The standard form under which conflict appears in statements of high- scoring subjects is, as
indicated
above, "I shouldn't, but.
Adorno-T-Authoritarian-Personality-Harper-Bros-1950
) Oh no, I don't think any Jew can hide it.
I always know them.
(How do they look?
) Attractive.
Very well dressed.
And as though they knew exactly
what they wanted. (How well have you known Jews? ) Well, I never knew any in childhood. In fact, I never knew one until we moved to San Francisco, 10 years ago. He was our landlord. It was terrible. I had a lovely home in Denver and I hated to leave. And here I was stuck in an ugly apartment and he did everything to make it worse. If the rent was due on Sunday, he was there bright and early. After that I knew lots of them. I had Jewish bosses. There are Jews in the bank. They are everywhere-always in the money. My next-door neighbor is a Jew. I decided to be civil. After all, I can't move now and I might as well be neighborly. They borrow our lawn mower. They say it is because you can't buy one during the war. But of course lawn mowers cost money. We had a party last week and they called the police. I called her the next day because I suspected them. She said she did it so I asked if she didn't think she should have called me first. She said a man was singing in the yard and woke her baby and she got so upset she called the police. I asked her
? 622 THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
if she realized that her baby screamed for 3 months after she brought him home from the hospital. Ever since then she has been just grovelling and I hate that even worse. "
"Knowing better" is mentioned not infrequently by high scorers: they realize they "should" not think that way, but stick to their prejudice under a kind of compulsion which is apparently stronger than the moral and rational counteragencies available to them. In addition to this phenomenon, there is hardly any aspect of the anti-Semitic syndrome discussed in this chapter which could not be illustrated by this quotation from a truly "all-out," to- talitarian anti-Semite. She omits nothing. Her insatiability is indicative of the tremendous libidinous energy she has invested in her Jewish complex. Acting out her anti-Semitism obviously works with her as a wish-fulfillment, both with regard to aggressiveness and with regard to the desire for intellectual superiority as indicated by her cooperation in the present study "in the inter- ests of science. " Her personal attitude partakes of that sinister contempt shown by those who feel themselves to be "in the know" with respect to all kinds of dark secrets.
Her most characteristic attitude is one of pessimism-she dismisses many matters with a downward glance, a shrug of the shoulders, and a sigh.
The idea of the "Jew spotter" was introduced in the Labor Study, where it proved to be the most discriminating item. We used it only in a supple- mentary way, in work with the Los Angeles sample, but there can be no doubt that people who are extreme on A-S will regularly allege that they can recognize Jews at once. This is the most drastic expression of the "orienta- tion" mechanism which we have seen to be so essential a feature of the preju- diced outlook. At the same time, it can frequently be observed that the actual variety of Jews, which could hardly escape notice, leads to a high amount of vagueness with regard to the criteria according to which Jews might be spotted; this vagueness does not, however, interfere with the definiteness of the spotter's claim. One example for this configuration will suffice. It is inter- esting because of the strange mixture of fantasy and real observation.
5039, a 27-year-old student at the University of Southern California and a war veteran, who scores high on E:
"Yes, I think I can . . . of course, you can't always, I know. But usually they have different features: larger nose, and I think differently shaped faces, more narrow, and different mannerisms. . . . But mainly they talk too much and they have different attitudes. Almost always they will counter a question with another question (gives examples from school); they are freer with criticism; tend to talk in big terms and generally more aggressive-at least I notice that immediately. . . . "
E. TWO KINDS OF JEWS
The stereotypes just discussed have been interpreted as means for pseudo- orientation in an estranged world, and at the same time as devices for "master-
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
ing" this world by being abl~ completely to pigeonhole its negative aspects. The "problematizing" attitude puts the resentful person in the position of one who is rationally discriminating; the assertion that all the Jews are alike transposes the "problem" into the realm of systematic and complete knowl- edge, without a "loophole," as it were; the pretension of being able unfail- ingly to recognize Jews raises the claim that the subject is actually the judge in matters where the judgment is supposed to have been pronounced once and for all. In addition, there is another stereotype of "orientation" which de- serves closer attention because it shows most clearly the "topographical" function and because it crops up spontaneously with great frequency in the interview material. It is even more indicative of the "pseudorational" ele- ment in anti-Semitic prejudice than is the manner of speaking about the "Jewish problem. " W e refer to the standard division of Jews into two groups, the good ones and the bad ones, a division frequently expressed in terms of the "white" Jews and the "kikes. " It may be objected that this division can- not be taken as an index of subjective attitudes, since it has its basis in the object itself, namely, the different degrees of Jewish assimilation. We shall be able to demonstrate that this objection does not hold true and that we have to cope with an attitudinal pattern largely independent of the structure of the minority group to which it is applied.
It has been established in previous chapters that the mentality of the preju- diced subject is characterized by thinking in terms of rigidly contrasting in- groups and outgroups. In the stereotype here under consideration, this dichotomy is projected upon the outgroups themselves, or at least upon one particular outgroup. This is partly due no doubt to the automatization of black and white thinking which tends to "cut in two" whatever is being considered. It is also due to the desire to maintain an air of objectivity while expressing one's hostilities, and perhaps even to a mental reservation of the prejudiced person who does not want to deliver himself completely to ways of thinking which he still regards as "forbidden. " The "two kinds" stereotype thus has to be viewed as a compromise between antagonistic tendencies within the prejudiced person himself. This would lead to the supposition that people who make this division are rarely extreme high scorers; a supposi- tion which seems to be largely borne out by our data. In terms of our "orienta- tion" theory we should expect that the "two kinds" idea serves as a makeshift for bridging the gap between general stereotypy and personal experience. Thus, the "good" outgroup members would be those whom the subject per- sonally knows, whereas the "bad" ones would be those at a greater social distance-a distinction obviously related to the differences between assimilated and nonassimilated sectors of the outgroup. This again is at least partly cor- roborated, though it will be seen that the "two kinds" idea is in many respects
so vague and abstract that it does not even coincide with the division be- tween the known and the unknown. As a device for overcoming stereotypy
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
the "two kinds" concept is spurious because it is thoroughly stereotyped itself.
JOO? , who scores high on all the scales, comments as follows:
"Most of the Jews I have known have been white Jews, and they are very charm- ing people. Jews are aggressive, clannish, overcrowd nice neighborhoods, and are money-minded. At least the 'non-white Jews. ' My experiences have been of two sorts. Some Jews are amongst the most charming and educated people I know. Other experiences have been less friendly. On the whole, I think Jews in the professions are all right, but in commerce they seem to be quite objectionable. "
Here it can be seen clearly how the over-all stereotypy, as suggested by the list of "objectionable Jewish traits," struggles with the stereotype of a dichotomy, which in this case represents the more humanitarian trend. It is conceived in terms of acquaintances vs. others, but this is complicated by a second division, that between "professional" Jews (supposedly of higher education and morality) and "business" Jews, who are charged with being ruthless money-makers and cheats.
This, however, is not the classical form of the "two kinds" idea. The latter is expressed, rather, by the above-mentioned Boy Scout leader, 5051, the man who brings the Armenians into play:
"Now take the Jews. There are good and bad amongst all races. W e know that, and we know that Jews are a religion, not a race; but the trouble is that there are two types of Jews. There are the white Jews and the kikes. My pet theory is that the white Jews hate the kikes just as much as we do. I even knew a good Jew who ran a store and threw some kikes out, calling them kikes and saying he didn't want their business. "
Research on anti-Semitism among Jews would probably corroborate this "pet" idea. In Germany at least, the "autochthonous" Jews used to discrim- inate heavily against refugees and immigrants from the East and often enough comforted themselves with the idea that the Nazi policies were directed merely against the "Ostjuden. " Distinctions of this sort seem to promote gradual persecution of Jews, group by group, with the aid of the smooth rationalization that only those are to be excluded who do not belong anyway. It is a structural element of anti-Semitic persecution that it starts with limited
objectives, but goes on and on without being stopped. It is through this struc- ture that the "two kinds" stereotype assumes its sinister aspect. The division between "whites" and "kikes," arbitrary and unjust in itself, invariably turns against the so-called "whites" who become the "kikes" of tomorrow.
