in America. W e have too much here already, that is we are too developed already. "
The subject is not struck by the idea that a collectivistic economy might be easier in an industrially highly advanced, mature country, rather than more difficult. To him, communism is simply identified with enhancement of ma- terial productive powers through more efficient organization. He seems to be afraid of overproduction as if this concept would still make sense in an economy no longer dependent upon the contingencies of the market.
Even the extreme low scorer M z206a, of the Maritime School group, who believes that America will eventually become a socialistic country,
thinks that Russia has a wonderful system of government-for Russia-"though I don't think we could transplant its system to this country . . . though we should watch her and get ideas to build our own country better. "
In this case the argument is mitigated by an element of thoughtfulness which is in accordance with the stand taken by this subject with regard to the Communist Party in this country:
"Well, I don't know a great deal about it. I believe that if a man wants to be a communist, that's not only his privilege, but his duty . . . to try and convince as many people as he can. . . . "Subject objects vigorously to red-baiting tactics.
"I think that Russia will be the most democratic country in the world in time. . . . Joe has been a little ruthless at times, but. . . . "
Sometimes the argument is fused with the idea that socialism would not be "practical," for purely economic reasons which are mostly taken from the very sphere of a profit system which is supposed to be replaced under socialism by an economic organization moulded after the needs of the population. F359, the previously (pp. 6r6, 69o) quoted high-scoring account- ant in a government department:
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Subject thinks that communism is all right for Russia, but not for this country, although the trend seems to be more and more that way. She believes in private ownership of property and the private enterprise system. She considers it more efficient. She is not so sure about government ownership of public utilities such as water, etc. She thinks that they probably operate better under private ownership, that the costs are lower.
The interviews of other subjects show an unmistakably condescending overtone of this same argument, such as M107, a medical student who scores high onE but middle on F and PEC:
"We can cooperate with Russia; if they want communism they have to have it. "
This type of liberal approach, of which, incidentally, the Hitler regime profited during the whole Chamberlain era of noninterference, is not as broad-minded as it may appear. It often hides the conviction that there is no objective truth in politics, that every country, as every individual, may
\ behave as it likes and that the only thing that counts is success. It is precisely LJ:bis pragmatization of politics which ultimately define's fascist philosophy.
Obviously, the relationship between anticommunism and fascist potential as measured by our scales should not be oversimplified. In some of our earlier studies the correlation between anti-Semitism and anticommunism was very high,8 but there is reason to believe that it would not be so high today, not, at least, at the surface level. During the last several years all the propaganda machinery of the country has been devoted to promoting anticommunist feeling in the sense of an irrational "scare" and there are probably not many people, except followers of the "party line," who have been able to resist the incessant ideological pressure. At the same time, during the past two or three years it may have become more "conventional" to be overtly opposed to anti-Semitism, if the large number of magazine articles, books, and films
with wide circulation can be regarded as symptomatic of a trend. The under- lying character structure has little bearing on such fluctuations. If they could be ascertained, they would demonstrate the extreme importance of propaganda in political matters. Propaganda, when directed to the antidemo- cratic potential in the people, determines to a large extent the choice of the social objects of psychological aggressiveness.
s Cf. Levinson and Sanford (71).
? CHAPTER XVIII
SOME ASPECTS OF RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY AS REVEALED IN THE INTERVIEW MATERIAL T. W. Adorno
A. INTRODUCTION
The relationship between prejudice and religion played a relatively minor role in our research. This may be due in a large part to the nature of our sample. It did not include any specific religious groups nor was it drawn from geographical areas such as the Bible Belt or cities with a heavily concentrated Irish-Catholic population in which religious ideology has considerable social importance. If research along the lines of the present work should be carried through in such areas, the religious factor might easily come to the fore to a much greater extent than in the present study.
Apart from this limitation, there is another and more fundamental one. Religion does not play such a decisive role within the frame of mind of most people as it once did; only rarely does it seem to account for . their social attitudes and opinions. This at least was indicated by the present results. The quantitative relationships obtained (Chapter VI) are not particularly strik- ing, and although part of the interview schedule was devoted specifically to religion, it cannot be said that the material gathered in this part of the inter- views is very rich. On an overt level at least, religious indifference seems to put this whole sphere of ideology somewhat into the background; there can be no question but that it is less affect-laden than most of the other ideological areas under consideration and that the traditional equation be- tween religious "fanaticism" and fanatical prejudice no longer holds good.
