The talk that interested me most throughout the week was the one on American Authoritarianism. As always, the presentation was insightful and engaging and the topic really allowed me to get involved and think about what it meant politically.
After going over my notes and reading this text again, I felt like the author was trying to make two very valid points when talking about Authoritarianism in America.
1) Authoritarianism is a desire for order and fear of outsiders.
2) Authoritarianism leads to social order and hierarchy.
Authoritarianism Is A Desire For Order And A Fear Of Outsiders
The idea of authoritarianism as a desire for order and a fear of outsiders isn’t a new one at all. I would argue that in creating “The Leviathan” the political scientist Thomas Hobbes was actually the first one to engage in this. Within Leviathan, Hobbes says we have a desire for order because without it we would “naturally” live in a state of war. It’s a state of chaos in which “every man is against every man” as we would hunt and hurt one another, and be no different to the animal kingdom. This portrays a level of fear that we have for outsiders and for chaos, and that fear forces us to enter a social contract. The social contract gives others the power to rule over us in trade for order, thusly creating an ordered system purely out of “self-preservation”. While this idea is now mostly outdated (because we’ve moved far beyond the idea of social contracts) I still think that it is possible that the political right’s desire for authoritarianism comes from a level of Hobbes’ “self-preservation” and the want to keep their current status the same within society as the order works for them. This is mostly conjecture however, my best guess as to why there has been a rise, without there actually being studies on the rise itself.
Authoritarianism Leads To Social Order And Hierarchy
This was a big part of Melissa’s presentation and upon rereading the text, also a large part of the paper. When reading this sentence I am almost instantly reminded of Plato’s Republic, a famous text in which Plato laid out his thinking for the best forms of government. He himself asks the question of “why is authoritarianism seen as a bad thing?” and makes a point for the need in a hierarchy. Plato believes that we need authoritarianism in rule because, without it, our society would get nothing done. However, in his ideal government, a selection of leaders are elected (mostly philosophers) which make up an oligarchy, who are to be seen as knowing better than others and ranking higher in social platforms. While this system does create greater amounts of efficiency, the obvious problem with social order and hierarchy is the ability to corrupt and the belief that some are better than others. Corruption in modern politics is rampant enough as is, with Russia calling themselves a “democracy” and The current issues going on within the U.S. So while I would agree that with authoritarianism comes social order, I don’t think that within contemporary society, authoritarianism is the best way to run governments or social circles.
Really glad you enjoyed the article! It’s certainly thought-provoking, and I think your connection to Hobbes is a great example for illustrating this fear of the “state of nature”.
Something that I thought was interesting within the article itself is the fact that even people without this “authoritarian” leaning can be frightened into displaying aspects of an authoritarian leaning (i.e. fear of the “other”), and this seemed pretty steady across the board. To me, it feels like the phrase “American authoritarianism” holds a lesser weight because it can be applied to so many people at any given time. Perhaps America has fallen into a state of myth, in which our lives are illustrated so realistically by rhetoric that this “fear of the other” includes images (whether implicit or explicit) of the scary “state of nature” that Hobbes warned us all about. Especially in a digitally-connected society, these images prove to be salient – when we think of war, what do we picture first? Do we picture patriots and veterans? Or do we picture chaos and destruction?
Hi Riley,
Thank you for your insightful thoughts! I personally haven’t read any of Hobbes’ works, so I thought the idea of humans “naturally” living in a state of conflict and needing order to mediate it was very interesting. I can also relate some of my thoughts to your comments on “self-preservation”. In the context of American Authoritarianism, I find that this is especially relevant as we see dominant groups struggling to maintain socio-political and economic power over other subordinate groups, especially because they feel that advantages for the subordinate groups translate to disadvantages for themselves. We will discuss this more next week via contemporary racial projects in the US, but this is a great launchpad for discussion!