Evidence of the independence of the division from its object is offered by the all-around high scorer, Mz229m, of the Maritime School group, who divides the Jews in a manner employed by other Southerners with regard to the Negroes. Here a certain break between general race prejudice and a rela- tive freedom of more personal attitudes and experiences seems to exist.
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
(Jewish problem? ) "Not a terrific problem. I get along with them. Jews in the South are different from those in the Nonh. Not so grasping in the South. (Daugh- ter marrying a Jew? ) O. K. ; no problem. Large number of Jewish families in Galveston. No prejudice against Jews in Texas. "
This making of private exceptions is sometimes, as by the mildly anti- Semitic radio writer 5003, expressed as follows:
"He doesn't know about Jews. 'Some of my best friends are Jews. ' " In spite of the innumerable jokes, both European and American, about the "some of my best friends" cliche, it survives tenaciously. Apparently it combines felicitously the merits of "human interest"-supposedly personal experience-with a bow to the superego which does not seriously impede the underlying hostility.
Occasionally the concessions made to personal acquaintances are explained by the interspersion of racial theories, and thus a? mildly paranoid touch is added. An example is the generally "high" woman, Fzog:
Father Scotch-Irish; mother English-Irish. Subject is not identified with any of these. "I have an age-old feeling against Jews, some against Negroes. Jews stick together, are out for money; they gyp you. Jews are in big businesses. It seems they will be running the country before long. I know some people of Jewish descent who are very nice, but they're not full-blooded Jews. Jews have large noses, are slight in stature, little sly Jews. The women have dark hair, dark eyes, are sort of loud. "
This girl student, by the way, to whom the "education" idea is all-important, is among those who show traces of bad conscience.
Subject knows she's prejudiced; she thinks she needs educating too, by working with people of different races.
The intrinsic weakness of the "best friend" idea, which simulates human experience without truly expressing it, comes into the open in the following quotation, where the line between the friend and the "kikes" is drawn in such a way that even the "friend" is not fully admitted.
(Jews? ) "There are Jews and Jews. I have a very good girl friend who is a Jew- never enters into our relationship except that she is in a Jewish sorority. (Would you want her in your sorority? ) Well . . . (pause) . . . I don't think I'd have any objections. (Would you let in all Jewish girls? ) No. One Jew is alright but you
get a whole mob and . . . ! (What happens? ) They get into anything and they'll control it-they'll group together for their own interests-the kike Jew is as dishonest as they come. Find them on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. I have had no expe- rience with kike Jews. I think that's created in my family. Father feels strongly against them-I don't know why. (Nazis? ) That's unnecessary-they have a right to exist-no reason for excluding them as long as they don't try to overstep the rights of others. I knew a lot of Jews in high school. They kept pretty much to themselves. Don't think I'm echoing. I would like Jews as long as they don't reflect typical Jewish qualities. Typical Jewish nose, mouth, voice. The presence of a
? 626 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
Jew creates feelings of tension. Squeaky voice, long, pointed nose. Couldn't name anti-Semitic groups in this country but think they exist. "
Particular attention should be called to the statement of this girl, described by the interviewer as being "tight all over," that the presence of a Jew creates feelings of tension. There is reason to believe that this is a common experience. It would hardly suffice to attribute this uneasiness solely to repressed guilt feelings, or to the effect of some "strangeness" as such. At least the concrete aspects of this strangeness in social contacts needs further elucidation. We venture the hypothesis that it is due to a certain discomfort and uneasiness on the Jew's own part in non-Jewish company, and on a certain antagonism of the Jews, deeply rooted in history, against "genial" conviviality and harmless abandonment of oneself in order to enjoy the mo- ment. Since this may be one concrete factor making for anti-Semitism, independent of traditional stereotypy, this whole complex should be fol- lowed up most carefully in future research.
As to the evidence for our assertion that the "two kinds" idea is not object- bound but rather a structural psychological pattern, we limit ourselves to two examples. The student nurse, 5013, whose scale scores are generally high:
Feels towards the Japanese and the Mexicans and Negroes very much as she does toward the Jews. In all cases she holds to a sort of bifurcation theory, that is, that there are good Japanese and that they should be allowed to return to Cali- fornia, but there are bad ones and they should not. The Mexicans also fall into two groups, as do the Negroes. When it is pointed out to her that people of her own extraction probably also fall into good and bad groups, she admits this but feels that the line between the good and the bad is not as great in her case. She feels that the Negro problem is probably of greater importance than the other minorities but says that she speaks at the hospital to the colored nurses and doctors. At this point she related a long anecdote about taking care of a female Negro patient who had told her that the Negroes had brought their problems on themselves by aspiring to equality with the whites. She feels that this was a very wise N egress and agrees with her.
In the case of Southerners, the "two kinds" idea is frequently applied to the Negroes, those in the South being praised, and those who went away being denounced for demanding an equality to which they were not entitled. In so far as the Southern "white man's nigger" is more subservient and a better object of exploitation in the eyes of these subjects, this attitude, with its patriarchal and feudalistic rationalizations, can be called semirealistic. But the construct of "two kinds of Negroes" often results in quite a different con- notation, as in the case of F340a. She is high on F and PEC and middle on E.
"The Negroes are getting so arrogant now, they come to the employment office and say they don't like this kind of a job and that kind of a job. However, there are some who are employed at the employment office and they are very nice and intelligent. There are nice ones and bad ones among us. The Negroes who have
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
always lived in Oakland are ~ll right; they don't know what to do with all those who are coming in from the South either. They all carry knives; if you do some- thing they don't like, they 'will get even with you, they will slice you up. ' "
Here, the "two kinds" idea results in plain persecution fantasies. F. THE ANTI-SEMITE'S DILEMMA
If anti-Semitism is a "symptom" which fulfills an "economic" function within the subject's psychology, one is led to postulate that this symptom is not simply "there," as a mere expression of what the subject happens to be, but that it is the outcome of a conflict. It owes its very irrationality to psycho- logical dynamics which force the individual, at least in certain areas, to abandon the reality principle. The conception of prejudice as a symptom resulting from a conflict has been elucidated in earlier chapters. Here, we are concerned not so much with the clinical evidence of conflict determinants as with the traces of conflict within the phenomenon of anti-Semitism itself. Some evidence bearing on this point has already been presented in the last sections. The "problem" idea as well as the dichotomy applied to the out-
group represent a kind of compromise between underlying urges and hostile stereotypes on the one hand, and the demands of conscience and the weight of concrete experience on the other. The subject who "discusses" the Jews usually wants to maintain some sense of proportion, at least formally, even though the content of his rational considerations is spurious and his supposed insight itself is warped by the very same instinctual urges which it is called upon to check.
The standard form under which conflict appears in statements of high- scoring subjects is, as indicated above, "I shouldn't, but. . . . " This formula is the result of a remarkable displacement. It has been pointed out that the anti-Semite is torn between negative stereotypy and personal experiences which contradict this stereotypy. 1 As soon as the subject reflects, however, upon his own attitude, the relation between stereotypy and experience ap- pears in reverse. He regards tolerance as the general law, as the stereotype as it were, and personalizes his own stereotyped hostility, presenting it as the in- escapable result either of experience or of idiosyncrasies which are stronger than he is himself. This can be accounted for partly by the officially prevail- ing democratic ideology which stamps prejudice as something wrong. It has also to be considered that the superego, being constituted as the psycho- logical agency of society within the individual, regularly assumes an aspect of u! liversality which easily appears to the subject, driven by wishes for in-
1 The most drastic evidence for this hypothesis is, of course, the habit of differentiating between those Jews with whom the subject is acquainted, and who are "good," and the rest of them, who are the "kikes. " In certain cases this contradiction is both concretized and cleared up etiologically. We refer here to case 5057, discussed in detail in Chapter XIX, where the subject's bias is practically explained by himself as the outcome of res~nt- ment aroused by a childhood experience with a Jewish delicatessen man.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
stinctual gratification, as "rigid law. " This, however, hardly tells the whole story. The discrepancy between experience and stereotype is put into the service of the prejudiced attitude. The prejudiced subject is dimly aware that the content of the stereotype is imaginary and that his own experience represents truth. Yet, for deeper psychological reasons, he wants to stick to the stereotype. This he achieves by transforming the latter into an expres- sion of his personality and the antistereotypical elements into an abstract obligation. This displacement is enhanced by his innermost conviction that the supposed stereotypes of tolerance are not so strong socially as he pre- tends. He realizes that while he appears to rebel against the slogans of democ- racy and equality, for reasons that are strictly personal, he is actually backed by powerful social trends. And yet he will claim, at the same time, that he acts as a sincere and independent person who does not care what others think. Moreover, he relies on the idea that one's own feelings are always stronger than conventions, that he simply has to follow them, and that his prejudice is a kind of fatality which cannot be changed. This seems to be a common pattern by which the anti-Semite's conflict situation is rationalized in a way favorable to prejudice.
