This would seem to have
something
to do with established democracy in this country, which makes the expression of democratic ideas the thing to be done, while the opposite is, ?
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
Chapter VII).
The honesty of the former D.
A.
is derived from his much- advertised drive against political racketeering and corruption.
He is sup- posed to be honest because he has exterminated, according to his propa- gandist build-up, the dishonest.
Honesty seems largely to be a rationalization for vindictiveness.
Speaking psychologically, the image of Dewey is a projec- tion of the punitive superego, or rather one of those collective images which replace the superego in an externalized, rigid form.
The praise of his honesty, together with the repeated emphasis on his strength and youth, fall within the "strong man" pattern.
Fu7, another high scorer, of the Professional Women group, has a maximal score on A-S and is generally extremely conservative. Her similarly personalized appraisal of Dewey strikes a slightly different note but fits within the same pattern: ?
She feels that Dewey knows the value of money better than Roosevelt, because he came from a family that did not have too much.
The punitiveness behind the praise of the honest man shows itself in this example as hatred against comfortable living, against the "snobbish upper class" who supposedly enjoy the things which one has to deny to oneself. Dewey, per contra, is the symbol of one's own frustrations and is uncon- sciously, i. e. , sadomasochistically, expected to perpetuate frustration. What he seems to stand for within the minds of the high-scoring subjects is a state of affairs in which everybody has "learned the value of a dollar. " Identifica- tion with him is easy because as a prospective President he has the halo of power whereas his frugality is that of the middle-class subject herself.
Perhaps it is not accidental that infatuation with honesty is particularly frequent among women. They see life from the consumer's side; they do not want to be cheated, and therefore the noisy promise of honesty has some appeal to them.
As to the differentiation between high and low scorers with regard to per- sonalization, an impression may tentatively be formulated which is hard to substantiate but consistent with our clinical findings. The element of per-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 67 I
sonalization that counts most heavily with the low scorers seems to be con- fidence, the idea that public figures are good, friendly fathers who take care of one, or of the "underdog. " It seems to be derived from an actual life relationship to one's parents, from unblocked positive transference. This observation will be given relief when the attitude of our subjects towards Roosevelt is discussed. Conversely, the personal trait most appreciated by the high scorer seems to be strength. Social power and control, the ultimate focus of their identification, is translated by the personalization mechanism into a quality inherent in certain individuals. The symbols of the powers that be are drawn from the imagery of a stern father to whom one "looks up. "
One last aspect of personalization may be mentioned. To know something about a person helps one to seem "informed" without actually going into the matter: it is easier to talk about names than about issues, while at the same time the names are recognized identification marks for all current topics. Thus, spurious eersonalization is an ideal behavior pattern for the semi- erudite, a device somewhere in the middle between complete ignorance and that kind of "knowledge" which is being promoted by mass communica- tion and industrialized culture.
To sum up: ever more anonymous and opaque social processes make it in- creasingly difficult to integrate the limited sphere of one's personal life experi- ence with objective social dynamics. Social alienation is hidden by a surface phenomenon in which the very opposite is being stressed: personalization of political attitudes and habits offers compensation for the dehumanization of the social sphere which is at the bottom of most of today's grievances. As less and less actually depends on individual spontaneity in our political and social organization, the more people are likely to cling to the idea that the man is everything and to seek a substitute for their own social impotence in the supposed omnipotence of great personalities.
3. SURFACE IDEOLOGY AND REAL OPINION
The alienation between the political sphere and the life experience of the individual, which the latter often tries to master by psychologically deter- mined intellectual makeshifts such as stereotypy and personalization, some- times results in a gap between what the subject professes to think about poli- tics and economy and what he really thinks. His "official" ideology conforms to what he supposes he has to think; his real ideas are an expression of his more immediate personal needs as well as of his psychological urges. The "official" ideology pertains to the objectified, alienated sphere of the political,
'the "real opinion" to the subject's own sphere, and the contradiction between the two expresses their irreconcilability.
Since this formal structure of political thinking has an immediate bearing upon one of the key phenomena of susceptibility to fascism, namely upon pseudoconservatism, it may be appropriate to offer a few examples here.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Fzz6, a prejudiced woman of the University Extension Group, offers an example of a conflict between surface ideology and real attitude through her somewhat deviate pattern of scale scores: she is middle on E and F but low on PEC. In her case, the deeper determinants are doubtless potentially fascist as evidenced particularly by her strong racial prejudice against both Negroes and Jews. In other political issues the picture is highly ambivalent. Charac- teristically, she classes herself as a Democrat, but voted for Willkie and then for Dewey. She "wasn't against Roosevelt," but her statement that "no man is indispensable" thinly veils her underlying hostility. She
"knew what Hoover stood for, and I had no use for him. But that didn't mean I had to worship Roosevelt. He was a good man, but when I heard people weeping and wailing over his death, I was just disgusted. As though he were indispensable. "
The amazing irregularity is an emphatically pro-Russian statement and an outspokenly antifascist attitude in international politics:
"Now, I am a great admirer of Russia. Perhaps I shouldn't say it out loud, but I am. I think they are really trying to do something for all the people. Of course there was a lot of suffering and bloodshed but think of what they had to struggle against. My husband really gets disturbed about this. He says I ought to go to Russia if I like communism so much. He says that to admire communism is to want a change and he thinks it is very wrong for me to even sound as though I wanted any change when we have enough and are comfortable and are getting along all right. I tell him that is very selfish and also that some people under the Czar might have felt that way but when the situation got so bad there was a revolution they got wiped out too. (American Communists? ) Well, I couldn't say because I don't really know anything about them.
"I don't hold the United States blameless. I think we have lots of faults. We talk now as though we had always hated war and tried to stop this one. That isn't true. There were ways to stop this war if they had wanted to. I remember when Mus- solini moved on Ethiopia. I always think of that as the real beginning of this war. And we were not interested in stopping that. My husband doesn't like me to criti- cize the United States. "
The frequent interspersion of this statement with reference to disagreements with her husband, from whom she is "very much different politically" and with whom she has "terrible arguments" leads us to assume that her "progres- sive" political views in areas apparently not highly affect-laden by her are rationalizations of her strong resentment of the man of whom she says "I don't think we can live for ourselves alone. " One is tempted to hypothesize that she wants him to get mad at her when she speaks in favor of Russia. In her case, the broad-mindedness and rationality of surface opinion seems to be conditioned by strong underlying, repressed irrationalities:
Interviewer did not have much success with very personal data. She turned aside questions that came close to her deeper feelings. There was no depth to the discus- sion of her husband.
