No More Learning

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). "
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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. That this subject's explanations of Hitler really mean sympathy is evidenced by a subsequent statement on Hitler's policy of exterminating the Jews, already quoted in Chapter XVI:
"Well, Hitler, carried things just a little too far. There was some justification- some are bad, but not all. But Hitler went on the idea that a rotten apple in the barrel will spoil all the rest of them. "
Still, even this subject clings to the democratic cloak and refrains from overt fascism. Asked about the Jews in this country he answers:
"Same problem but it's handled much better, because we're a democratic coun- try. "
While pseudoconservatism is, of course, predominantly a trait of high scorers, it is by no means lacking among low scorers. This pertains particularly to the apologetic attitude toward the Nazis. Thus, F133, a woman low on
prejudice though high on F, a young student of mathematics, calls herself "rather conservative. " Her "official" ideology is set against bigotry. But re- ferring to her Irish descent, she resents the English and this leads her to pro-German statements which, in harmony with her F score, more than merely hint at underlying fascist leanings:
"I am prejudiced against England. England gave a dirty deal to the Irish people. England says the Nazis are black and Russia is white, but I think England is black. She goes around conquering people and is not just at all; and I am opposed to
? THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
Russia. It is true that they took up the cause of the people, but on the whole they are not right, and their type of government is inferior to ours. (\Vhat about the Nazis? ) The Germans lost everything; they just got hopeless. I don't believe in dividing Germany just in order to make Russia and England richer. It isn't true that Germany started the war-for war two people are necessary. It is not fair to put all the burden on one nation. The Germans will only feel more persecuted and fight more. One should leave the Germans to themselves. There is much too much em- phasis on how cruel the Nazis are. The Germans did not have a just peace. W e can't put our own Nazi regime in to run the Germans. The Russians will cause the next war. The devastation in Germany has been just too great. I am pessimistic because people believe that everybody is bad who is down, and those are good who are strong, and the strong ones cut in pieces the one who is down, and they are just practical and not just. "
The decisive shift occurs when the subject, after demanding "fairness" with regard to the problem of war guilt, protests against "too much emphasis" on Nazi atrocities.
ExcuRsus oN THE MEANING oF PsEUDOCONSERVATISM. The introduction of the term pseudoconservative which may often be replaced by pseudoliberal and even pseudoprogressive, necessitates a brief theoretical discussion of what is "pseudo" about the subjects in question and whether and to what extent the notion of genuine political ideologies can be upheld. All these terms have to be handled with the utmost caution and should never be hypostatized. The distinction between pseudo and genuine political ideologies has been in- troduced mainly in order to avoid the pitfall of oversimplification, of identi- fying the prejudiced person, and the prospective fascist in general, with "reactionism. " It has been established beyond any doubt that fascism in terms of efficient organization and technological achievement has many "pro- gressive" features. Moreover, it has been recognized long before our study that the general idea of "preserving the American way of living," as soon as it assumes the features of vigilantism, hides violently aggressive and destructive tendencies which pertain both to overt political manifestations and to charac- ter traits. However, it has to be emphasized that the idea of the genuine- ness of an attitude or of behavior set against its "overplaying," is some- how as problematic as that of, say, normality. Whether a person is a genuine or a pseudoconservative in overt political terms can be decided only in critical situations when he has to decide on his actions. As far as the distinction per- tains to psychological determinants, it has to be relativized. Since all our psychological urges are permeated by identifications of all levels and types, it is impossible ever completely to sever the "genuine" from what is "imita- tion. " It would be obviously nonsensical to call ungenuine those traits of a person which are based on the identification with his father. The idea of an
absolute individual per se, completely identical with itself and with nothing else, is an empty abstraction. There is no psychological borderline between the genuine and the "assumed. " Nor can the relation between the two ever
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 683
be regarded as a static one. ? Today's pseudoconservative may become the genuine conservative of tomorrow.