This pattern manifests itself objectively in a characteristic contradic- tion: that between general pretensions of being unbiased, and prejudiced statements as soon as specific issues are raised. 5056, a 29-year-old housewife, with high scores on all the scales,
Stated that she and her husband have no particular dislike for any group of people. (This statement is interesting when contrasted with her very high E-score, and with the statements which follow. ) "The Negro, however, should be kept with his own people. I would not want my niece marrying a Negro, and I would not want Negro neighbors. " To subject there is quite a Negro problem-"it is probably the most important minority problem. " She prefers "the way things are in the South; the Negroes seem so happy down there. Actually, they should have a separate state. This doesn't mean that we should snub them. The separate state would be very good, because, although we should govern them, they could run it themselves. "
The underlying conflict could not be expressed more authentically than in the contradiction contained in the last statement. The subject tries to display an unbiased attitude toward Jews:
It is interesting to note that she objected rather strongly to discussing the Jews and the Negroes in the same context and protested when they were presented contiguously in the interview. "I would just as soon have Jews around-in fact, I have some Jewish friends. Some are overbearing, but then some Gentiles are over- bearing too. "
But as soon as it comes to her "personal" attitude, she falls for the stereotype and resolves the conflict by an aloofness which amounts for all practical purposes to an endorsement of anti-Semitism:
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
When asked about Jewish traits, she first mentioned "the Jewish nose. " In addi- tion, she believes Jews have a certain set of personality traits all their own, which will never change. "They want to argue all the time; some are greedy (though some aren't, in fact, some are generous) ; they talk with their hands and are dramatic in their speech. " She believes the dislike of the Jews is increasing, to which trend she objects. "Think we're being selfish when we act that way, just as we accuse the Jews of being. " She doesn't like to hear attacks on the Jews, but she wouldn't defend them by argument. This seems to be both a function of her dislike for argumenta- tion as well as a certain attitude of noninvolvement in or detachment from the whole question of anti-Semitism.
The subjective mirroring of the conflict between stereotype and experience in reverse, resulting in rigidity of the supposed experience, is clearly exempli- fied in the statements of Ml2Joa, a middle scorer of the Maritime School group:
(What do you think of the problem of racial minorities? ) "Well, for the for- eigners coming in, it's quite a question. This is supposed to be a melting pot. But shouldn't let too many of them in. . . . And then the Negro problem. . . . I try to be liberal, but I was raised in a Jim Crow state. . . . I don't think I would ever fall in with giving the Negroes equal rights in every way. . . . And yet, foreigners, you have a natural dislike for them. Yet, all of us were once foreigners. . . . "
The anti-Semite's dilemma may be epitomized by quoting verbatim the following statements of the girl student soos, who is high on both theE and F scales, but low on PEC.
"I don't think there should be a Jewish problem. People should not be discrim- inated against, but judged on their individual merits. I don't like it to be called a problem. Certainly I'm against prejudice. Jews are aggressive, bad-mannered, clan- nish, intellectual, clean, overcrowd neighborhoods, noisy, and oversexed. I will admit that my opinion is not based on much contact, however; I hear these things all the time. There are very few Jewish students in my school, and I have already referred to my good contact with the one girl. "
Here the contradiction between judgment and experience is so striking that the existence of prejudice can be accounted for only by strong psychological urges.
G. PROSECUTOR AS JUDGE
In terms of ideology, the anti-Semite's conflict is between the current, culturally "approved" stereotypes of prejudice and the officially prevailing standards of democracy and human equality. Viewed psychologically, the conflict is between certain foreconscious or repressed id tendencies on the one hand and the superego, or its more or less externalized, conventional sub- stitute, on the other. It is hard to predict or even to explain satisfactorily, on the basis of our data, which way this conflict will be decided in each individ- ual case, though we may hypothesize that as soon as prejudice in any amount is allowed to enter a person's manifest ways of thinking, the scales weigh
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
heavily in favor of an ever-increasing expansion of his prejudice. We are furthermore entitled to expect this result of the conflict in all cases where the potentially fascist personality syndrome is established. If the conflict within the individual has been decided against the Jews, the decision itself is almost without exception rationalized moralistically. It is as if the internal powers of prejudice, after the defeat of the countertendencies, would con- summate their victory by taking the opposing energies, which they have defeated, into their own service. The superego becomes the spokesman of the id, as it were-a dynamic configuration, incidentally, which is not altogether new to psychoanalysis. W e might call the urges expressing themselves in anti- Semitism the prosecutor, and conscience the judge, within the personality, and say that the two are fused. The Jews have to face, in the prejudiced personality, the parody of a trial. This is part of the psychological explana- tion of why the chances of the Jews making a successful defense against the prejudiced personality are so slim. It may be noted that the judiciary practice in Nazi Germany followed exactly the same pattern, that the Jews were never given a chance, in the Third Reich, to speak for their own cause, either in private law suits or collectively. It will be seen that the expropriation of the superego by the fascist character, with underlying unconscious guilt feelings which must be violently silenced at any price, contributes decisively to the transformation of "cultural discrimination" into an insatiably hostile attitude feeding upon destructive urges.