When it comes, however, to political topics which, for some reason unex-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 673
plored in the interview, really mean something to this subject, she forgets all about her own rationality and gives vent to her vindictiveness though with a bad conscience, as evidenced by her previously quoted statement (Chap-
ter XVI) that "she is not very proud of her anti-Semitic bias. "
Mpo, of the University Extension Testing Class, is a low-scoring man, hesitant, apologetic, shy, and unaggressive. He wants to become a landscape architect. His political views are consciously liberal and definitely nonpreju- diced. He struggles to maintain his liberalism continuously, but this is not easy for him wi\:h regard to certain political matters, his impulses in many instances disavowing what he states. He begins with the typical low scorer's
statement:
"I am afraid I don't have as many ideas about politics and government as I should, but I think-a lot of people are more liberal now than they have been recendy. Possibly some like the change that is taking place in England-I don't know. "
He first takes a mildly antistrike attitude:
"I don't know, I cannot see that, as just a straight demand, without taking into consideration the company and its ties and all that. I have not read much about that but . . . in a large company . . . maybe they might be able to take it, all right, but in little shops . . . and if it did go through, and even if it did not have disastrous (effects) on business closing . . . price rises would make it come out even anyway. I guess I am really not in favor of strikes but I can see it just about. . . . "
Then he talks himself into a more definite stand against strikes, introduced by the still democratic "getting together" formula.
"They ought to get together and give, maybe, a 20 per cent or 30 per cent raise, then maybe kinda split it . . . and these strikes . . . just start at the wrong end . . . because if the strike is setded . . . they still have to come to some sort of agreement . . . and it's gonna be forced and men'll be driven . . . I guess human nature just is not that way but. . . ? "
The last statement, rather confused, actually belongs to the high-scorer pat- tern concerning the inhert badness of human nature (cf. Chapter VII).
After he has made this turn, he goes on with the usual high scorer's con- demnation of P AC, government control, etc. , and ends up with an ambivalent statement about minimum wage-hour legislation:
"Well, things like that I guess if-1 guess they are necessary-! guess maybe I am an idealist-! don't think there should have been a minimum wage law because I think the employer should pay his employee a living wage and if he cannot pay that, well, the person does not have to work there but if the employer cannot pay that, he is not going to stay in business. . . . "
It is the general trend rather than any specific statement which bears wit- ness to the wish to be politically progressive and the very definite changes of mind as soon as concrete issues are raised. This man's "political instincts" -if this term is allowed-are against his official progressiveness. One might
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
well infer from this observation that one can differentiate better between po- litical potentials by looking at deeper psychological impulses than by look- ing at avowed ideology.
Something similar can be observed with the medium-scoring man Mzz8, of the Extension Psychology Class group, a registered Democrat. He was middle on A-S but low on F and low-middle on E. It is the interviewer's im- pression that he is potentially "low" but that certain personality factors prevent him from going all the way. The exceptional aspect about him may well be explained through the conflict between different opinional layers. In terms of "big" and comparatively abstract political issues, he comes out with a "progressive" statement.
"There is a trend toward socialism, I don't know how modified. The conflict between labor and business will probably be mediated . by the government. The government will probably hold the balance of power in labor-business conflicts. The emphasis now is on free enterprise but that often results in monopoly, the big concerns squeezing the little guys to death. There is too much of a gap between the rich and the poor. People climb up by pushing others down, with no regulation. For this reason, government should have more influence, economically, whether or not it goes as far as socialism. "
The interviewer happened to ride with the subject from Berkeley to San Francisco and continued the discussion in a more informal, unofficial way, touching the subject matter of unionism. In this context a classic example of the gap between official ideology and political thinking in terms of one's own immediate interests occurred:
He thinks the C. I. 0 . is better than the A. F. of L. and he thinks that unions ought to extend their functions even more in political and educational and higher manage- ment brackets, but he himself won't join the Federal Workers Union which he would be eligible to join because he feels they are not enough concerned with the problems of the higher level incomes, that they are too much interested in keeping the wages of the poorer groups above a certain minimum. He wishes they would be concerned with promotions and upgrading and developing good criteria by which people could be promoted.
-~ The Canadian M 934, again a "medium" of the Public Speaking Class, is studying to become a minister. He calls himself "very far over on the left wing" but qualifies this immediately by the statement: .
". . . I'm of a practical nature and I would not vote for the socialists . . . espe- cially if I thought they would get in. "
To him, the practical is irreconcilable with socialism. The latter is all right as an idea, as a stimulant, as it were, but heaven forbid that it should ma- terialize.
"I would vote . . . only to maintain socialist opposition . . . to keep the existing government from going too far to the right . . . but don't think they have the
? . .
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 675 experience to . . ? put their. socialist program into, effect . . . and I think their
program has to be modified. "
He praises the British Labour Government but actually only because it has not carried through a socialist program, an abstinence interpreted by the interviewee as a sign of "political experience. "
"Well . . . I think they were ready for the job . . . aren't trying to change social order in one fell swoop . . . I think that is an evidence of their maturity. "
This subject wants to be endowed with the prestige of a left-wing intellectual while at the same time, as an empirical being, he is manifestly afraid of a concrete materialization of ideas to which he subscribes in the abstract.
It is hardly accidental that in these cases the overt ideology is always pro- gressive, the real opinion of an opposite character.
This would seem to have something to do with established democracy in this country, which makes the expression of democratic ideas the thing to be done, while the opposite is, ? in a certain way, unorthodox. There ,is reason to believe that the fascist potential today shows itself largely in the maintenance of traditional ideas which may be called either liberal or conservative, whereas the underlying "political instinct," fed largely by unconscious forces of the personality, is completely different. :This will be elaborated in the following section.