Yet, there is reason enough to devote some close attention to our data on religion, scarce though they may be. The considerable part played by actual or former ministers in spreading fascist propaganda and the continuous use they make of the religious medium strongly suggest that the general trend toward religious indifference does not constitute altogether a break between religious persuasion and our main problem. Although religion may no longer stimulate open fanaticism against those who do not share one's own belief,
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we are led to suspect that on a deeper, more unconscious level the religious heritage, the carry-over of old belief and the identification with certain denominations, still make themselves felt.
Our approach was guided by certain theoretical considerations inherent in our general frame of reference. In order to give relief to the focus of our observations, it is appropriate to indicate the more fundamental of these theoretical reflections.
It was expected from the very beginning that the relations between religious ideology and ethnocentrism would be complex. On the one hand the Christian doctrine of universal love and the idea of "Christian Humanism" is opposed to prejudice. This doctrine is doubtless one of the major historical presup- positions for the recognition of minorities as sharing equal rights with ma- jorities "in the sight of God. " The Christian relativization of the natural, the extreme emphasis on the "spirit," forbids any tendency to regard natural characteristics such as "racial" traits as ultimate values or to judge man according to his descent.
On the other hand, Christianity as the religion of the "Son" contains an implicit antagonism against the religion of the "Father" and its surviving witnesses, the Jews. This antagonism, continuous since St. Paul, is enhanced by the fact that the Jews, by clinging to their own religious culture, rejected the religion of the Son and by the fact that the New Testament puts upon them the blame for Christ's death. It has been pointed out again and again by great theologians, from Tertullian and Augustine to Kierkegaard, that the acceptance of Christianity by the Christians themselves contains a prob- lematic and ambiguous element, engendered by the paradoxical nature of the doctrine of God becoming man, the Infinite finite. Unless this element is con- sciously put into the center of the religious conception, it tends to promote hostility against the outgroup. As Samuel ( ro I) has pointed out, the "weak" Christians resent bitterly the openly negative attitude of the Jews toward the religion of the Son, since they feel within themselves traces of this nega- tive attitude based upon the paradoxical, irrational nature of their creed-an attitude which they do not dare to admit and which they must therefore put under a heavy taboo in others.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that many of the usual rationalizations of anti-Semitism originate within Christianity or at least have been amal- gamated with Christian motives. The fight against the Jews seems to be mod- eled after the fight between the Redeemer and the Christian Devil. Joshuah Trachtenberg (I I9) has given detailed evidence that the imagery of the Jew is largely a secularization of the medieval imagery of the Devil.
The fantasies about Jewish bankers and money-lenders have their biblical arche- type in the story of Jesus driving the usurers from the Temple. The idea of the Jewish intellectual as a sophist is in keeping with the Christian denuncia- tion of the Pharisee. The Jewish traitor who betrays not only his master but
? RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
also the ingroup to which he has been admitted, is Judas. These motifs are enhanced by more unconscious trends such as are expressed in the idea of the crucifix and the sacrifice of blood. Although these latter ideas have been more or less successfully replaced by "Christian Humanism," their deeper psychological roots have still to be reckoned with. l
In attempting to evaluate the influence of such elements of religion upon the existence or absence of prejudice today, one has to take into considera- tion the position in which Christianity presently finds itself: it is faced with an "indifference" which often seems to make it altogether unimportant. The Christian religion has been deeply affected by the process of Enlightenment and the conquest of the scientific spirit. The "magical" elements of Chris- tianity as well as the factual basis of Christian belief in biblical history have been profoundly shaken. This, however, does not mean that Christian religion has been abolished. Although largely emasculated in its profoundest claims, it has maintained at least part of the social functions acquired throughout the centuries. This means that it has largely become neutralized. The shell of Christian doctrine, above all its social authority and also a number of more or less isolated elements of its content, is preserved and "consumed" in a haphazard way as a "cultural good" like patriotism or traditional art.
This neutralization of religious beliefs is strikingly exemplified by the fol- lowing statement of Mzog, a high-scoring Roman Catholic who attends church regularly. He writes on his questionnaire that he considers religion a
"thoroughly important part of existence, perhaps it should occupy 2 to 5 per cent of leisure time. "
The relegation of religion, which was once regarded as the most essential sphere of life, to "leisure," as well as the time allotment made for it and, above all, the fact that it is subsumed under a calculated time schedule and referred to in terms of per cent is symbolic of the profound changes which have taken place with regard to the prevailing attitude towards religion.