There is a clear index of the conquest of the superego by anti-Semitic ideology: the assertion that the responsibility for everything the Jews have to suffer, and more particularly, for the genocide committed by the Nazis, rests with the victims rather than with their persecutors. The anti-Semite avails himself of a cliche which seems to make this idea acceptable once and for all: that the Jews "brought it on themselves" no matter what "it" may be. Mzo7, the young man who marked every question on the questionnaire scale either +3 or -3 but averaged high on all three scales, is a good example of this pattern of rationalization, following the dubious logic of "where there is smoke there must be fire":
"I never understood why Hitler was so brutal toward them. There must have been some reason for it, something to provoke it. Some say he had to show his authority, but I doubt it. I suspect the Jews contributed a great deal to it. "
How the moralistic construct of Jewish responsibility leads to a complete reversal between victim and murderer is strikingly demonstrated by one subject, 5064, another one of the Los Angeles Boy Scout leaders and a butcher by trade. He scores high on both the E and F scale although lower on PEC. While still officially condemning the German atrocities, he makes a surprising suggestion:
"No American can approve of what the Nazis did to the Jews. I really hope that
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
the Jews will do something about it before we come to any such position here. The solution is in the education, particularly of the minority. "
This type of mental perversion seems to utilize an idea taken from the stock of traditional liberalistic wisdom: God helps those who help themselves. The Jews are in jeopardy, therefore it is up to the Jews. In a cultural climate where success has come to be a major measuring rod for any value, the pre- carious situation of the Jews works as an argument against them. The affinity of this attitude and the "no pity for the poor" theme, to be discussed in the chapter on politics, can hardly be overlooked. The same line of thought occurs in the interview of another Boy Scout leader, the Austrian-born and somewhat over-Americanized 55-year-old 5044, who is consistently high on all scales:
"The Jews should take the lead rather than the Gentiles. After all, the Jews are the ones who may get into serious trouble. They shouldn't walk on other people's feet. "
While the Jews "bring it upon themselves," the Nazis' extermination policy is either justified or regarded as a Jewish . exaggeration itself, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. The high-scoring man, M359, departmental man- ager for a leather company, is one of those who have "a large number of very close Jewish friends. " Despite this he is high on both the E and PEC scales, although lower on F. Nor does it prevent the following interview episode:
(Nazi treatment? ) "Unable to convince myself that the treatment was limited to Jews. This seems to me to be Jewish propaganda to solicit sympathy and help by overemphasizing their hardships, though I have no sympathy for the Nazi's treat- ment of peoples. "
The mercilessness accompanying the semi-apologetic attitude towards the Nazis can be seen in this subject's pseudorational statements on Palestine: while apparently wishing to "give the Jews a chance," he simultaneously excludes any prospects of success by referring to the Jews' supposedly unchangeably bad nature:
(Solution? ) "Sending them to Palestine is silly because it's not big enough. A good idea to have a country of their own, but big enough so that they can go ahead with their daily pursuits in a normal way, but the Jews would not be happy. They are only happy to have others work for them. "
The explanatory idea that the "Jews brought it upon themselves" is used as a rationalization for destructive wishes which otherwise would not be al- lowed to pass the censorship of the ego. In some cases this is disguised as a statement of fact; e. g. , by5o12, a 2 r-year-old discharged naval petty officer, who scores high on all scales:
"I don't want anything to do with them. They are a nuisance, but not a menace. They will get whatever they deserve as a result of their behavior. "
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
The high-scoring woman Fzo;, however, who used to be a social welfare student but has changed to decorative art, lets the cat out of the bag:
"I don't blame the Nazis at all for what they did to the Jews. That sounds terrible, I know, but if the Jews acted the way they do here, I don't blame them. I've never had any bad personal experiences with Jews, it's just the way they act. Don't help your fellow man; that's their creed. "
Here the interrelation between death-wish and moralistic rationalization be- comes truly terrifying. Particularly noteworthy is the subject's underscoring of her own irrationality, in spite of her rationalization concerning the Jews' innate badness. Her confession that she never had any bad experiences with Jews high-lights an important aspect of the whole phenomenon of anti- Semitic extremism. It is the fantastic disproportion between the Jewish "guilt" -even as conceived by the anti-Semite himself-and the judgment that is pronounced. In previous sections the role played by the theme of "ex- change" in the mentality of the prejudiced person has been discussed. Fre- quently our high-scoring subjects complain that they never get their full share, that they are being exploited by everybody. This sense of victimiza-. tion goes hand in hand with very strong underlying possessive and appro- priative desires. Accordingly, when the subjects speak about the "justice" to be meted out to the Jews they express their own desire for an unjust state of affairs in which the exchange of equivalents has been replaced by distribution according to unmediated and irrational power relationships. This is expressed negatively towards the Jews: they should get more punishment-infinitely more-than they "deserve. " Ordinarily, it would never occur even to a very aggressive person that somebody who is bad-mannered or even a cheat should be punished by death. Where the Jews are concerned, however, the transition from accusations which are not only flimsy but unsubstantial even if they were true, to suggestions of the severest kinds of treatment seems to work quite smoothly. This is indicative of one of the most pernicious features of the potentially fascist character.
The logical property of stereotypes, that is, their all-comprehensiveness which allows for no deviations, is not only well adapted to meet certain re- quirements of the prejudiced outlook; it is, by itself, an expression of a psychological trait which probably could be fully understood only in connec- tion with the theory of paranoia and the paranoid "system" which always tends to include everything, to tolerate nothing which cannot be identified by the subject's formula. The extremely prejudiced person tends toward "psychological totalitarianism," something which seems to be almost a micro- cosmic image of the totalitarian state at which he aims. Nothing can be left untouched, as it were; everything must be made "equal" to the ego-ideal of a rigidly conceived and hypostatized ingroup. The outgroup, the chosen foe, represents an eternal challenge. As long as anything different survives, the
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
fascist character feels threatened, no matter how weak the other being may be. It is as if the anti-Semite could not sleep quietly until he has trans- formed the whole world into the very same paranoid system by which he is beset: the Nazis went far beyond their official anti-Semitic program. This mechanism makes for the complete disproportion between "guilt" and pun- ishment. The extreme anti-Semite simply cannot stop. By a logic of his own, which is of an archaic nature, much closer to associational transitions than to discursive inferences, he reaches, after having started from relatively mild accusations, the wildest conclusions, tantamount in the last analysis to the pronouncement of death sentences against those whom he literally "can- not stand. " This mechanism was encountered in the "screened" interviews of the Labor Study where subjects frequently "talked themselves into anti- Semitism. " Our interview schedule, more strictly standardized, prevented us
from catching the latter phenomenon. Yet we have striking testimony of the disproportion between guilt and punishment in some of our cases. It is here that the "expropriation" of the suverego by the anti-Semite's punitive moralism obtains its full significance. This removes the last obstacle to psy- chological totalitarianism. There are no inhibitions left by which the associa- tional crescendo of destructive ideas could be checked. Hatred is reproduced and enhanced in an almost automatized, compulsive manner which is both utterly detached from the reality of the object and completely alien to the ego. It may be added that, viewed sociologically, the disproportion between guilt and punishment shows that to the extreme anti-Semite the whole idea of rational law has become a sham even though he dwells on orderliness and ! egalitarian niceties. He is ready to sacrifice his own ideology of equivalents as soon as he has the power to get the major share for himself. Psychologically, the idea of eternal Jewish guilt can be understood as a projection of the prejudiced person's own repressed guilt feelings; ideologically, it is a mere epiphenomenon, a rationalization in the strictest sense. In the extreme case, the psychological focal point is the wish to kill the object of his hatred. It is only afterwards that he looks for reasons why the Jews "must" be killed, and these reasons can never suffice fully to justify his extermination fantasies.
This, however, does not "cure" the anti-Semite, once he has succeeded in expropriating his conscience. The disproportion between the guilt and the punishment induces him, rather, to pursue his hatred beyond any limits and thus to prove to himself and to others that he must be right. This is the ulti- mate function of ideas such as "the Jews brought it upon themselves" or the more generalized formula "there mU:st be something to it. " The extreme anti- Semite silences the remnants of his own conscience by the extremeness of his attitude. He seems to terrorize himself even while he terrorizes others.
The sham trial of rationalizations put on by the prejudiced person some- times makes for a kind of defense of the Jews. But this psychological defense is all too reminiscent of the technique of the Nazi courts. It is permitted only
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
in order to satisfy the formalized and hollow wish for legality, the empty shell of expropriated conscience. The defense must always remain impotent. What- ? ever good is said about the Jews sounds like an ironical or hypocritical varia- tion of standard blames. Thus, reference is frequently made to the mythical "good family life" of the Jews, a comment which, however thinly, veils the accusation of conspiratorial clannishness; and this is accompanied by in- sincere protestations of envy of these Jewish qualities, the implication being that the anti-Semitic subject gets the worst deal in life because his noble nature prevents him from the practice of connivance. Still another type of mock-defense can be observed in our interviews. It is the assertion that the
Jews are so clever; that they are "smarter" than the Gentiles, and that one has to admire them on this account. The mechanism at work here involves a double set of values which makes itself felt throughout contemporary cul- ture. On the one hand, there are the "ideals" of magnanimity, unselfishness, justice, and love to which one has to pay lip service. On the other hand, there are the standards of achievement, success, and status which one has to follow in one's actual life. This double set of values is applied to the Jews in reverse, as it were. They are praised for their supposed or actual living up to the standards which the anti-Semite himself actually follows and simul- taneously, they are condemned for their violation of the very same moral code of which he has successfully rid himself. The phraseology of conscience is used in order to take back the moral credit given to the chosen foe in order to appease one's own conscience. Even the praise apportioned to the Jews is used as supporting evidence for their pre-established guilt.