4. PSEUDOCONSERV A TISM
Our analysis of the questionnaire findings on PEC (Chapter V) has led to a differentiation between those who are high on PEC but low on E, and those who are high on both. This distinction was interpreted in terms of genuine and pseudoconservatives, the former supporting not only capitalism in its liberal, individualistic form but also those tenets of traditional Ameri- canism which are definitely antirepressive and sincerely democratic, as indi- cated by an unqualified rejection of antiminority prejudices. Our interview material allows us to give more relief to this construct and also to qualify it in certain respects. Before we go into some details of the pseudoconserva- tive's ideology, we should stress that our assumption of a pseudoconservative pattern of ideology is in agreement with the total trend of our psychological findings. The idea is that the potentially fascist character, in the specific sense given to this concept through our studies, is not only on the overt level but throughout the make-up of his personality a pseudoconservative rather than a genuine conservative. The psychological structure that corresponds to pseudoconservatism is conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness on the ego level, with violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. These contradictory trends are borne out particularly in those sections of our study where the range between the two poles of the unconscious and the conscious is widest, above all, where the T. A. T. is con- sidered in relation to the clinical parts of the interviews. Traits such as au-
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
thoritarian aggressiveness and vindictiveness may be regarded as inter- mediary between these antagonistic trends of the prejudiced personality. When turning to ideology which belongs in the context of psychological determinants here under discussion, to the realm of rationalization, it should be remembered that rationalizations of "forbidden" impulses, such as the drive for destruction, never completely succeed. While rationalization emas- culates those urges which are subject to taboos, it does not make them disap- pear completely but allows them to express themselves in a "tolerable," modified, indirect way, conforming to the social requirements which the ego is ready to accept. Hence even the overt ideology of pseudoconservative persons is by no means unambiguously conservative, as they would have us believe, not a mere reaction-formation against underlying rebelliousness; rather, it indirectly admits the very same destructive tendencies which are held at bay by the individual's rigid identification with an externalized super- ego. This break-through of the nonconservative element is enhanced by cer- tain supra-individual changes in today's ideology in which traditional values, such as the inalienable rights of each human being, are subject to a rarely articulate but nevertheless very severe attack by ascendent forces of crude repression, of virtual condemnation of anything that is deemed weak. There is reason to believe that those developmental tendencies of our society which point into the direction of some more or less fascist, state capitalist organiza- tion bring to the fore formerly hidden tendencies of violence and discrimina- tion in ideology. All fascist movements officially employ traditional ideas and values but actually give them an entirely different, antihumanistic meaning. The reason that the pseudoconservative seems to be such a characteristically modern phenomenon is not that any new psychological element has been added to this particular syndrome, which was probably established during the last four centuries, but that objective social conditions make it easier
for the character structure in question to express itself in its avowed opinions. It is one of the unpleasant results of our studies, which has to be faced squarely, that this process of social acceptance of pseudoconservatism has gone a long way-that it has secured an indubitable mass basis. In the opinions of a number of representative high scorers, ideas both of political conservatism and traditional liberalism are frequently neutralized and used as a mere cloak for repressive and ultimately destructive wishes. The pseudoconservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institu- tions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.
The pattern of pseudoconservatism is unfolded in the interviewer's de- scription of M zag, another high-scoring man, a semifascist parole officer:
On his questionnaire, this man writes down "Republican" as the political party of his preference, and then scratches it out. He agrees with the anti-New Deal Democrats and the Willkie-type Republicans and disagrees with the New Deal
. .
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 677
Democrats and the traditional Republicans. This is cleared up in his interview when he says that the party does not mean anything, the candidate is the thing. 3
Asked what is his conception of the Willkie-type Republican, he says he thinks of the Willkie supporters as the same as the Dewey supporters. Big business favored both Willkie and Dewey.
The score 67 on PEC is high-middle. An examination of the individual items seems to show that he is not a true conservative in the sense of the rugged indi- vidual. True, he agrees with most of the PEC items, going to plus 3 on the Child- should-learn-the-value-of-the-dollar and the Morgan and Ford items, but marking most of the others plus 1 or plus 2, but, be it noted, he does not agree that depres- sions are like headaches, that businessmen are more important than artists and professors; and he believes the government should guarantee everybody an income, that there should be increased taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, and that socialized medicine would be a good thing. He goes to plus 3 on the last item. Thus, it appears that he favors some kind of social function on the part of the government, but believes that the control should be in the proper hands. This is cleared up by the interview. Before becoming a policeman 6~{! years ago, this man was in the hospital insurance business. He says he had first to battle with the A. M. A. , who did not favor any kind of medical insurance; and later he thought it wise to give up the business because state medicine was in the offing.
In summing up his position concerning medical insurance, he says:
"I like the collectiveness of it, but believe private business could do it better than the government. The doctors have butchered the thing and the politicians would do worse. People need this sort of thing and I like it in theory if it is run right. "
Thus it becomes clear, according to the interviewer, that he has some kind of collectivistic value system but believes that the control should be in the hands of the group with whom he can identify himself. This is clearly the Ford and Morgan sort of group rather than labor unions which he opposes.
The decisive thing about this man is that he has, in spite of his general re- actionism and his all-pervasive ideas of power-which are evidenced by most of the other sections of the interview-socialistic leanings. This, however, does not refer to socialism in the sense of nationalizing the means of production but to his outspoken though inarticulate wish that the system of free enter- prise and competition should be replaced by a state-capitalist integration where the economically strongest group, that is to say, heavy industry, takes control and organizes the whole life process of society without further inter- ference by democratic dissension or by groups whom he regards as being in control only on account of the process of formal democracy, but not on the basis of the "legitimate" real economic power behind them.
This "socialist," or rather, pseudosocialist, element of pseudoconservatism, actually defined only by antiliberalism, serves as the democratic cloak for antidemocratic wishes. Formal democracy seems to this kind of thinking to
3 Personalization, as indicated by these sentences, has an obvious fascist potential. It enhances the individual as against any objective anonymous system of checks and bal- ances, against democratic control. Behind the adulation of the "great man" looms, in the present situation, the readiness to "follow the leader. "
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
be too far away from "the people," and the people will have their right only if the "inefficient" democratic processes are substituted by some rather ill- defined strong-arm system.
M6pA, another high-scoring man, a San Quentin prisoner, convicted of first-degree murder, is a good example of pseudodemocratism as a particular aspect of pseudoconservatism.