It may be assumed that such neutralized residues of Christianity as that indicated in M zag's statement are largely severed from their basis in serious belief and substantial individual experience. Therefore, they rarely pro- duce individual behavior that is different from what is to be expected from the prevailing patterns of civilization. However, some of the formal proper- ties of religion, such as the rigid antithesis of good and evil, ascetic ideals, emphasis upon unlimited effort on the part of the individual, still exercise considerable power. Severed from their roots and often devoid of any spe- cific conte? nt, these formal constituents are apt to be congealed into mere formulae. Thus, they assume an aspect of rigidity and intolerance such as we expect to find in the prejudiced person.
1 A detailed theoretical analysis of the relationship between Christianity and anti- Semitism has been contributed by Max Horkheimer and T . W . Adorno (53).
? THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
73?
The dissolution of positive religion and its preservation in a noncommittal
ideological form are due to social processes. \Vhile religion has been deprived of the intrinsic claim of truth, it has been gradually transformed into "social cement. " The more this cement is needed for the mai~tenance of the status quo and the more dubious its inherent truth becomes, the more obstinately is its authority upheld and the more its hostile, destructive and negative fea- tures come to the fore. The transformation of religion into an agency of social conformity makes it fall in line with most other conformist tendencies. Adherence to Christianity under such conditions easily lends itself to abuse; to subservience, overadjustment, and ingroup loyalty as an ideology which covers up hatred against the disbeliever, the dissenter, the Jew. Belonging to a denomination assumes an air of aggressive fatality, similar to that of being born as a member of one particular nation. Membership in any particular religious group tends to be reduced to a fairly abstract ingroup-outgroup re- lationship within the general pattern brought out by the foregoing discus- sion of ethnocentrism.
These theoretical formulations are not intended as hypotheses for which crucial tests could be provided by our research; rather, they furnish some of the background against which the observations now to be reported may plausibly be interpreted.
B. GENERAL OBSERV A TIONS
There is much in the interview material to support the view, suggested by findings from the questionnaire, that the more religion becomes conveQtion- alized, the more it falls in line with the general outlook of the ethnocentric individual. An illustration of this point is afforded by the following excerpt from the interview of F5o54, a woman who scored high on the ethnocentrism scale.
The subject seems to have accepted a set of rather dogmatic moral codes which makes her regard people, especially "youngsters who call themselves atheists" as falling outside the circle in which she wants to move. She made a point of admitting (confidentially) that one of the main reasons she was looking forward to moving away from Westwood was that she could thereby get her youngest daughter away from the influence of the neighbor's boy, who is an atheist because his father tells him "religion is a lot of hooey. " She is also distressed, because her eldest daughter "just won't go to church. "
From the above it is evident that she is quite in agreement with organized religion and tends to be a conformist in religious matters. Christian ethics and its moral codes are regarded as absolutes; and deviations are to be frowned upon or punished.
This account suggests that there is a connection between conventional religious rigidity and an almost complete absence of what might be called personally "experienced" belief. The same holds for the high-scoring man
? RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
731
5057, a person who sticks to the Church although he "does not believe in a personal God. "
The subject believes that most Protestant religions are very much the same. He selected Christian Science because "it is a quieter religion than most. " He started going to Unity sunday school while living with his grandparents and liked the Unity Church, which, in his estimation, presents a mild form of Christian Science. He joined the Christian Science Church when he married, inasmuch as his wife's family and his wife are all Christian Scientists. "Religion should not be allowed to interfere with the ordinary essentials. However, religion should restrain you from overindulgences of any kind, such as drinking, gambling, or anything to excess. "
A high-scoring young woman, F103, says "My parents let us make our own choice; just so we go to church. " There we see the lack of any interest in the content of religion; one goes to church because "it's the thing to do" and because one wants to please one's parents. A final example is afforded by an- other prejudiced young woman, F104, who remarks "I have never known any people who were not religious. I have known one fellow who was waver- ing, and he was a very morbid person. " The idea here seems to be that one goes to church in order to express one's normality or at least to be classed with normal people.
These examples help us to understand why persons or groups who "take religion seriously" in a more internalized sense are likely to be opposed to ethnocentrism. What proved to be true in Germany, where "radical" Christian movements, such as the dialectical theology of Karl Barth, coura- geously opposed Nazism, seems to hold good beyond the theological "elite. " The fact that a person really worries about the meaning of religion as such, when he lives in a general atmosphere of "neutralized" religion, is indicative of a nonconformist attitude. It may easily lead toward opposition to the "regular fellow," for whom it is as much "second nature" to attend church as it is not to admit Jews to his country club. Moreover, the stress on the specific content of religion, rather than on the division between those who belong and those who do not belong to the Christian faith, necessarily ac- centuates the motives of love and compassion buried under conventionalized religious patterns. The more "human" and concrete a person's relation to religion, the more human his approach to those who "do not belong" is likely to be: their sufferings remind the religious subjectivist of the idea of martyrdom inseparably bound up with his thinking about Christ.