The point being developed here, as well as other features of the prejudiced mentality, is illustrated by the following description of 5039, a 27-year-old veteran student, high onE and middle on the other scales, who is described by the interviewer as a "rather egocentric person. "
In rebelling against his father's teachings, he has dissociated himself from the church, but nevertheless strongly identifies himself as a Gentile in contrast to the Jews. He explained this on the basis of having grown up in a neighborhood . . . where he was the only Gentile in a Jewish community and where he was made to feel that he was an "outsider. " He feels that there is a basic conflict in the religious teachings and upbringing of Christians as against Jews, which is largely responsible for the incompatibility of the two groups. He stated that the Christian religion stresses the pacifistic teaching of "turning the other cheek," thus causing youth to become "maladjusted and submissive," whereas the Jewish religion spurs youth to achievement and aggression, on the basis that "your fathers have suffered, therefore it is now up to you to prove yourself.
what they wanted. (How well have you known Jews? ) Well, I never knew any in childhood. In fact, I never knew one until we moved to San Francisco, 10 years ago. He was our landlord. It was terrible. I had a lovely home in Denver and I hated to leave. And here I was stuck in an ugly apartment and he did everything to make it worse. If the rent was due on Sunday, he was there bright and early. After that I knew lots of them. I had Jewish bosses. There are Jews in the bank. They are everywhere-always in the money. My next-door neighbor is a Jew. I decided to be civil. After all, I can't move now and I might as well be neighborly. They borrow our lawn mower. They say it is because you can't buy one during the war. But of course lawn mowers cost money. We had a party last week and they called the police. I called her the next day because I suspected them. She said she did it so I asked if she didn't think she should have called me first. She said a man was singing in the yard and woke her baby and she got so upset she called the police. I asked her
? 622 THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
if she realized that her baby screamed for 3 months after she brought him home from the hospital. Ever since then she has been just grovelling and I hate that even worse. "
"Knowing better" is mentioned not infrequently by high scorers: they realize they "should" not think that way, but stick to their prejudice under a kind of compulsion which is apparently stronger than the moral and rational counteragencies available to them. In addition to this phenomenon, there is hardly any aspect of the anti-Semitic syndrome discussed in this chapter which could not be illustrated by this quotation from a truly "all-out," to- talitarian anti-Semite. She omits nothing. Her insatiability is indicative of the tremendous libidinous energy she has invested in her Jewish complex. Acting out her anti-Semitism obviously works with her as a wish-fulfillment, both with regard to aggressiveness and with regard to the desire for intellectual superiority as indicated by her cooperation in the present study "in the inter- ests of science. " Her personal attitude partakes of that sinister contempt shown by those who feel themselves to be "in the know" with respect to all kinds of dark secrets.
Her most characteristic attitude is one of pessimism-she dismisses many matters with a downward glance, a shrug of the shoulders, and a sigh.
The idea of the "Jew spotter" was introduced in the Labor Study, where it proved to be the most discriminating item. We used it only in a supple- mentary way, in work with the Los Angeles sample, but there can be no doubt that people who are extreme on A-S will regularly allege that they can recognize Jews at once. This is the most drastic expression of the "orienta- tion" mechanism which we have seen to be so essential a feature of the preju- diced outlook. At the same time, it can frequently be observed that the actual variety of Jews, which could hardly escape notice, leads to a high amount of vagueness with regard to the criteria according to which Jews might be spotted; this vagueness does not, however, interfere with the definiteness of the spotter's claim. One example for this configuration will suffice. It is inter- esting because of the strange mixture of fantasy and real observation.
5039, a 27-year-old student at the University of Southern California and a war veteran, who scores high on E:
"Yes, I think I can . . . of course, you can't always, I know. But usually they have different features: larger nose, and I think differently shaped faces, more narrow, and different mannerisms. . . . But mainly they talk too much and they have different attitudes. Almost always they will counter a question with another question (gives examples from school); they are freer with criticism; tend to talk in big terms and generally more aggressive-at least I notice that immediately. . . . "
E. TWO KINDS OF JEWS
The stereotypes just discussed have been interpreted as means for pseudo- orientation in an estranged world, and at the same time as devices for "master-
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
ing" this world by being abl~ completely to pigeonhole its negative aspects. The "problematizing" attitude puts the resentful person in the position of one who is rationally discriminating; the assertion that all the Jews are alike transposes the "problem" into the realm of systematic and complete knowl- edge, without a "loophole," as it were; the pretension of being able unfail- ingly to recognize Jews raises the claim that the subject is actually the judge in matters where the judgment is supposed to have been pronounced once and for all. In addition, there is another stereotype of "orientation" which de- serves closer attention because it shows most clearly the "topographical" function and because it crops up spontaneously with great frequency in the interview material. It is even more indicative of the "pseudorational" ele- ment in anti-Semitic prejudice than is the manner of speaking about the "Jewish problem. " W e refer to the standard division of Jews into two groups, the good ones and the bad ones, a division frequently expressed in terms of the "white" Jews and the "kikes. " It may be objected that this division can- not be taken as an index of subjective attitudes, since it has its basis in the object itself, namely, the different degrees of Jewish assimilation. We shall be able to demonstrate that this objection does not hold true and that we have to cope with an attitudinal pattern largely independent of the structure of the minority group to which it is applied.
It has been established in previous chapters that the mentality of the preju- diced subject is characterized by thinking in terms of rigidly contrasting in- groups and outgroups. In the stereotype here under consideration, this dichotomy is projected upon the outgroups themselves, or at least upon one particular outgroup. This is partly due no doubt to the automatization of black and white thinking which tends to "cut in two" whatever is being considered. It is also due to the desire to maintain an air of objectivity while expressing one's hostilities, and perhaps even to a mental reservation of the prejudiced person who does not want to deliver himself completely to ways of thinking which he still regards as "forbidden. " The "two kinds" stereotype thus has to be viewed as a compromise between antagonistic tendencies within the prejudiced person himself. This would lead to the supposition that people who make this division are rarely extreme high scorers; a supposi- tion which seems to be largely borne out by our data. In terms of our "orienta- tion" theory we should expect that the "two kinds" idea serves as a makeshift for bridging the gap between general stereotypy and personal experience. Thus, the "good" outgroup members would be those whom the subject per- sonally knows, whereas the "bad" ones would be those at a greater social distance-a distinction obviously related to the differences between assimilated and nonassimilated sectors of the outgroup. This again is at least partly cor- roborated, though it will be seen that the "two kinds" idea is in many respects
so vague and abstract that it does not even coincide with the division be- tween the known and the unknown. As a device for overcoming stereotypy
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
the "two kinds" concept is spurious because it is thoroughly stereotyped itself.
JOO? , who scores high on all the scales, comments as follows:
"Most of the Jews I have known have been white Jews, and they are very charm- ing people. Jews are aggressive, clannish, overcrowd nice neighborhoods, and are money-minded. At least the 'non-white Jews. ' My experiences have been of two sorts. Some Jews are amongst the most charming and educated people I know. Other experiences have been less friendly. On the whole, I think Jews in the professions are all right, but in commerce they seem to be quite objectionable. "
Here it can be seen clearly how the over-all stereotypy, as suggested by the list of "objectionable Jewish traits," struggles with the stereotype of a dichotomy, which in this case represents the more humanitarian trend. It is conceived in terms of acquaintances vs. others, but this is complicated by a second division, that between "professional" Jews (supposedly of higher education and morality) and "business" Jews, who are charged with being ruthless money-makers and cheats.
This, however, is not the classical form of the "two kinds" idea. The latter is expressed, rather, by the above-mentioned Boy Scout leader, 5051, the man who brings the Armenians into play:
"Now take the Jews. There are good and bad amongst all races. W e know that, and we know that Jews are a religion, not a race; but the trouble is that there are two types of Jews. There are the white Jews and the kikes. My pet theory is that the white Jews hate the kikes just as much as we do. I even knew a good Jew who ran a store and threw some kikes out, calling them kikes and saying he didn't want their business. "
Research on anti-Semitism among Jews would probably corroborate this "pet" idea. In Germany at least, the "autochthonous" Jews used to discrim- inate heavily against refugees and immigrants from the East and often enough comforted themselves with the idea that the Nazi policies were directed merely against the "Ostjuden. " Distinctions of this sort seem to promote gradual persecution of Jews, group by group, with the aid of the smooth rationalization that only those are to be excluded who do not belong anyway. It is a structural element of anti-Semitic persecution that it starts with limited
objectives, but goes on and on without being stopped. It is through this struc- ture that the "two kinds" stereotype assumes its sinister aspect. The division between "whites" and "kikes," arbitrary and unjust in itself, invariably turns against the so-called "whites" who become the "kikes" of tomorrow.
Evidence of the independence of the division from its object is offered by the all-around high scorer, Mz229m, of the Maritime School group, who divides the Jews in a manner employed by other Southerners with regard to the Negroes. Here a certain break between general race prejudice and a rela- tive freedom of more personal attitudes and experiences seems to exist.
