Right Wing Authoritarianism: The Cure

Right Wing Authoritarianism is a social disease of civilisation. Authoritarian child-rearing (aka patriarchy) causes social structures which in turn lead to war and division.

When a child receives tough love the trauma of this separation from real love results in what is known as the Right Wing Authoritarian personality style. These people are raised to be in a constant state of fear and hyper-vigilance towards change. Any disruption to clear social order sets them off deeper into their fear, and often they react with aggression (when their patriarchal role models give them permission) and the result is a social structure in which Social Dominance Oriented personalities provide those role models and the nation state system becomes possible.

Add to this RWA-SDO embrace the role of sociopaths in manipulating both the RWA masses - about 10 percent of the population chronically and another 15-20 percent of conservatives whose RWA is switched on during times of duress - and the scene is set for the Hitler Effect. RWA's become hyper-obedient to SDO's whose strong father-like leadership they crave, manipulated by sociopaths who create situations that stoke the fires.

This is how large groups of people (greater than human-scale of about a few hundred people) operate within civilisations. Civilisations (in Derrick Jensen's definition - abusive cultures of consumption) are not possible without this dynamic.

The cure then is to understand and highlight the 10% who are strong RWA followers and help to calm them and reduce their fear. The cure is also to understand and highlight the SDO's and sociopaths and how they operate in heightening fear in order to increase obedience. If we can do that, if we can inhibit the RWA-SDO-socipath embrace we can create societies in which all authority comes from continually nurtured consensus, in which ambiguity and fluid group boundaries are tolerated (RWA's hate ambiguity, hate outgroups). If we can achieve this we can dissolve the hierarchies which characterise civilisation and which have been created through the fear-RWA-SDO-sociopath dynamic. It is illegitimate authority in action. Legitimate authority is never built on power but on continual and fluid consensus building. It is not a classical categorical 'big man' society thing, real authority is continually earned through positive emotion and reason not through fear and right.

The answer is transparency, knowledge and education about these negative aspects of social relationships and groups. Stanley Milgram's obedience to authority experiments helped show some of these effects, Theodor Adorno and Robert Altemeyer have shown us how the RWA follower and SDO leaders dynamic resulted in the holocaust. The knowledge is there, and Robert Hare's work on how sociopaths manipulate power, it is all out there to be disseminated and understood. Power, authority, and The Fear, need to be a part of all children's education. Indeed in most progressive educations it is an implicit if not explicit factor already - over the past 40 years measures of obedience to authority have dropped significantly in the Western world, although there are pockets such as right wing christain areas where tough love strong authority of the Paul approach are embraced in resistance to progressive and more ambiguous ideas of social order.

But most of all, we have the internet, we have peer-to-peer communication which can subvert all attempts at the knowledge control which characterises rigid hierarchical social structure. We have the potential for transparency to be the the sunlight disinfectant which will wipe away authoritarianism. We are also somewhere near beginning to define Right Wing Authoritarianism, born as it is of childhood psychological trauma, to be considered a mental illness, a personality disorder. Likewise the Social Dominance Oriented personality. Both will go the same way as sociopathy - the original sin. Love all the children, support all the rigid parents and help them to understand what they are doing to their children using classical thought and ideas of patriarchy and fundamentalist compartmentalised thought. Help them to be creative and tolerate ambiguity. Help them to relax and to see that Everything is OK, it's a wonderful world. Save their children from the same fate as their Fear dictates to them and we will save the world.

Patriarchy is dying! Civ is dying as we build a permaculturization of society based on love and connection.