In the light of these considerations, it will be of some methodological im- portance to formulate the distinction between "genuine" and "pseudo" with care. The simplest procedure, of course, would be to define both concepts operationally in terms of cluster relationships of the questionnaire and also of the interviews. One would have to call roughly pseudoconservative those who show blatant contradictions between their acceptance of all kinds of conventional and traditional values-by no means only in the political sphere -and their simultaneous acceptance of the more destructive clusters of the F scale, such as cynicism, punitiveness, and violent anti-Semitism. Yet, this procedure is somewhat arbitrary and mechanical. At its best, it would define the terms but never help to understand their implicit etiology.
It would be more satisfactory to base the distinction on a psychological hypothesis that makes sense. An hypothesis that might serve is one that takes as its point of departure the differentiation between successful or unsuccessful identifica- tion. This would imply that the "genuine" conservative characters would be those who essentially or at least temporarily succeeded in their identification with authoritarian patterns without considerable carry-overs of their emo- tional conflicts-without strong ambivalence and destructive countertend- encies. Conversely, the "pseudo" traits are characteristic of those whose au- thoritarian identification succeeded only on a superficial level. They are forced to overdo it continuously in order to convince themselves and the others that they belong, to quote the revolution-hater of San Quentin, to the right strata of society. The stubborn energy which they employ in order to accept conformist values constantly threatens to shatter these values them- selves, to make them turn into their opposite, just as their "fanatical" eager- ness to defend God and Country makes them join lunatic fringe rackets and sympathize with the enemies of their country.
Even this distinction, however, can claim only limited validity and is sub- ject to psychological dynamics. W e know from Freud that the identification with the father is always of a precarious nature and even in the "genuine" cases, where it seems to be well established, it may break down under the impact of a situation which substitutes the paternal superego by collectivized authority of the fascist brand.
Yet, with all these qualifications, the distinction still can claim some justi- fication under present conditions. It may be permissible to contrast the pseudoconservatives so far discussed with a "genuine" conservative taken from the Los Angeles sample which, as pointed out in Chapter I, included- in contrast to the Berkeley sample-a number of actual or self-styled mem- bers of the upper class.
Fsoo8 is low onE, middle on F, and high on PEC. She is a woman of old American stock, a direct descendant of Jefferson. She is apparently free of
? THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSO~ALITY
any vindictive sense of her social status and lays no emphasis on her good family or on her being a real member of the "right strata of society. " She is definitely nonprejudiced. Her T. A. T. shows traits of a somewhat neurotic overoptimism which may or may not be a product of reaction-formation. One might venture that the "genuine" conservatives who still survive and whose number is probably shrinking, may develop an increasingly bad con- science because they become aware of the rapid development of important conservative layers of American society into the direction of labor baiting and race hatred. The more this tendency increases, the more the "genuine" conservative seems to feel compelled to profess democratic ideals, even if they are somewhat incompatible with his own upbringing and psychological patterns. If this observation could be generalized, it would imply that the
"genuine" conservatives are more and more driven into the liberal camp by today's social dynamics. This may help to explain why it is so hard to find any striking examples for genuine conservatism among high scorers.
If our assumption is correct, that pseudoconservatism is based-as far as its psychological aspect is concerned-on incomplete identification, it becomes understandable why it is linked to a trait which also plays a considerable role within the pattern of conventionality: identification with higher social groups. The identification that failed is probably in most cases that with the father. Those people in whom this failure does not result in any real antago- nism to authority, who accept the authoritarian pattern without, however, internalizing it, are likely to be those who identify themselves sociologically with higher social groups. This would be in harmony with the fact that the fascist movement in Germany drew heavily on frustrated middle-class peo- ple of all kinds: of those who had lost their economic basis without being ready to admit their being declasse; of those who did not see any chances for themselves but the shortcut of joining a powerful movement which promised them jobs and ultimately a successful war. This socioeconomic aspect of pseudoconservatism is often hard to distinguish from the psychological one. To the prospective fascist his social identification is as precarious as that with the father. At the social root of this phenomenon is probably the fact that to rise by the means of "normal" economic competition becomes increasingly difficult, so that people who want to "make it"-which leads back to the psychological situation-are forced to seek other ways in order to be admitted into the ruling group. They must look for a kind of "co-optation," some- what after the fashion of those who want to be admitted to a smart club. Snob- bery, so violently denounced by the fascist, probably for reasons of projec- tion, has been democratized and is part and parcel of their own mental make-up: who wants to make a "career" must really rely on "pull and climb- ing" rather than on individual merit in business or the professions. Identifica- tion with higher groups is the presupposition for climbing, or at least appears so to the outsider, whereas the "genuine" conservative group is utterly al-
? POLITICS AND ECONOMICS IN INTERVIEW MA TERIAL 685
lergic to it. However, the man ? who often, in accordance with the old Horatio Alger ideology, maintains his own "upward social mobility" draws from it at least some narcissistic gratifications and felicitously anticipates internally a status which he ultimately hopes to attain in reality.