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
(Jewish problem? ) "Not a terrific problem. I get along with them. Jews in the South are different from those in the Nonh. Not so grasping in the South. (Daugh- ter marrying a Jew? ) O. K. ; no problem. Large number of Jewish families in Galveston. No prejudice against Jews in Texas. "
This making of private exceptions is sometimes, as by the mildly anti- Semitic radio writer 5003, expressed as follows:
"He doesn't know about Jews. 'Some of my best friends are Jews. ' " In spite of the innumerable jokes, both European and American, about the "some of my best friends" cliche, it survives tenaciously. Apparently it combines felicitously the merits of "human interest"-supposedly personal experience-with a bow to the superego which does not seriously impede the underlying hostility.
Occasionally the concessions made to personal acquaintances are explained by the interspersion of racial theories, and thus a? mildly paranoid touch is added. An example is the generally "high" woman, Fzog:
Father Scotch-Irish; mother English-Irish. Subject is not identified with any of these. "I have an age-old feeling against Jews, some against Negroes. Jews stick together, are out for money; they gyp you. Jews are in big businesses. It seems they will be running the country before long. I know some people of Jewish descent who are very nice, but they're not full-blooded Jews. Jews have large noses, are slight in stature, little sly Jews. The women have dark hair, dark eyes, are sort of loud. "
This girl student, by the way, to whom the "education" idea is all-important, is among those who show traces of bad conscience.
Subject knows she's prejudiced; she thinks she needs educating too, by working with people of different races.
The intrinsic weakness of the "best friend" idea, which simulates human experience without truly expressing it, comes into the open in the following quotation, where the line between the friend and the "kikes" is drawn in such a way that even the "friend" is not fully admitted.
(Jews? ) "There are Jews and Jews. I have a very good girl friend who is a Jew- never enters into our relationship except that she is in a Jewish sorority. (Would you want her in your sorority? ) Well . . . (pause) . . . I don't think I'd have any objections. (Would you let in all Jewish girls? ) No. One Jew is alright but you
get a whole mob and . . . ! (What happens? ) They get into anything and they'll control it-they'll group together for their own interests-the kike Jew is as dishonest as they come. Find them on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. I have had no expe- rience with kike Jews. I think that's created in my family. Father feels strongly against them-I don't know why. (Nazis? ) That's unnecessary-they have a right to exist-no reason for excluding them as long as they don't try to overstep the rights of others. I knew a lot of Jews in high school. They kept pretty much to themselves. Don't think I'm echoing. I would like Jews as long as they don't reflect typical Jewish qualities. Typical Jewish nose, mouth, voice. The presence of a
? 626 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
Jew creates feelings of tension. Squeaky voice, long, pointed nose. Couldn't name anti-Semitic groups in this country but think they exist. "
Particular attention should be called to the statement of this girl, described by the interviewer as being "tight all over," that the presence of a Jew creates feelings of tension. There is reason to believe that this is a common experience. It would hardly suffice to attribute this uneasiness solely to repressed guilt feelings, or to the effect of some "strangeness" as such. At least the concrete aspects of this strangeness in social contacts needs further elucidation. We venture the hypothesis that it is due to a certain discomfort and uneasiness on the Jew's own part in non-Jewish company, and on a certain antagonism of the Jews, deeply rooted in history, against "genial" conviviality and harmless abandonment of oneself in order to enjoy the mo- ment. Since this may be one concrete factor making for anti-Semitism, independent of traditional stereotypy, this whole complex should be fol- lowed up most carefully in future research.
As to the evidence for our assertion that the "two kinds" idea is not object- bound but rather a structural psychological pattern, we limit ourselves to two examples. The student nurse, 5013, whose scale scores are generally high:
Feels towards the Japanese and the Mexicans and Negroes very much as she does toward the Jews. In all cases she holds to a sort of bifurcation theory, that is, that there are good Japanese and that they should be allowed to return to Cali- fornia, but there are bad ones and they should not. The Mexicans also fall into two groups, as do the Negroes. When it is pointed out to her that people of her own extraction probably also fall into good and bad groups, she admits this but feels that the line between the good and the bad is not as great in her case. She feels that the Negro problem is probably of greater importance than the other minorities but says that she speaks at the hospital to the colored nurses and doctors. At this point she related a long anecdote about taking care of a female Negro patient who had told her that the Negroes had brought their problems on themselves by aspiring to equality with the whites. She feels that this was a very wise N egress and agrees with her.
In the case of Southerners, the "two kinds" idea is frequently applied to the Negroes, those in the South being praised, and those who went away being denounced for demanding an equality to which they were not entitled. In so far as the Southern "white man's nigger" is more subservient and a better object of exploitation in the eyes of these subjects, this attitude, with its patriarchal and feudalistic rationalizations, can be called semirealistic. But the construct of "two kinds of Negroes" often results in quite a different con- notation, as in the case of F340a. She is high on F and PEC and middle on E.
"The Negroes are getting so arrogant now, they come to the employment office and say they don't like this kind of a job and that kind of a job. However, there are some who are employed at the employment office and they are very nice and intelligent. There are nice ones and bad ones among us. The Negroes who have
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
always lived in Oakland are ~ll right; they don't know what to do with all those who are coming in from the South either. They all carry knives; if you do some- thing they don't like, they 'will get even with you, they will slice you up. ' "
Here, the "two kinds" idea results in plain persecution fantasies. F. THE ANTI-SEMITE'S DILEMMA
If anti-Semitism is a "symptom" which fulfills an "economic" function within the subject's psychology, one is led to postulate that this symptom is not simply "there," as a mere expression of what the subject happens to be, but that it is the outcome of a conflict. It owes its very irrationality to psycho- logical dynamics which force the individual, at least in certain areas, to abandon the reality principle. The conception of prejudice as a symptom resulting from a conflict has been elucidated in earlier chapters. Here, we are concerned not so much with the clinical evidence of conflict determinants as with the traces of conflict within the phenomenon of anti-Semitism itself. Some evidence bearing on this point has already been presented in the last sections. The "problem" idea as well as the dichotomy applied to the out-
group represent a kind of compromise between underlying urges and hostile stereotypes on the one hand, and the demands of conscience and the weight of concrete experience on the other. The subject who "discusses" the Jews usually wants to maintain some sense of proportion, at least formally, even though the content of his rational considerations is spurious and his supposed insight itself is warped by the very same instinctual urges which it is called upon to check.
The standard form under which conflict appears in statements of high- scoring subjects is, as indicated above, "I shouldn't, but. . . . " This formula is the result of a remarkable displacement. It has been pointed out that the anti-Semite is torn between negative stereotypy and personal experiences which contradict this stereotypy. 1 As soon as the subject reflects, however, upon his own attitude, the relation between stereotypy and experience ap- pears in reverse. He regards tolerance as the general law, as the stereotype as it were, and personalizes his own stereotyped hostility, presenting it as the in- escapable result either of experience or of idiosyncrasies which are stronger than he is himself. This can be accounted for partly by the officially prevail- ing democratic ideology which stamps prejudice as something wrong. It has also to be considered that the superego, being constituted as the psycho- logical agency of society within the individual, regularly assumes an aspect of u! liversality which easily appears to the subject, driven by wishes for in-
1 The most drastic evidence for this hypothesis is, of course, the habit of differentiating between those Jews with whom the subject is acquainted, and who are "good," and the rest of them, who are the "kikes. " In certain cases this contradiction is both concretized and cleared up etiologically. We refer here to case 5057, discussed in detail in Chapter XIX, where the subject's bias is practically explained by himself as the outcome of res~nt- ment aroused by a childhood experience with a Jewish delicatessen man.