(What do you think of political trends today? ) "We have got a persecutor in California for governor . . . don't put that in. They call it a democracy . . . democracy is the best type of government but (inefficient). . . . "
Subject criticizes President Roosevelt strongly, especially his NRA. He men- tions his father's being pushed out of a job partly because of NRA, but he appears to be a little confused in this reference:
"Democracy is good when it is used right. I believe that too few people control the money in the country. I don't believe in communism . . . but there is so many little people who never have anything. . . . "
Subject mentioned his grandmother's only receiving $30 a month pension which, he says, she cannot live on . . . law ought to be changed in that respect . . . subject emphasizes the need of extending old-age insurance to people too old to benefit by recent legislation. . . . 4
An exceedingly serious dynamics is involved here. It cannot be disputed ' that formal democracy, under the present economic system, does not suffice to guarantee permanently, to the bulk of the population, satisfaction of the most elementary wants and needs, whereas at the same time the democratic form of government is presented as if-to use a favorite phrase of our sub- jects-it were as close to an ideal society as it could be. The resentment caused by this contradiction is turned by those who fail to recognize its economic roots against the form of democracy itself. Because it does not fulfill what it promises, they regard it as a "swindle" and are ready to exchange it for a system which sacrifices all claims to human dignity and justice, but of which they expect vaguely some kind of a guarantee of their lives by better planning and organization. Even the most extreme concept of the tradition of Amer- ican democracy is summoned by the pseudoconservative way of political thinking: the concept of revolution. However, it has become emasculated. There is only a vague idea of violent change, without any concrete reference to the people's aims involved-moreover, of a change which has in -common with revolution only the aspect of a sudden and violent break but otherwise looks rather like an administrative measure. This is the spiteful, rebellious yet intrinsically passive idea which became famous after the former Prince of Wales visited the distressed areas of North England: the idea that "some-
thing should be done about it. " It occurs literally in the interview of the high-scoring woman, Fzos, a 37-year-old crippled, frustrated housewife with
4 This case is described in detail in Chapter XXI under the name of "Ronald. "
? POLITICS A~D ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MATERIAL 679 strong paranoid traits. She had voted for Roosevelt every time because "I just
decided I'd be a Democrat. " Asked why, she continues as follows:
"I don't know. I'm just primarily against capitalism, and the Republicans are capitalistic. The Democrats have tried to give the working class a break. Father has voted for Thomas for years. He thinks eventually the world will come to that. But he's never made an issue of it. (Are your ideals a reflection of his attitude? ) Oh, it could be. I'm not conscious of it. I voted as soon as I was able to. (What do you think will happen after the war? ) Probably the Republicans will be in again. I think the American public is a very changing type. Probably I'll change too. The world's in such a chaotic mess, something should be done. W e're going to "have to learn to live with one another, the whole world. "
The phoniness of this subject's supposed progressiveness comes out in the section on minorities where she proves to be a rabid anti-Semite.
In order to guess the significance of the dull wish of this woman for a radical change it has to be confronted with the stand another pseudocon- servative takes, the violently anti-Semitic San Quentin inmate, M66zA, a robber. He plays, according to the interviewer, the bored decadent satiated with "too much experience" and derives from this attitude a fake aristocratic ideology which serves as a pretext for violent oppression of those whom he deems weak. He pays "very little attention to politics, except that I think we are headed for communism, and I am thumbs down on it. " Asked why, he comes forward with the following confession:
"For one thing, I have never forgiven the Russians for the revolution. . . . I con- sider them murders and not assassinations and I haven't forgiven Russia any more than I have forgiven France for her revolution, or Mexico . . . in other words, I still believe in the Old Order and I believe we were happiest under Hoover and should have kept him. I think I would have had more money under him too and I don't be- lieve in inheritance taxes. If I earn $roo,ooo by the sweat of my brow, I ought to be able to leave it to whomever I please. I guess I really don't believe that all men are created free and equal. "
While he still accepts the traditional critique of government interference in the name of rugged individualism, he would favor such government control if it were exercised by the strong. Here the criminal is in complete agreement with the aforementioned (p. 676) parole officer, M zog:
(What about government controls over business? ) "I half-approve. I certainly think that somebody should be over. . . . I believe in government control because it makes it less of-I really don't believe in democracy; if we know somebody's at the helm, we can't have revolutions and things. But I have never read much on politics and I don't think I have a right to say much. "
That the idea of the "right people" is actually behind M66zA's political phi- losophy is shown by his explanation of why he objects to all revolutions:
"They overthrow the established order . . . and they are always made by people who never had anything . . . I've never seen a communist who came from the right strata of society . . . I did read George Bernard Shaw's (book on socialism). "
? 68o
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
One may differentiate between two kinds of pseudoconservatives: those ? who profess to believe in democracy and are actually antidemocratic, and those who call themselves conservative while surreptitiously indulging in sub- versive wishes. This differentiation, however, is somewhat rationalistic. It does not amount to much, either in terms of psychological motivations or of actual political decision. It seems to pertain merely to thin rationalizations: the core of the phenomenon is both times identical. The just-quoted 66zA belongs to the pseudoconservative group in the narrower sense and so does Mzo5, a prelaw student high on all scales, who stresses his conservative back- ground while admitting overt fascist leanings:
"Naturally, I get my Republican sentiments from my parents. But recently I have read more for myself, and I agree with them. . . . \V e are a conservative family. W e hate anything to do with socialism. My father regretted that he voted for F. D. R. in 1932? Father wrote to Senator Reynolds of South Carolina about the Nationalist Party. lt's not America First, it's not really isolationist, but we believe that our coun- try is being sold down the river. "
The overt link between father-fixation as discussed in the clinical chapters (Part II) and authoritarian persuasions in politics should be stressed. He uses a phrase familiar with fascists when they were faced with the defeat of Germany and the German system and yet somehow wished to cling to their
negative Utopia.
"America is fighting the war but we will lose the peace if we win the war. I can't see what I can possibly get out of it. "
Conversely, a striking example of pseudodemocratism in the narrower sense is offered at the beginning of the political section of the interview of the high-scoring man Mzo8, a strongly fascistic student of insect toxicol- ogy, discussed in the chapter on typology as representative of the extreme "manipulative" syndrome. He is against Roosevelt, against the New Deal, and against practically any social humanitarian idea. At the next moment, however, he says he did feel that he was "somewhat of a socialist. "
This is literally the pattern by which the German Nazis denounced the Weimar Republic in the name of authority unchecked by democratic con- trol, exalted the sacredness of private property, and simultaneously inserted the word socialist into the vernacular of their own party. It is obvious that this kind of "socialism," which actually amounts merely to the curtailment of individual liberties in the name of some ill-defined collectivity, blends very well with the desire for authoritarian control as expressed by those who style themselves as conservatives. Here the overt incompatibility between private interests (what he "gets out of it") and objective political logic (the cer- tainty of an Allied victory) is by hook and crook put into the service of profascist postwar defeatism. No matter how it goes, democracy must lose. Psychologically, the destructive "impending doom" pattern is involved.
. .
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 68 I
This defeatism is characteristic of another trait of pseudoconservative po- litical philosophy: sympathy with the fascist enemy, Hitler's Germany. This is easily rationalized as humane magnanimity and even as the democratic wish to give everybody a fair deal. It is the fifth-column mentality on which Hit- lerian propaganda in democratic countries drew heavily before the war and which has by no means been uprooted.
M zo6, a college student high on all scales, fairly rational in many respects, seems at first sight to be critical of Germany. By tracing grandiloquently the sources of German fascism to supposedly profound historical roots, largely invented themselves by fascist propaganda, however, he slips into an apolo- getic attitude:
"German people have always been aggressive, have loved pa~ades, have always had a big army. They received an unfair peace after the last war. The treaty of Ver- sailles was obviously unfair to them, and because they were hard up, they were will- ing to listen to a young man like Hitler when he came along. If there had been a better peace, there'd be no trouble now. Hitler came along with promises, and people were willing to go for him. They had huge unemployment, inflation, and so on. "
The legend of the "unjust" treaty of Versailles must feed on tremendous psy- chological resources-unconscious guilt feelings against the established sym- bol of prowess-in non-German countries: otherwise it could not have survived the Hitlerian war.