Here two examples of high scorers may be quoted, both again taken from the Los Angeles group.
soo6, an extreme high scorer on all scales, one of the few of our inter- viewees who actually admitted that they want to kill the Jews (see his in- terview in Chapter XVI, p. 636), is the grandson of a dentist, whereas his father failed to become one, and he hopes fervently to regain the grand- father's social status. As to the problem of failure in identification, it is sig- nificant in this case that the image of the father is replaced by that of the grandfather-just as the idea of "having seen better times," of a good family background clouded over by recent economic developments, played a? large role with the prefascist, postinflation generation in Germany.
501;, who is also extremely high on all scales, describes her father as a doctor, whereas he is actually a chiropractor-a habit which seems to be largely shared by the chiropractors themselves. If the German example teaches anything and if our concept of semierudition proves to be correct, one may expect that nonacademic "scientists" and "doctors" are strongly attracted by the fascist platform. 5
5. THE USURP A TION COMPLEX
The goal toward which the pseudoconservative mentality strives-diffusedly and semiconsciously-is to establish a dictatorship of the economically strong- est group. This is to be achieved by means of a mass movement, one which promises security and privileges to the so-called "little man" (that is to say, wor_ried members of the middle and lower middle class who still cling to their status and their supposed independence), if they join with the right people at the right time. This wish appears throughout pseudoconservative ideology in mirrored reflection. Government by representation is accused of perverting democracy. Roosevelt and the New Deal particularly are said to have usurped power and to have entrenched themselves dictatorially. Thus
5 The role played by shady pseudo-medicine in Nazi Germany is sociologically linked to the ascendance of declasse intellectuals under National Socialism, psychologically to the paranoid twist of Nazi ideology as well as of the personalities of many leaders. There is a direct interconnection between the doctrine of "purity of blood" and the glorification of sundry purifiers of the body. The first academic chair created by Hitler was one for "natural healing. '' His own physician was a quack, Rimmler's a chiropractor, and Rudolf Hess encouraged all kinds of superstitious approaches to medicine. It should be noted that analogous tendencies make themselves felt in the American "lunatic fringe. " One of our native crackpot agitators combines Jew-baiting with a "health food" campaign, directed against the delikatessen which are not only denounced as being Jewish but also as unwholesome. The imagery of Jewish food throughout the fascist ideology deserves careful examination.
? 686 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
pseudoconservatives accuse the progressives of the very thing which they would like to do, and they utilize their indictment as a pretext for "throw- ing the rascals out. " They call for a defense of democracy against its "abuses" and would, through attacking the "abuses," ultimately abolish democracy altogether. Pseudoconservative ideology harmonizes completely with psy- chological projectivity.