To put it bluntly, the adherent of what Kierkegaard, a hundred years ago, called "official Christianity" is likely to be ethnocentric although the religious organizations with which he is affiliated may be officially opposed to it, whereas the "radical" Christian is prone to think and to act differently.
However, it should not be forgotten that extreme religious subjectivism, with its one-sided emphasis on religious experience set against the objectified
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Church, may also under certain conditions fall in line with the potentially fascist mentality. Religious subjectivism that dispenses with any binding prin- ciples provides the spiritual climate for other authoritative claims. Moreover, the sectarian spirit of people who carry this outlook to an extreme sometimes results in a certain affinity for the aggressive ingroup mood of movements generally condemned as "crack-pot," as well as for those underlying anarchi- cal trends which characterize the potentially fascistic individual. This aspect of religious subjectivism plays an important role in the mentality of fascist agitators who operate in a religious setting. 2
Among those who reject religion, a number of significant differences may be noted. As our quantitative results have shown, no mechanical identification of the non- or anti-religious person with the "low scorer" can be made. There are, to be sure, "agnostic" or "atheistic" persons whose persuasions are part and parcel of a universally progressive attitude which holds for minority questions. The actual meaning of this "progressiveness," however, may vary widely. Whereas anti-religious progressives are definitely opposed to preju- dice under present conditions, when it comes to the question of susceptibility to fascist propaganda, it makes all the difference whether they are "ticket thinkers" who subscribe wholesale to tolerance, atheism, and what not, or whether their attitude toward religion can be called an autonomous one based on thinking of their own.
Moreover, it may turn out to be an important criterion of susceptibility whether a person is opposed to religion as an ally of repression and reaction, in which case we should expect him to be relatively unprejudiced, or whether he adopts an attitude of cynical utilitarianism and rejects everything that is not "realistic" and tangible, in which case we should expect him to be preju- diced. There also exists a fascist type of irreligious person who has become completely cynical after having been disillusioned with regard to religion, and who talks about the laws of nature, survival of the fittest and the rights of the strong. The true candidates of neo-paganism of the fascist extreme are recruited from the ranks of these people. A good example is the high-scoring man 5064, the Boy Scout leader, discussed in Chapter XVI. Asked about reli-
gion, he confesses to "worshiping nature. " He exalts athletics and camp col- lectivity, probably on the basis of latent homosexuality. He is the clearest example we have of the syndrome involving pagan pantheism, belief in "power," the idea of collective leadership, and a generally ethnocentric and pseudoconservative ideology.
It is against the background of these general observations on the structure of the relationship between religion and modern prejudice that the following, more specific observations may_ be understood.
2 The interaction between revivalism, religious subjectivism, and fascist propaganda has been analyzed in detail by T . W . Adorno (3).
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C. SPECIFIC ISSUES
1. THE FUNCTION OF RELIGION IN HIGH AND LOW SCORERS
Evidence in support of our hypothesis concerning "neutralized" religion is offered by a trait which seems to occur rather frequently in our interview material. It is the disposition to view religion as a means instead of an end. Religion is accepted, not because of its objective truth, but on account of its value in realizing goals that might also be achieved by other means. This at- titude falls in line with the general tendency toward subordination and re- nunciation of one's own judgment so characteristic of the mentality of those who follow fascist movements. Acceptance of an ideology is not based upon understanding of or belief in its content but rather upon what immediate use can be made of it, or upon arbitrary decisions. Here lies one of the roots of the stubborn, conscious, and manipulative irrationalism of the Nazis, as it was summed up by Hitler's saying: "Man kann nur fur eine Idee sterben, die man nicht versteht. " (One can die only for an idea which one does not under- stand. ) This is by its intrinsic logic tantamount to contempt for truth per se. One selects a "Weltanschauung" after the pattern of choosing a particularly well advertised commodity, rather than for its real quality. This attitude, applied to religion, must necessarily produce ambivalence, for religion claims to express absolute truth. If it is accepted for some other reason alone, this claim is implicitly denied and thereby religion itself rejected, even while being accepted. Thus, rigid confirmation of religious values on account of their "usefulness" works against them by necessity.