Fu7, another high scorer, of the Professional Women group, has a maximal score on A-S and is generally extremely conservative. Her similarly personalized appraisal of Dewey strikes a slightly different note but fits within the same pattern: ?
She feels that Dewey knows the value of money better than Roosevelt, because he came from a family that did not have too much.
The punitiveness behind the praise of the honest man shows itself in this example as hatred against comfortable living, against the "snobbish upper class" who supposedly enjoy the things which one has to deny to oneself. Dewey, per contra, is the symbol of one's own frustrations and is uncon- sciously, i. e. , sadomasochistically, expected to perpetuate frustration. What he seems to stand for within the minds of the high-scoring subjects is a state of affairs in which everybody has "learned the value of a dollar. " Identifica- tion with him is easy because as a prospective President he has the halo of power whereas his frugality is that of the middle-class subject herself.
Perhaps it is not accidental that infatuation with honesty is particularly frequent among women. They see life from the consumer's side; they do not want to be cheated, and therefore the noisy promise of honesty has some appeal to them.
As to the differentiation between high and low scorers with regard to per- sonalization, an impression may tentatively be formulated which is hard to substantiate but consistent with our clinical findings. The element of per-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 67 I
sonalization that counts most heavily with the low scorers seems to be con- fidence, the idea that public figures are good, friendly fathers who take care of one, or of the "underdog. " It seems to be derived from an actual life relationship to one's parents, from unblocked positive transference. This observation will be given relief when the attitude of our subjects towards Roosevelt is discussed. Conversely, the personal trait most appreciated by the high scorer seems to be strength. Social power and control, the ultimate focus of their identification, is translated by the personalization mechanism into a quality inherent in certain individuals. The symbols of the powers that be are drawn from the imagery of a stern father to whom one "looks up. "
One last aspect of personalization may be mentioned. To know something about a person helps one to seem "informed" without actually going into the matter: it is easier to talk about names than about issues, while at the same time the names are recognized identification marks for all current topics. Thus, spurious eersonalization is an ideal behavior pattern for the semi- erudite, a device somewhere in the middle between complete ignorance and that kind of "knowledge" which is being promoted by mass communica- tion and industrialized culture.
To sum up: ever more anonymous and opaque social processes make it in- creasingly difficult to integrate the limited sphere of one's personal life experi- ence with objective social dynamics. Social alienation is hidden by a surface phenomenon in which the very opposite is being stressed: personalization of political attitudes and habits offers compensation for the dehumanization of the social sphere which is at the bottom of most of today's grievances. As less and less actually depends on individual spontaneity in our political and social organization, the more people are likely to cling to the idea that the man is everything and to seek a substitute for their own social impotence in the supposed omnipotence of great personalities.
3. SURFACE IDEOLOGY AND REAL OPINION
The alienation between the political sphere and the life experience of the individual, which the latter often tries to master by psychologically deter- mined intellectual makeshifts such as stereotypy and personalization, some- times results in a gap between what the subject professes to think about poli- tics and economy and what he really thinks. His "official" ideology conforms to what he supposes he has to think; his real ideas are an expression of his more immediate personal needs as well as of his psychological urges. The "official" ideology pertains to the objectified, alienated sphere of the political,
'the "real opinion" to the subject's own sphere, and the contradiction between the two expresses their irreconcilability.
Since this formal structure of political thinking has an immediate bearing upon one of the key phenomena of susceptibility to fascism, namely upon pseudoconservatism, it may be appropriate to offer a few examples here.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Fzz6, a prejudiced woman of the University Extension Group, offers an example of a conflict between surface ideology and real attitude through her somewhat deviate pattern of scale scores: she is middle on E and F but low on PEC. In her case, the deeper determinants are doubtless potentially fascist as evidenced particularly by her strong racial prejudice against both Negroes and Jews. In other political issues the picture is highly ambivalent. Charac- teristically, she classes herself as a Democrat, but voted for Willkie and then for Dewey. She "wasn't against Roosevelt," but her statement that "no man is indispensable" thinly veils her underlying hostility. She
"knew what Hoover stood for, and I had no use for him. But that didn't mean I had to worship Roosevelt. He was a good man, but when I heard people weeping and wailing over his death, I was just disgusted. As though he were indispensable. "
The amazing irregularity is an emphatically pro-Russian statement and an outspokenly antifascist attitude in international politics:
"Now, I am a great admirer of Russia. Perhaps I shouldn't say it out loud, but I am. I think they are really trying to do something for all the people. Of course there was a lot of suffering and bloodshed but think of what they had to struggle against. My husband really gets disturbed about this. He says I ought to go to Russia if I like communism so much. He says that to admire communism is to want a change and he thinks it is very wrong for me to even sound as though I wanted any change when we have enough and are comfortable and are getting along all right. I tell him that is very selfish and also that some people under the Czar might have felt that way but when the situation got so bad there was a revolution they got wiped out too. (American Communists? ) Well, I couldn't say because I don't really know anything about them.
"I don't hold the United States blameless. I think we have lots of faults. We talk now as though we had always hated war and tried to stop this one. That isn't true. There were ways to stop this war if they had wanted to. I remember when Mus- solini moved on Ethiopia. I always think of that as the real beginning of this war. And we were not interested in stopping that. My husband doesn't like me to criti- cize the United States. "
The frequent interspersion of this statement with reference to disagreements with her husband, from whom she is "very much different politically" and with whom she has "terrible arguments" leads us to assume that her "progres- sive" political views in areas apparently not highly affect-laden by her are rationalizations of her strong resentment of the man of whom she says "I don't think we can live for ourselves alone. " One is tempted to hypothesize that she wants him to get mad at her when she speaks in favor of Russia. In her case, the broad-mindedness and rationality of surface opinion seems to be conditioned by strong underlying, repressed irrationalities:
Interviewer did not have much success with very personal data. She turned aside questions that came close to her deeper feelings. There was no depth to the discus- sion of her husband.