One may well ask why people so concerned with power, if they really see the Roosevelt policy as a strong-armed dictatorship, do not endorse it and feel happy about it. The reasons, it would seem, are several. First, the social types representative of pseudoconservatism are not or do not regard them- selves as beneficiaries of the New Deal. It appears to them as a government for the unemployed and for labor; and even if they themselves received some benefits from WPA or the closed shop, they are resentful about it because this demonstrates to them what they are least willing to admit: that their belonging to the middle classes has lost its economic foundation. Second, to them, the Roosevelt administration never was really strong enough. They sense very well the degree to which the New Deal was handicapped by the Supreme Court and by Congress; they know or have an inkling of the con- cessions Roosevelt had to make- he had to give conspicuous jobs to several men opposed to his political line, e. g. , Jesse Jones; they cry "dictator" because they realize that the New Deal was no dictatorship at all and that it did not fit within the authoritarian pattern of their over-all ideology. Thirdly, their idea of the strong man, no matter in what glowing personalized terms it may be expressed, is colored by an image of real strength: the back- ing of the most powerful industrial groups. To them, progressives in the government are real usurpers, not so much because they have acquired by shrewd and illegal manipulation rights incompatible with American democ- racy, but rather because they assume a power position which should be re- served for the "right people. " Pseudoconservatives have an underlying sense of "legitimacy": legitimate rulers are those who are actually in command of the machinery of production-not those who owe their ephemeral power to formal political processes. This last motif, which also plays a heavy role in the prehistory of German fascism, is to be taken the more seriously because it does not altogether contradict social reality. As long as democracy is really a formal system of political government which made, under Roosevelt, cer-
tain inroads into economic fields but never touched upon the economic fun- damentals, it is true that the life of the people depends on the economic organization of the country and, in the last analysis, on those who control American industry, more than on the chosen representatives of the people. Pseudoconservatives sense an element of untruth in the idea of "their" demo- cratic government, and realize that they do not really determine their fate as social beings by going to the polls. Resentment of this state of affairs, how- ever, is not directed against the dangerous contradiction between economic
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inequality and formal political equality but against the democratic form as such. Instead of trying to give to this form its adequate content, they want to do away with the form of democracy itself and to bring about the direct control of those whom they deem the most powerful anyway.
This background of the dictatorship idea, that democracy is no reality under prevailing conditions, may be evidenced by two quotations from me- dium-scoring men. M1223h follows up his statement that the Democrats are going communistic and that the unions should be curbed, by the statement, "The people aren't running the country. "
M1225a speaks cautiously about democracy: "It's supposed to be a govern- ment of the people by representation. "
Asked whether we had it in this country he answers bluntly: No, but qualifies this immediately with the statement-a pretty standardized one- "We have as close to it as there is. "
Similarly, M1223h qualifies his critique by the contention that "America is still fairly democratic but going away from democracy too fast. "
The contradictory utterances of these two men, apart from wishful think- ing, indicate that they are perturbed by the antagonism between formal political democracy and actual social control. They just reach the point where they see this antagonism. They did not dare, however, to explain it but rather retract their own opinions in order not to become "unrealistic. " Conformism works as a brake on their political thinking.
A few examples of the usurpation fantasy proper follow.
M2o8, who obtained a middle score on E and F and a high score on PEC, insists, according to his interviewer,
that,President Roosevelt lost the popular vote by several thousand votes, accord- ing to counts he and his father made following the news reports over the radio, implying that the official count had been incorrect.
While this man is for "initiative and competition, against government bungling and inefficiencies," he has boundless confidence in social control exercised by the proper organization:
"The best organizations for a citizen to belong to in order to influence the condi- tions in his community are local Chambers of Commerce. By improving your city, you make it attractive and create wealth. " He said the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce was something he belonged to and his organization would send out postcards very soon to every single individual in the city in a huge membership drive.
M656, a high-scoring prison inmate (grand theft and forgery), was inter- viewed shortly after President Roosevelt's death and when asked what he regarded as the greatest danger facing this country, said
"the government we just had, the one that brought on the war, the Nazi-dictator- ship. "
? 688 THE AUTHORIT ARIAN PERSONALITY
The high-scoring man Mzo8, the aforementioned insect toxicologist, is convinced that Roosevelt only carried out Hoover's ideas, a statement not infrequent among prejudiced subjects who regard the New Deal as usurpa- tion in so far as it has "stolen" its ideas from its opponents. Asked further about Roosevelt, he goes on:
"he usurped power that was necessary to do something-he took a lot more power than a lot. . . . He has been in too long, and there were deals on the fire that we
don't know about with Churchill or Stalin. "
In the end the usurper idea coincides with that of the conspirator who makes "secret deals" detrimental to his country.