Subordination of religion to extrinsic aims is common in both high and low scorers; by itself, it does not appear to differentiate between them. It seems, however, that prejudiced and unprejudiced subjects do differ with respect to the kinds of goals that are emphasized and the ways in which religion is utilized in their service.
High scorers, more often than low scorers, seem to make use of religious ideas in order to gain some immediate practical advantage or to aid in the manipulation of other people. An example of the way in which formalized religion is adhered to as a means for maintaining social status and social rela- tionshibs is afforded by the highly prejudiced young woman, F2oz, who is very frankly interested in "a stable society" in which class lines are clearly drawn.
"I was brought up in the Episcopalian Church through going to a school for girls. It's nice. My friends go. It's more of a philosophy (than Christian Science); it raises your standards. The philosophy of the Episcopalian Church follows the pattern of all Protestant churches. It takes in the upper classes and gives them a religion or makes it a little nearer. "
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Ethnocentric subjects frequently think of religion as a practical aid in the
mental hygiene of the individual. The statement of F109 is characteristic.
"I don't understand religion. It's like a fairy tale to me. I don't know if I believe in God. There must be one but it is hard to believe it. Religion gives you something to hold on to, to base your life on. "
If religion only serves the need for something "to hold on to," this need may also be served by anything which provides the individual with absolute au- thority, such as the fascist state. There is a strong probability that fascism played exactly the same role with German womanhood which was formally exercised by their belief in positive religion. Psychologically, fascist hier- archies may function largely as secularizations and substitutes of ecclesiastical ones. It is not accidental that Nazism arose in Southern Germany with its strong Roman-Catholic tradition.
M zz8, a moderately high scorer, shows clearly the element of arbitrari- ness in his religious belief, mixed up with pseudoscientific statements which take the stamina out of this belief.
"I am willing to believe in the existence of a God. Something I can't explain any- way. Was it Darwin who said the world started with whirling gas? Well, who created that? Where did the start of it come from? That of course has little to do with church ritual. " (He has stated just before that the church "is pretty im- portant. ")
There is no logical i~terconnection between this reasoning and the subject's adherence to positive Christianity. Consequently the continuation of the passage reveals by its sophistry the aspect of insincerity in conventionalized religion which leads easily to malicious contempt for the values one officially subscribes to. M zz8 goes on to say:
"I believe in the power of prayer even if it's just in the satisfaction of the indi- vidual performing it. I don't know if there is any direct communication but it helps the individual, so I'm for it. It's also a chance for introspection; to stop and look at yourself. "3
The approach to religion for extraneous reasons is probably not so much an expression of the subject's own wants and needs as an expression of his opinion that religion is good for others, helps to keep them content, in short, can be used for manipulative purposes. Recommending religion to others makes it easier for a person to be "in favor" of it without any actual identifica- tion with it. The cynicism of the central European administrators of the
3 This attitude, that of a homespun psychologist as it were, can also be found in low scorers. The characteristic configuration to be found in high scQrers, however, seems to be the unresolved contradiction between a critical attitude toward religion as an objectiv- ity and a positive attitude toward it for purely subjective reasons. It is characteristic of the prejudiced mentality as a whole that he stops thinking at certain contradictions and leaves them as they are, which implies both intellectual defeatism and authoritarian sub- missiveness. This mechanism of arbitrarily giving up processes by command of the ego, as it were, is often misinterpreted as "stupidity. "
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nineteenth century who taught that religion is a good medicine for the masses, seems to have been to a certain extent democratized. Numerous mem- bers of the masses themselves proclaim that religion is good for the masses, whereas they make for themselves, as individuals, a kind of mental reserva- tion. There is a strong similarity between these appreciations of religion and a trait which played a large role in Nazi Germany. There, innumerable per- sons exempted themselves privately from the ruling ideology and talked about~"they" when discussing the Party. The fascist-minded personality, it seems, can manage his life only by splitting his own ego into several agencies, some of which fall in line with the official doctrine, whilst others, heirs to the old superego, protect him from mental unbalance and allow him to maintain himself as an individual. Splits of this kind become manifest in the uncon- trolled associations of uneducated and naive persons, such as the rather me- dium-scoring man M62g, who is serving a life sentence in San Quentin
prison. He makes the extraordinary statement:
"I believe, personally, I have a religion that hasn't been defined so far as I know in any books yet. I believe that religion has a value for people who believe in it. I think it's used as an escape mechanism by those who use it. "
The illogical way in which this man has made a sedative of religion can be accounted for without much psychological interpretation by the fact that he spent nineteen months in condemned row.