When it comes, however, to political topics which, for some reason unex-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 673
plored in the interview, really mean something to this subject, she forgets all about her own rationality and gives vent to her vindictiveness though with a bad conscience, as evidenced by her previously quoted statement (Chap-
ter XVI) that "she is not very proud of her anti-Semitic bias. "
Mpo, of the University Extension Testing Class, is a low-scoring man, hesitant, apologetic, shy, and unaggressive. He wants to become a landscape architect. His political views are consciously liberal and definitely nonpreju- diced. He struggles to maintain his liberalism continuously, but this is not easy for him wi\:h regard to certain political matters, his impulses in many instances disavowing what he states. He begins with the typical low scorer's
statement:
"I am afraid I don't have as many ideas about politics and government as I should, but I think-a lot of people are more liberal now than they have been recendy. Possibly some like the change that is taking place in England-I don't know. "
He first takes a mildly antistrike attitude:
"I don't know, I cannot see that, as just a straight demand, without taking into consideration the company and its ties and all that. I have not read much about that but . . . in a large company . . . maybe they might be able to take it, all right, but in little shops . . . and if it did go through, and even if it did not have disastrous (effects) on business closing . . . price rises would make it come out even anyway. I guess I am really not in favor of strikes but I can see it just about. . . . "
Then he talks himself into a more definite stand against strikes, introduced by the still democratic "getting together" formula.
"They ought to get together and give, maybe, a 20 per cent or 30 per cent raise, then maybe kinda split it . . . and these strikes . . . just start at the wrong end . . . because if the strike is setded . . . they still have to come to some sort of agreement . . . and it's gonna be forced and men'll be driven . . . I guess human nature just is not that way but. . . ? "
The last statement, rather confused, actually belongs to the high-scorer pat- tern concerning the inhert badness of human nature (cf. Chapter VII).
After he has made this turn, he goes on with the usual high scorer's con- demnation of P AC, government control, etc. , and ends up with an ambivalent statement about minimum wage-hour legislation:
"Well, things like that I guess if-1 guess they are necessary-! guess maybe I am an idealist-! don't think there should have been a minimum wage law because I think the employer should pay his employee a living wage and if he cannot pay that, well, the person does not have to work there but if the employer cannot pay that, he is not going to stay in business. . . . "
It is the general trend rather than any specific statement which bears wit- ness to the wish to be politically progressive and the very definite changes of mind as soon as concrete issues are raised. This man's "political instincts" -if this term is allowed-are against his official progressiveness. One might
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
well infer from this observation that one can differentiate better between po- litical potentials by looking at deeper psychological impulses than by look- ing at avowed ideology.
Something similar can be observed with the medium-scoring man Mzz8, of the Extension Psychology Class group, a registered Democrat. He was middle on A-S but low on F and low-middle on E. It is the interviewer's im- pression that he is potentially "low" but that certain personality factors prevent him from going all the way. The exceptional aspect about him may well be explained through the conflict between different opinional layers. In terms of "big" and comparatively abstract political issues, he comes out with a "progressive" statement.
"There is a trend toward socialism, I don't know how modified. The conflict between labor and business will probably be mediated . by the government. The government will probably hold the balance of power in labor-business conflicts. The emphasis now is on free enterprise but that often results in monopoly, the big concerns squeezing the little guys to death. There is too much of a gap between the rich and the poor. People climb up by pushing others down, with no regulation. For this reason, government should have more influence, economically, whether or not it goes as far as socialism. "
The interviewer happened to ride with the subject from Berkeley to San Francisco and continued the discussion in a more informal, unofficial way, touching the subject matter of unionism. In this context a classic example of the gap between official ideology and political thinking in terms of one's own immediate interests occurred:
He thinks the C. I. 0 . is better than the A. F. of L. and he thinks that unions ought to extend their functions even more in political and educational and higher manage- ment brackets, but he himself won't join the Federal Workers Union which he would be eligible to join because he feels they are not enough concerned with the problems of the higher level incomes, that they are too much interested in keeping the wages of the poorer groups above a certain minimum. He wishes they would be concerned with promotions and upgrading and developing good criteria by which people could be promoted.
-~ The Canadian M 934, again a "medium" of the Public Speaking Class, is studying to become a minister. He calls himself "very far over on the left wing" but qualifies this immediately by the statement: .
". . . I'm of a practical nature and I would not vote for the socialists . . . espe- cially if I thought they would get in. "
To him, the practical is irreconcilable with socialism. The latter is all right as an idea, as a stimulant, as it were, but heaven forbid that it should ma- terialize.
"I would vote . . . only to maintain socialist opposition . . . to keep the existing government from going too far to the right . . . but don't think they have the
? . .
POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 675 experience to . . ? put their. socialist program into, effect . . . and I think their
program has to be modified. "
He praises the British Labour Government but actually only because it has not carried through a socialist program, an abstinence interpreted by the interviewee as a sign of "political experience. "
"Well . . . I think they were ready for the job . . . aren't trying to change social order in one fell swoop . . . I think that is an evidence of their maturity. "
This subject wants to be endowed with the prestige of a left-wing intellectual while at the same time, as an empirical being, he is manifestly afraid of a concrete materialization of ideas to which he subscribes in the abstract.
It is hardly accidental that in these cases the overt ideology is always pro- gressive, the real opinion of an opposite character.
This would seem to have something to do with established democracy in this country, which makes the expression of democratic ideas the thing to be done, while the opposite is, ? in a certain way, unorthodox. There ,is reason to believe that the fascist potential today shows itself largely in the maintenance of traditional ideas which may be called either liberal or conservative, whereas the underlying "political instinct," fed largely by unconscious forces of the personality, is completely different. :This will be elaborated in the following section.