The frequency and intensity of the usurper idea, together with the fan- tastic nature of many of the pertinent assertions in our material justifies our calling it a "complex," that is to say, looking for a widespread and stable psychological configuration on which this idea feeds. As far as we know, no attention has been given to this complex in psychological literature, though the frequency of usurpation conflicts throughout occidental drama warrants the assumption that there must be some deep-rooted basis in instinctual dy- namics for it. Suffice it to recollect that Shakespeare's most famous tragedies: Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Richard III deal in one way or the other with usurpation, and that the usurper theme runs as a red thread through the whole dramatic work of Schiller, from Franz Moor in the "Robbers" to Demetrius. On a sociopsychological level, that is to say com- paratively abstractly and superficially, an explanation is easy at hand. The existence of power and privilege, demanding sacrifices of all those who do not share in its advantages, provokes resentment and hurts deeply the longing for equality and justice evolved throughout the history of our culture. In the
depth of his heart, everyone regards any privilege as illegitimate. Yet one is forced continuously, in order to get along in the world as it is, to adjust him- self to the system of power relationships that actually defines this world. This process has been going on over the ages, and its results have become part and parcel of today's personalities. This means that people have learned to repress their resentment of privilege and to accept as legitimate just that which is suspected of being illegitimate. But since human sufferings from the survival of privilege have never ceased, adjustment to it has never become complete. Hence the prevailing attitude towards privileges is essentially am- bivalent. While it is being accepted consciously, the underlying resentment is displaced unconsciously. This is done in such a way that a kind of emo- tional compromise between our forced acceptance of the existence of power, and resistance against it, is reached. Resentment is shifted from the "legiti- , mate" representatives of power to those who want to take it away from them, who identify themselves, in their aims, with power but violate, at the same time, the code of existent power relations. The ideal object of this
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shift is the political usurper'in whom one can denounce "greed for power" while at the same time taking a positive stand with regard to established power. Still, sympathy with the usurper survives at the bottom. It is the conflict between this sympathy and our displaced aggressiveness which quali- fies him for dramatic conflict. ?
There is reason to believe, however, that this line of thought does not fully explain the usurper complex. Much more deep-lying, archaic mech- anisms seem to be involved. . As a rule, the usurper complex is linked with the problem of the family. The usurper is he who claims to be the member of a family to which he does not belong, or at least to pretend to rights due to another. family. It may be noted that even in the Oedipus legend, the usurper complex is involved in so far as Oedipus believes himself to be the real child of his foster-parents, and this error accounts for his tragic en- tanglement. We venture, with all due reservation, the hypothesis that this has something to do with an observation that can be made not infrequently: that people are afraid of not really being the children of their parents. This fear may be based on the dim awareness that the order of the family, which stands for civilization in the form in which we know it, is not identical with "nature" -that our biological origin does not coincide with the institutional framework of marriage and monogamy, that "the stork brings us from the pond. " We sense that the shelter of civilization is not safe, that the house of the family is built on shaky ground. We project our uneasiness upon the us? urper, the image of him who is not his parents' child, who becomes psychologically a kind of ritualized, institutional "victim" whose annihilation is unconsciously supposed to bring us rest and security. It may very well be that our tend- ency to "look for the usurper" has its origin in psychological resources as deep as those here suggested.
6. F. D. R.
The usurpation complex is focused on Roosevelt, whose name evokes the sharpest differences between high and low scorers that are to be found in the interview material on politico-economic topics.
It hardly needs to be said that all the statements touching upon the late president are personalized. The political issues involved appear mainly as qualities of the man himself. He is criticized and praised because he is this or that, not because he stands for this or that. The most drastic ? accusation is that of war-monger. This accusation often assumes the form of those con- spiracy fantasies which are so highly characteristic of the usurper complex.