More sophisticated persons sometimes have to deal with the same conflict. An example is the moderately high woman, 5059, who rejects atheism because "an atheistic funeral was so cold. " She simply denies any contradictions be- tween science and religion, calling the idea of a contradiction a "malevolent invention," thus apparently projecting her own uneasiness about this conflict upon those who speak it out. This is similar to the mentality of the Nazi who puts the blame for social defects on the critique of our social order.
It must now be pointed out that low scorers also often accept religion, not because of any intrinsic truth that it may hold for them, but because it may serve as a means for furthering human aims. An example of such practical religion is the following excerpt from the interview with a woman student of journalism, F126, who obtained extremely low scores on both the A-S and the E s,cales.
Family were moderate church-goers. She rarely goes now. However, she has much respect for religion and seems to feel that it might be developed into some- thing that would give people that faith and understanding for each other that is lacking. "I don't know what else could give people something to hold onto, some purpose in life. They seem to need something to believe in. Some of us seem to have a love for people without that, but not very many. "
In one sense this way of looking at religion has something in common with the externalized attitudes described above. However, it is our impression that
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l when the practical approach to religion appears in the thinking of the low l
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scorer its content, or its context, can usually be distinguished from what is found in the thinking of the high scorer. Thus, although the young woman just quoted believes that religion is good for people, gives them "something to hold onto," she seems to mean that they need it at least for a humane and ideal purpose, that is, so that they may have more "understanding for each other," not simply in order to get along better or to function more efficiently. Low as well as high scorers are likely to consider that religion contributes to the mental hygiene of the individual; but whereas the high scorers charac- teristically indicate that it is good for other people because they are chronically weak, and possibly good for themselves in times of acute external stress ("fox-hole religion"), the low scorers are more likely to think of religion in internalized terms, as a means for reducing hatred, resolving inner conflicts,
relieving anxiety, and the like. Practically never do we encounter a low scorer who conceives of religion primarily in terms of external practical utility-as an aid to success, to status and power, or to a sense of being in accord with conventional values.
2. BELIEF IN GOD, DISBELIEF IN IMMORTALITY
The neutralization of religion is accompanied by its dissection. Just as emphasis on the practical uses of religion tends to sever religious truth from religious authority, so the specific contents of religion are continually sub- mitted to a process of selection and adaptation. The interview material sug- gests that the tendency to believe selectively in religion is a distinguishing feature of our prejudiced subjects. A fairly common phenomenon among them is belief in God accompanied by disbelief in immortality. Two examples
follow. In the case of 5009, a devout Baptist, the interviewer reports: sincerely feels deeply religious, believes in God, but has, as an educated man,
occasional doubts concerning the life after death. And in the case of 5002:
still is :i "Christian," believes in God, would like to believe in life after death, but has doubts and thinks that a sincere religious revival or a new religious myth would be a good thing for the world.
Particularly common are statements to the effect that interviewees regard themselves as religious, as followers of the church, but disagree with "some of its teachings," which sometimes refers to miracles, sometimes to immor- tality. This outlook seems corroborative of an underlying pattern of consid- erable significance the elements of which have been established in our psycho- logical analyses. The abstract idea of God is accepted as an expansion of the father idea, whereas general destructiveness makes itself felt in a reaction against the hope for the individual expressed by the dogma of immortality. Subjects with this point of view want a God to exist as the absolute authority
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to which th<';y can bow, but 'they wish the individual to perish completely. The concept of God underlying this way of thinking is that of the absolute essence of punitiveness. It is therefore not astonishing that religious leanings of this particular brand are frequent in the high scorers among our group
of prison inmates . (cf. Chapter XXI).
M627, who is serving a life sentence for rape, is "having trouble with reli-
gion" and does not believe that "there should be a set way of worship. " But he believes, in spit~ of an undertone of religious rebelliousness,
"that every man should have his own way of worship as long as he believes in a power greater than himself. "
This power has the form of external authority, but remains completely ab- stract, nothing but the projective concept of power as such.
"Well, I have heard so many fellows talk about the powers they believed in . . . and I tried to recognize the power in myself and just couldn't . . . read all kinds of religious books . . . but still kind of foggy. "
The same line of thought is expressed by M656A, who is serving a term for forgery, "Robert" in Chapter XXI.