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
stinctual gratification, as "rigid law. " This, however, hardly tells the whole story. The discrepancy between experience and stereotype is put into the service of the prejudiced attitude. The prejudiced subject is dimly aware that the content of the stereotype is imaginary and that his own experience represents truth. Yet, for deeper psychological reasons, he wants to stick to the stereotype. This he achieves by transforming the latter into an expres- sion of his personality and the antistereotypical elements into an abstract obligation. This displacement is enhanced by his innermost conviction that the supposed stereotypes of tolerance are not so strong socially as he pre- tends. He realizes that while he appears to rebel against the slogans of democ- racy and equality, for reasons that are strictly personal, he is actually backed by powerful social trends. And yet he will claim, at the same time, that he acts as a sincere and independent person who does not care what others think. Moreover, he relies on the idea that one's own feelings are always stronger than conventions, that he simply has to follow them, and that his prejudice is a kind of fatality which cannot be changed. This seems to be a common pattern by which the anti-Semite's conflict situation is rationalized in a way favorable to prejudice.
This pattern manifests itself objectively in a characteristic contradic- tion: that between general pretensions of being unbiased, and prejudiced statements as soon as specific issues are raised. 5056, a 29-year-old housewife, with high scores on all the scales,
Stated that she and her husband have no particular dislike for any group of people. (This statement is interesting when contrasted with her very high E-score, and with the statements which follow. ) "The Negro, however, should be kept with his own people. I would not want my niece marrying a Negro, and I would not want Negro neighbors. " To subject there is quite a Negro problem-"it is probably the most important minority problem. " She prefers "the way things are in the South; the Negroes seem so happy down there. Actually, they should have a separate state. This doesn't mean that we should snub them. The separate state would be very good, because, although we should govern them, they could run it themselves. "
The underlying conflict could not be expressed more authentically than in the contradiction contained in the last statement. The subject tries to display an unbiased attitude toward Jews:
It is interesting to note that she objected rather strongly to discussing the Jews and the Negroes in the same context and protested when they were presented contiguously in the interview. "I would just as soon have Jews around-in fact, I have some Jewish friends. Some are overbearing, but then some Gentiles are over- bearing too. "
But as soon as it comes to her "personal" attitude, she falls for the stereotype and resolves the conflict by an aloofness which amounts for all practical purposes to an endorsement of anti-Semitism:
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
When asked about Jewish traits, she first mentioned "the Jewish nose. " In addi- tion, she believes Jews have a certain set of personality traits all their own, which will never change. "They want to argue all the time; some are greedy (though some aren't, in fact, some are generous) ; they talk with their hands and are dramatic in their speech. " She believes the dislike of the Jews is increasing, to which trend she objects. "Think we're being selfish when we act that way, just as we accuse the Jews of being. " She doesn't like to hear attacks on the Jews, but she wouldn't defend them by argument. This seems to be both a function of her dislike for argumenta- tion as well as a certain attitude of noninvolvement in or detachment from the whole question of anti-Semitism.
The subjective mirroring of the conflict between stereotype and experience in reverse, resulting in rigidity of the supposed experience, is clearly exempli- fied in the statements of Ml2Joa, a middle scorer of the Maritime School group:
(What do you think of the problem of racial minorities? ) "Well, for the for- eigners coming in, it's quite a question. This is supposed to be a melting pot. But shouldn't let too many of them in. . . . And then the Negro problem. . . . I try to be liberal, but I was raised in a Jim Crow state. . . . I don't think I would ever fall in with giving the Negroes equal rights in every way. . . . And yet, foreigners, you have a natural dislike for them. Yet, all of us were once foreigners. . . . "
The anti-Semite's dilemma may be epitomized by quoting verbatim the following statements of the girl student soos, who is high on both theE and F scales, but low on PEC.
"I don't think there should be a Jewish problem. People should not be discrim- inated against, but judged on their individual merits. I don't like it to be called a problem. Certainly I'm against prejudice. Jews are aggressive, bad-mannered, clan- nish, intellectual, clean, overcrowd neighborhoods, noisy, and oversexed. I will admit that my opinion is not based on much contact, however; I hear these things all the time. There are very few Jewish students in my school, and I have already referred to my good contact with the one girl. "
Here the contradiction between judgment and experience is so striking that the existence of prejudice can be accounted for only by strong psychological urges.
G. PROSECUTOR AS JUDGE
In terms of ideology, the anti-Semite's conflict is between the current, culturally "approved" stereotypes of prejudice and the officially prevailing standards of democracy and human equality. Viewed psychologically, the conflict is between certain foreconscious or repressed id tendencies on the one hand and the superego, or its more or less externalized, conventional sub- stitute, on the other. It is hard to predict or even to explain satisfactorily, on the basis of our data, which way this conflict will be decided in each individ- ual case, though we may hypothesize that as soon as prejudice in any amount is allowed to enter a person's manifest ways of thinking, the scales weigh
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
heavily in favor of an ever-increasing expansion of his prejudice. We are furthermore entitled to expect this result of the conflict in all cases where the potentially fascist personality syndrome is established. If the conflict within the individual has been decided against the Jews, the decision itself is almost without exception rationalized moralistically. It is as if the internal powers of prejudice, after the defeat of the countertendencies, would con- summate their victory by taking the opposing energies, which they have defeated, into their own service. The superego becomes the spokesman of the id, as it were-a dynamic configuration, incidentally, which is not altogether new to psychoanalysis. W e might call the urges expressing themselves in anti- Semitism the prosecutor, and conscience the judge, within the personality, and say that the two are fused. The Jews have to face, in the prejudiced personality, the parody of a trial. This is part of the psychological explana- tion of why the chances of the Jews making a successful defense against the prejudiced personality are so slim. It may be noted that the judiciary practice in Nazi Germany followed exactly the same pattern, that the Jews were never given a chance, in the Third Reich, to speak for their own cause, either in private law suits or collectively. It will be seen that the expropriation of the superego by the fascist character, with underlying unconscious guilt feelings which must be violently silenced at any price, contributes decisively to the transformation of "cultural discrimination" into an insatiably hostile attitude feeding upon destructive urges.
There is a clear index of the conquest of the superego by anti-Semitic ideology: the assertion that the responsibility for everything the Jews have to suffer, and more particularly, for the genocide committed by the Nazis, rests with the victims rather than with their persecutors. The anti-Semite avails himself of a cliche which seems to make this idea acceptable once and for all: that the Jews "brought it on themselves" no matter what "it" may be. Mzo7, the young man who marked every question on the questionnaire scale either +3 or -3 but averaged high on all three scales, is a good example of this pattern of rationalization, following the dubious logic of "where there is smoke there must be fire":
"I never understood why Hitler was so brutal toward them. There must have been some reason for it, something to provoke it. Some say he had to show his authority, but I doubt it. I suspect the Jews contributed a great deal to it. "
How the moralistic construct of Jewish responsibility leads to a complete reversal between victim and murderer is strikingly demonstrated by one subject, 5064, another one of the Los Angeles Boy Scout leaders and a butcher by trade. He scores high on both the E and F scale although lower on PEC. While still officially condemning the German atrocities, he makes a surprising suggestion:
"No American can approve of what the Nazis did to the Jews. I really hope that
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
the Jews will do something about it before we come to any such position here. The solution is in the education, particularly of the minority. "
This type of mental perversion seems to utilize an idea taken from the stock of traditional liberalistic wisdom: God helps those who help themselves. The Jews are in jeopardy, therefore it is up to the Jews. In a cultural climate where success has come to be a major measuring rod for any value, the pre- carious situation of the Jews works as an argument against them. The affinity of this attitude and the "no pity for the poor" theme, to be discussed in the chapter on politics, can hardly be overlooked. The same line of thought occurs in the interview of another Boy Scout leader, the Austrian-born and somewhat over-Americanized 55-year-old 5044, who is consistently high on all scales:
"The Jews should take the lead rather than the Gentiles. After all, the Jews are the ones who may get into serious trouble. They shouldn't walk on other people's feet. "
While the Jews "bring it upon themselves," the Nazis' extermination policy is either justified or regarded as a Jewish . exaggeration itself, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. The high-scoring man, M359, departmental man- ager for a leather company, is one of those who have "a large number of very close Jewish friends. " Despite this he is high on both the E and PEC scales, although lower on F. Nor does it prevent the following interview episode:
(Nazi treatment? ) "Unable to convince myself that the treatment was limited to Jews. This seems to me to be Jewish propaganda to solicit sympathy and help by overemphasizing their hardships, though I have no sympathy for the Nazi's treat- ment of peoples. "
The mercilessness accompanying the semi-apologetic attitude towards the Nazis can be seen in this subject's pseudorational statements on Palestine: while apparently wishing to "give the Jews a chance," he simultaneously excludes any prospects of success by referring to the Jews' supposedly unchangeably bad nature:
(Solution? ) "Sending them to Palestine is silly because it's not big enough. A good idea to have a country of their own, but big enough so that they can go ahead with their daily pursuits in a normal way, but the Jews would not be happy. They are only happy to have others work for them. "
The explanatory idea that the "Jews brought it upon themselves" is used as a rationalization for destructive wishes which otherwise would not be al- lowed to pass the censorship of the ego. In some cases this is disguised as a statement of fact; e. g. , by5o12, a 2 r-year-old discharged naval petty officer, who scores high on all scales:
"I don't want anything to do with them. They are a nuisance, but not a menace. They will get whatever they deserve as a result of their behavior. "
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
The high-scoring woman Fzo;, however, who used to be a social welfare student but has changed to decorative art, lets the cat out of the bag:
"I don't blame the Nazis at all for what they did to the Jews. That sounds terrible, I know, but if the Jews acted the way they do here, I don't blame them. I've never had any bad personal experiences with Jews, it's just the way they act. Don't help your fellow man; that's their creed. "
Here the interrelation between death-wish and moralistic rationalization be- comes truly terrifying. Particularly noteworthy is the subject's underscoring of her own irrationality, in spite of her rationalization concerning the Jews' innate badness. Her confession that she never had any bad experiences with Jews high-lights an important aspect of the whole phenomenon of anti- Semitic extremism. It is the fantastic disproportion between the Jewish "guilt" -even as conceived by the anti-Semite himself-and the judgment that is pronounced. In previous sections the role played by the theme of "ex- change" in the mentality of the prejudiced person has been discussed. Fre- quently our high-scoring subjects complain that they never get their full share, that they are being exploited by everybody. This sense of victimiza-. tion goes hand in hand with very strong underlying possessive and appro- priative desires. Accordingly, when the subjects speak about the "justice" to be meted out to the Jews they express their own desire for an unjust state of affairs in which the exchange of equivalents has been replaced by distribution according to unmediated and irrational power relationships. This is expressed negatively towards the Jews: they should get more punishment-infinitely more-than they "deserve. " Ordinarily, it would never occur even to a very aggressive person that somebody who is bad-mannered or even a cheat should be punished by death. Where the Jews are concerned, however, the transition from accusations which are not only flimsy but unsubstantial even if they were true, to suggestions of the severest kinds of treatment seems to work quite smoothly. This is indicative of one of the most pernicious features of the potentially fascist character.
The logical property of stereotypes, that is, their all-comprehensiveness which allows for no deviations, is not only well adapted to meet certain re- quirements of the prejudiced outlook; it is, by itself, an expression of a psychological trait which probably could be fully understood only in connec- tion with the theory of paranoia and the paranoid "system" which always tends to include everything, to tolerate nothing which cannot be identified by the subject's formula. The extremely prejudiced person tends toward "psychological totalitarianism," something which seems to be almost a micro- cosmic image of the totalitarian state at which he aims. Nothing can be left untouched, as it were; everything must be made "equal" to the ego-ideal of a rigidly conceived and hypostatized ingroup. The outgroup, the chosen foe, represents an eternal challenge. As long as anything different survives, the
? PREJUDICE IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL
fascist character feels threatened, no matter how weak the other being may be. It is as if the anti-Semite could not sleep quietly until he has trans- formed the whole world into the very same paranoid system by which he is beset: the Nazis went far beyond their official anti-Semitic program. This mechanism makes for the complete disproportion between "guilt" and pun- ishment. The extreme anti-Semite simply cannot stop. By a logic of his own, which is of an archaic nature, much closer to associational transitions than to discursive inferences, he reaches, after having started from relatively mild accusations, the wildest conclusions, tantamount in the last analysis to the pronouncement of death sentences against those whom he literally "can- not stand. " This mechanism was encountered in the "screened" interviews of the Labor Study where subjects frequently "talked themselves into anti- Semitism. " Our interview schedule, more strictly standardized, prevented us
from catching the latter phenomenon. Yet we have striking testimony of the disproportion between guilt and punishment in some of our cases. It is here that the "expropriation" of the suverego by the anti-Semite's punitive moralism obtains its full significance. This removes the last obstacle to psy- chological totalitarianism. There are no inhibitions left by which the associa- tional crescendo of destructive ideas could be checked. Hatred is reproduced and enhanced in an almost automatized, compulsive manner which is both utterly detached from the reality of the object and completely alien to the ego. It may be added that, viewed sociologically, the disproportion between guilt and punishment shows that to the extreme anti-Semite the whole idea of rational law has become a sham even though he dwells on orderliness and ! egalitarian niceties. He is ready to sacrifice his own ideology of equivalents as soon as he has the power to get the major share for himself. Psychologically, the idea of eternal Jewish guilt can be understood as a projection of the prejudiced person's own repressed guilt feelings; ideologically, it is a mere epiphenomenon, a rationalization in the strictest sense. In the extreme case, the psychological focal point is the wish to kill the object of his hatred. It is only afterwards that he looks for reasons why the Jews "must" be killed, and these reasons can never suffice fully to justify his extermination fantasies.
This, however, does not "cure" the anti-Semite, once he has succeeded in expropriating his conscience. The disproportion between the guilt and the punishment induces him, rather, to pursue his hatred beyond any limits and thus to prove to himself and to others that he must be right. This is the ulti- mate function of ideas such as "the Jews brought it upon themselves" or the more generalized formula "there mU:st be something to it. " The extreme anti- Semite silences the remnants of his own conscience by the extremeness of his attitude. He seems to terrorize himself even while he terrorizes others.
The sham trial of rationalizations put on by the prejudiced person some- times makes for a kind of defense of the Jews. But this psychological defense is all too reminiscent of the technique of the Nazi courts. It is permitted only
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
in order to satisfy the formalized and hollow wish for legality, the empty shell of expropriated conscience. The defense must always remain impotent. What- ? ever good is said about the Jews sounds like an ironical or hypocritical varia- tion of standard blames. Thus, reference is frequently made to the mythical "good family life" of the Jews, a comment which, however thinly, veils the accusation of conspiratorial clannishness; and this is accompanied by in- sincere protestations of envy of these Jewish qualities, the implication being that the anti-Semitic subject gets the worst deal in life because his noble nature prevents him from the practice of connivance. Still another type of mock-defense can be observed in our interviews. It is the assertion that the
Jews are so clever; that they are "smarter" than the Gentiles, and that one has to admire them on this account. The mechanism at work here involves a double set of values which makes itself felt throughout contemporary cul- ture. On the one hand, there are the "ideals" of magnanimity, unselfishness, justice, and love to which one has to pay lip service. On the other hand, there are the standards of achievement, success, and status which one has to follow in one's actual life. This double set of values is applied to the Jews in reverse, as it were. They are praised for their supposed or actual living up to the standards which the anti-Semite himself actually follows and simul- taneously, they are condemned for their violation of the very same moral code of which he has successfully rid himself. The phraseology of conscience is used in order to take back the moral credit given to the chosen foe in order to appease one's own conscience. Even the praise apportioned to the Jews is used as supporting evidence for their pre-established guilt.
The point being developed here, as well as other features of the prejudiced mentality, is illustrated by the following description of 5039, a 27-year-old veteran student, high onE and middle on the other scales, who is described by the interviewer as a "rather egocentric person. "
In rebelling against his father's teachings, he has dissociated himself from the church, but nevertheless strongly identifies himself as a Gentile in contrast to the Jews. He explained this on the basis of having grown up in a neighborhood . . . where he was the only Gentile in a Jewish community and where he was made to feel that he was an "outsider. " He feels that there is a basic conflict in the religious teachings and upbringing of Christians as against Jews, which is largely responsible for the incompatibility of the two groups. He stated that the Christian religion stresses the pacifistic teaching of "turning the other cheek," thus causing youth to become "maladjusted and submissive," whereas the Jewish religion spurs youth to achievement and aggression, on the basis that "your fathers have suffered, therefore it is now up to you to prove yourself.