4. PSEUDOCONSERV A TISM
Our analysis of the questionnaire findings on PEC (Chapter V) has led to a differentiation between those who are high on PEC but low on E, and those who are high on both. This distinction was interpreted in terms of genuine and pseudoconservatives, the former supporting not only capitalism in its liberal, individualistic form but also those tenets of traditional Ameri- canism which are definitely antirepressive and sincerely democratic, as indi- cated by an unqualified rejection of antiminority prejudices. Our interview material allows us to give more relief to this construct and also to qualify it in certain respects. Before we go into some details of the pseudoconserva- tive's ideology, we should stress that our assumption of a pseudoconservative pattern of ideology is in agreement with the total trend of our psychological findings. The idea is that the potentially fascist character, in the specific sense given to this concept through our studies, is not only on the overt level but throughout the make-up of his personality a pseudoconservative rather than a genuine conservative. The psychological structure that corresponds to pseudoconservatism is conventionality and authoritarian submissiveness on the ego level, with violence, anarchic impulses, and chaotic destructiveness in the unconscious sphere. These contradictory trends are borne out particularly in those sections of our study where the range between the two poles of the unconscious and the conscious is widest, above all, where the T. A. T. is con- sidered in relation to the clinical parts of the interviews. Traits such as au-
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
thoritarian aggressiveness and vindictiveness may be regarded as inter- mediary between these antagonistic trends of the prejudiced personality. When turning to ideology which belongs in the context of psychological determinants here under discussion, to the realm of rationalization, it should be remembered that rationalizations of "forbidden" impulses, such as the drive for destruction, never completely succeed. While rationalization emas- culates those urges which are subject to taboos, it does not make them disap- pear completely but allows them to express themselves in a "tolerable," modified, indirect way, conforming to the social requirements which the ego is ready to accept. Hence even the overt ideology of pseudoconservative persons is by no means unambiguously conservative, as they would have us believe, not a mere reaction-formation against underlying rebelliousness; rather, it indirectly admits the very same destructive tendencies which are held at bay by the individual's rigid identification with an externalized super- ego. This break-through of the nonconservative element is enhanced by cer- tain supra-individual changes in today's ideology in which traditional values, such as the inalienable rights of each human being, are subject to a rarely articulate but nevertheless very severe attack by ascendent forces of crude repression, of virtual condemnation of anything that is deemed weak. There is reason to believe that those developmental tendencies of our society which point into the direction of some more or less fascist, state capitalist organiza- tion bring to the fore formerly hidden tendencies of violence and discrimina- tion in ideology. All fascist movements officially employ traditional ideas and values but actually give them an entirely different, antihumanistic meaning. The reason that the pseudoconservative seems to be such a characteristically modern phenomenon is not that any new psychological element has been added to this particular syndrome, which was probably established during the last four centuries, but that objective social conditions make it easier
for the character structure in question to express itself in its avowed opinions. It is one of the unpleasant results of our studies, which has to be faced squarely, that this process of social acceptance of pseudoconservatism has gone a long way-that it has secured an indubitable mass basis. In the opinions of a number of representative high scorers, ideas both of political conservatism and traditional liberalism are frequently neutralized and used as a mere cloak for repressive and ultimately destructive wishes. The pseudoconservative is a man who, in the name of upholding traditional American values and institu- tions and defending them against more or less fictitious dangers, consciously or unconsciously aims at their abolition.
The pattern of pseudoconservatism is unfolded in the interviewer's de- scription of M zag, another high-scoring man, a semifascist parole officer:
On his questionnaire, this man writes down "Republican" as the political party of his preference, and then scratches it out. He agrees with the anti-New Deal Democrats and the Willkie-type Republicans and disagrees with the New Deal
. .
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 677
Democrats and the traditional Republicans. This is cleared up in his interview when he says that the party does not mean anything, the candidate is the thing. 3
Asked what is his conception of the Willkie-type Republican, he says he thinks of the Willkie supporters as the same as the Dewey supporters. Big business favored both Willkie and Dewey.
The score 67 on PEC is high-middle. An examination of the individual items seems to show that he is not a true conservative in the sense of the rugged indi- vidual. True, he agrees with most of the PEC items, going to plus 3 on the Child- should-learn-the-value-of-the-dollar and the Morgan and Ford items, but marking most of the others plus 1 or plus 2, but, be it noted, he does not agree that depres- sions are like headaches, that businessmen are more important than artists and professors; and he believes the government should guarantee everybody an income, that there should be increased taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals, and that socialized medicine would be a good thing. He goes to plus 3 on the last item. Thus, it appears that he favors some kind of social function on the part of the government, but believes that the control should be in the proper hands. This is cleared up by the interview. Before becoming a policeman 6~{! years ago, this man was in the hospital insurance business. He says he had first to battle with the A. M. A. , who did not favor any kind of medical insurance; and later he thought it wise to give up the business because state medicine was in the offing.
In summing up his position concerning medical insurance, he says:
"I like the collectiveness of it, but believe private business could do it better than the government. The doctors have butchered the thing and the politicians would do worse. People need this sort of thing and I like it in theory if it is run right. "
Thus it becomes clear, according to the interviewer, that he has some kind of collectivistic value system but believes that the control should be in the hands of the group with whom he can identify himself. This is clearly the Ford and Morgan sort of group rather than labor unions which he opposes.
The decisive thing about this man is that he has, in spite of his general re- actionism and his all-pervasive ideas of power-which are evidenced by most of the other sections of the interview-socialistic leanings. This, however, does not refer to socialism in the sense of nationalizing the means of production but to his outspoken though inarticulate wish that the system of free enter- prise and competition should be replaced by a state-capitalist integration where the economically strongest group, that is to say, heavy industry, takes control and organizes the whole life process of society without further inter- ference by democratic dissension or by groups whom he regards as being in control only on account of the process of formal democracy, but not on the basis of the "legitimate" real economic power behind them.
This "socialist," or rather, pseudosocialist, element of pseudoconservatism, actually defined only by antiliberalism, serves as the democratic cloak for antidemocratic wishes. Formal democracy seems to this kind of thinking to
3 Personalization, as indicated by these sentences, has an obvious fascist potential. It enhances the individual as against any objective anonymous system of checks and bal- ances, against democratic control. Behind the adulation of the "great man" looms, in the present situation, the readiness to "follow the leader. "
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be too far away from "the people," and the people will have their right only if the "inefficient" democratic processes are substituted by some rather ill- defined strong-arm system.
M6pA, another high-scoring man, a San Quentin prisoner, convicted of first-degree murder, is a good example of pseudodemocratism as a particular aspect of pseudoconservatism.
(What do you think of political trends today? ) "We have got a persecutor in California for governor . . . don't put that in. They call it a democracy . . . democracy is the best type of government but (inefficient). . . . "
Subject criticizes President Roosevelt strongly, especially his NRA. He men- tions his father's being pushed out of a job partly because of NRA, but he appears to be a little confused in this reference:
"Democracy is good when it is used right. I believe that too few people control the money in the country. I don't believe in communism . . . but there is so many little people who never have anything. . . . "
Subject mentioned his grandmother's only receiving $30 a month pension which, he says, she cannot live on . . . law ought to be changed in that respect . . . subject emphasizes the need of extending old-age insurance to people too old to benefit by recent legislation. . . . 4
An exceedingly serious dynamics is involved here. It cannot be disputed ' that formal democracy, under the present economic system, does not suffice to guarantee permanently, to the bulk of the population, satisfaction of the most elementary wants and needs, whereas at the same time the democratic form of government is presented as if-to use a favorite phrase of our sub- jects-it were as close to an ideal society as it could be. The resentment caused by this contradiction is turned by those who fail to recognize its economic roots against the form of democracy itself. Because it does not fulfill what it promises, they regard it as a "swindle" and are ready to exchange it for a system which sacrifices all claims to human dignity and justice, but of which they expect vaguely some kind of a guarantee of their lives by better planning and organization. Even the most extreme concept of the tradition of Amer- ican democracy is summoned by the pseudoconservative way of political thinking: the concept of revolution. However, it has become emasculated. There is only a vague idea of violent change, without any concrete reference to the people's aims involved-moreover, of a change which has in -common with revolution only the aspect of a sudden and violent break but otherwise looks rather like an administrative measure. This is the spiteful, rebellious yet intrinsically passive idea which became famous after the former Prince of Wales visited the distressed areas of North England: the idea that "some-
thing should be done about it. " It occurs literally in the interview of the high-scoring woman, Fzos, a 37-year-old crippled, frustrated housewife with
4 This case is described in detail in Chapter XXI under the name of "Ronald. "
? POLITICS A~D ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MATERIAL 679 strong paranoid traits. She had voted for Roosevelt every time because "I just
decided I'd be a Democrat. " Asked why, she continues as follows:
"I don't know. I'm just primarily against capitalism, and the Republicans are capitalistic. The Democrats have tried to give the working class a break. Father has voted for Thomas for years. He thinks eventually the world will come to that. But he's never made an issue of it. (Are your ideals a reflection of his attitude? ) Oh, it could be. I'm not conscious of it. I voted as soon as I was able to. (What do you think will happen after the war? ) Probably the Republicans will be in again. I think the American public is a very changing type. Probably I'll change too. The world's in such a chaotic mess, something should be done. W e're going to "have to learn to live with one another, the whole world. "
The phoniness of this subject's supposed progressiveness comes out in the section on minorities where she proves to be a rabid anti-Semite.