The high-scoring man M664c, serving a San Quentin term of one year for forgery and check writing, professes to have been originally pro-Roose- velt.
"Hell, at that (election) I was strong for Roosevelt, we had an awful depression, one thing he'd done for that state he put that dam there. . . . We didn't need the war
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though. (Why did we get into it? ) Started sending that iron over to Japan and then helping England. . . . "
The idea of the "red Roosevelt" belongs to the same class of objections and paranoid exaggerations of political antipathies. Though much more common among subjects who score high on E and PEC, it can sometimes be found in the statements of low scorers. Note the remarks of Fz4o, a young nursery school helper, rated according to her questionnaire score as low on E but high on A-S and PEC. She first refers to her father.
(Is your father anti-Roosevelt? ) "Oh, sure he is. He just don't have any use for Roosevelt. It's all communism that is what he says. (And what do you think about it? ) Oh, I don't know. I guess he's right. He ought to know. That's all he thinks about-politics-politics. "
Sometimes the suspicion that Roosevelt was a Russophile war-monger is cloaked by legalistic argumentations, such as the statement that he left the country illegally during the war.
F zoz, a woman who stands high on all scales,' a somewhat frustrated young college student, relates that her father is "extremely anti-Roosevelt," and, when asked why, answers:
"No president is supposed to leave the country without the consent of Congress, and he goes whenever he feels like it. He is being a little too dictatorial. "
With regard to domestic politics, F359, the accountant in a government department who was quoted before (Chapter XVI, p. 616), states quite clearly and in fairly objective terms the contradiction which seems at the hub of anti-Roosevelt sentiment:
Subject did not like Roosevelt because of WPA. It creates a class of lazy people who would rather get $20 a week than work. She feels that Roosevelt did not ac- complish what he set out to do-raise the stand? ard of the poorer classes.
The conceptions of communist, internationalist, and war-monger are close to another one previously mentioned-that of the snob. Just as the fascist agitator persistently mixes up radicals and bankers, claiming that the latter financed the revolution and that the former seek financial gains, the contradictory ideas of an ultraleftist and an exclusive person alienated from the people are brought together by anti-Roosevelt sentiment. One may ven- ture the hypothesis that the ultimate content of both objections is the same: the resentment of the frustrated middle-class person against those who rep- resent the idea of happiness, be it by wanting other people-even the "lazy ones"-to be happy, be it that they are enjoying life themselves. This irra- tionality can be grasped better on the level of personality than on that of ideology.
Mz223h, of the Maritime School, with medium scores onE and PEC, but high on F, does not like Roosevelt-"a socialite; got too much power. " Simi-
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lady, the high-scoring married woman F117, 37 years old, employed m a Public Health Department,
feels that Roosevelt does not know how to handle money; he was born with a great deal. Now he throws it around-"millions here and millions there. "
This is the exact opposite of the praise of Dewey, whose more humble origin is supposed to guarantee thriftiness. The "democratic cloak" of the pseudoconservative consists, in cases like these, in the assertion that measures taken for the benefit of the people cannot be approved because the one who carried them out is not one of the people and therefore, in a way, has no right to act in their behalf-he is a usurper. Really folksy men, one might suppose, would rather let them starve.
The idea that the late President was too old and too ill, and that the New Deal was decrepit plays a particular role among anti-Roosevelt arguments. The dark forebodings about Roosevelt's death have come true. Yet, one may suspect here a psychological element: the fear of his death often rationalizes the wish for it. Moreover, the idea of his supposed old age pertains to the il- legitimacy complex: he should give way to others, to the "young generation," to fresh blood. This is in keeping with the fact that Gennan Nazism often denounced the over-age of the representatives of the Weimar Republic, and that Italian fascism heavily emphasized the idea of youth per se. Ultimately, some light is shed on the whole complex of the President's age and illness by our clinical findings, pertaining to the tendency of our high scorers to praise physical health and vigor as the outstanding quality of their parents, particu:. . lady of the mother (pp. 340 if.