In order to guess the significance of the dull wish of this woman for a radical change it has to be confronted with the stand another pseudocon- servative takes, the violently anti-Semitic San Quentin inmate, M66zA, a robber. He plays, according to the interviewer, the bored decadent satiated with "too much experience" and derives from this attitude a fake aristocratic ideology which serves as a pretext for violent oppression of those whom he deems weak. He pays "very little attention to politics, except that I think we are headed for communism, and I am thumbs down on it. " Asked why, he comes forward with the following confession:
"For one thing, I have never forgiven the Russians for the revolution. . . . I con- sider them murders and not assassinations and I haven't forgiven Russia any more than I have forgiven France for her revolution, or Mexico . . . in other words, I still believe in the Old Order and I believe we were happiest under Hoover and should have kept him. I think I would have had more money under him too and I don't be- lieve in inheritance taxes. If I earn $roo,ooo by the sweat of my brow, I ought to be able to leave it to whomever I please. I guess I really don't believe that all men are created free and equal. "
While he still accepts the traditional critique of government interference in the name of rugged individualism, he would favor such government control if it were exercised by the strong. Here the criminal is in complete agreement with the aforementioned (p. 676) parole officer, M zog:
(What about government controls over business? ) "I half-approve. I certainly think that somebody should be over. . . . I believe in government control because it makes it less of-I really don't believe in democracy; if we know somebody's at the helm, we can't have revolutions and things. But I have never read much on politics and I don't think I have a right to say much. "
That the idea of the "right people" is actually behind M66zA's political phi- losophy is shown by his explanation of why he objects to all revolutions:
"They overthrow the established order . . . and they are always made by people who never had anything . . . I've never seen a communist who came from the right strata of society . . . I did read George Bernard Shaw's (book on socialism). "
? 68o
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
One may differentiate between two kinds of pseudoconservatives: those ? who profess to believe in democracy and are actually antidemocratic, and those who call themselves conservative while surreptitiously indulging in sub- versive wishes. This differentiation, however, is somewhat rationalistic. It does not amount to much, either in terms of psychological motivations or of actual political decision. It seems to pertain merely to thin rationalizations: the core of the phenomenon is both times identical. The just-quoted 66zA belongs to the pseudoconservative group in the narrower sense and so does Mzo5, a prelaw student high on all scales, who stresses his conservative back- ground while admitting overt fascist leanings:
"Naturally, I get my Republican sentiments from my parents. But recently I have read more for myself, and I agree with them. . . . \V e are a conservative family. W e hate anything to do with socialism. My father regretted that he voted for F. D. R. in 1932? Father wrote to Senator Reynolds of South Carolina about the Nationalist Party. lt's not America First, it's not really isolationist, but we believe that our coun- try is being sold down the river. "
The overt link between father-fixation as discussed in the clinical chapters (Part II) and authoritarian persuasions in politics should be stressed. He uses a phrase familiar with fascists when they were faced with the defeat of Germany and the German system and yet somehow wished to cling to their
negative Utopia.
"America is fighting the war but we will lose the peace if we win the war. I can't see what I can possibly get out of it. "
Conversely, a striking example of pseudodemocratism in the narrower sense is offered at the beginning of the political section of the interview of the high-scoring man Mzo8, a strongly fascistic student of insect toxicol- ogy, discussed in the chapter on typology as representative of the extreme "manipulative" syndrome. He is against Roosevelt, against the New Deal, and against practically any social humanitarian idea. At the next moment, however, he says he did feel that he was "somewhat of a socialist. "
This is literally the pattern by which the German Nazis denounced the Weimar Republic in the name of authority unchecked by democratic con- trol, exalted the sacredness of private property, and simultaneously inserted the word socialist into the vernacular of their own party. It is obvious that this kind of "socialism," which actually amounts merely to the curtailment of individual liberties in the name of some ill-defined collectivity, blends very well with the desire for authoritarian control as expressed by those who style themselves as conservatives. Here the overt incompatibility between private interests (what he "gets out of it") and objective political logic (the cer- tainty of an Allied victory) is by hook and crook put into the service of profascist postwar defeatism. No matter how it goes, democracy must lose. Psychologically, the destructive "impending doom" pattern is involved.
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? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 68 I
This defeatism is characteristic of another trait of pseudoconservative po- litical philosophy: sympathy with the fascist enemy, Hitler's Germany. This is easily rationalized as humane magnanimity and even as the democratic wish to give everybody a fair deal. It is the fifth-column mentality on which Hit- lerian propaganda in democratic countries drew heavily before the war and which has by no means been uprooted.
M zo6, a college student high on all scales, fairly rational in many respects, seems at first sight to be critical of Germany. By tracing grandiloquently the sources of German fascism to supposedly profound historical roots, largely invented themselves by fascist propaganda, however, he slips into an apolo- getic attitude:
"German people have always been aggressive, have loved pa~ades, have always had a big army. They received an unfair peace after the last war. The treaty of Ver- sailles was obviously unfair to them, and because they were hard up, they were will- ing to listen to a young man like Hitler when he came along. If there had been a better peace, there'd be no trouble now. Hitler came along with promises, and people were willing to go for him. They had huge unemployment, inflation, and so on. "
The legend of the "unjust" treaty of Versailles must feed on tremendous psy- chological resources-unconscious guilt feelings against the established sym- bol of prowess-in non-German countries: otherwise it could not have survived the Hitlerian war.
