How to Spot a (Potential) Fasc!st

oh hey everyone you found me here in the great outdoors doing a bit of bird spotting see i'm a uh a bit of an amateur conservationist to me at the weekends you know there's a um particular species i've got my eye out for today fascisticus potentialicus you uh you might be more familiar with their cousin of sorts fascists because actually horrible creatures those murderous things the wreak havoc on any ecosystem they're able to establish a presence within relatively rare though thankfully and easy to spot too you can usually tell fascist because actually by its cool it sounds a bit like a um like a dog whistle think about fascisticus actualicus though far too rare to have any meaningful impact on its own in fact in all known instances where fascist because actually has been able to see through on its horrible designs they've always been supported by the local flock of fascisticus potentialicus oh the latter might seem far less keen initially they're not all that likely to open their beaks in support of the things they'll end up doing but as soon as fascisticus actualicus has established a meaningful presence in a locality well you'll soon find fascistic as potentialicus puffing up its chest and flying in whatever formation it is that fascistic as actualicus decrees the problem for conservationists such as myself though is they're just so damn hard to spot and recognizing these floundering foul is essential if we're ever going to encourage them to beat their wings in a different [Music] direction in 1945 the second world war came to a close with the victory of the allied forces over nazi germany fascist italy and imperial japan if they hadn't been already the crimes of the former regime in germany were now plain for all to see six million jews along with polls lgbt people and so-called political dissidents had been systematically murdered these genocidal plans have been drawn up by the state nevertheless their enactment had required the complicity and active participation of a huge proportion of germans and those living in the countries they came to occupy with the war over there was thus a growing interest in what caused so many supposedly ordinary people to lend this heinous regime their support among those interested in finding answers to this question were four psychologists based at the university of california berkeley theodore w adorno elsa frankel brunswick daniel j levinson and r nevitz sandford two of their number adorno and frankel brunswick were unavoidably existentially invested in this topic both being european jews who had fled to america to escape persecution all however were interested in understanding how fascism had won over the german people in order that such a scenario might be avoided in the future crucially these four academics whose research led to the publication of a book called the authoritarian personality weren't overly interested in out and out fascists those with a pre-existing commitment to the cause instead they were interested in understanding what they called the potentially fascistic individual the kind of person who might distance themselves from fascist beliefs in any normal time but who should fascism take hold in the country in which they live and appear to have some level of popular support might be persuaded to participate in its murderous designs eventually as the title of their book suggests they began to consider whether there might be a set of personality traits which makes some people more susceptible to fascist propaganda than others it's worth saying that adorno at al weren't seeking to propose a purely psychological explanation for the nazis rise to power they repeatedly stressed throughout their book that the emergence of fascism in mid-20th century europe was the result of numerous economic political and social forces and circumstances furthermore though the nazis did win a huge share of the popular vote in germany in 1932 for many both in germany and europe more broadly fascism was something that was forced upon them rather than something which they brought about themselves what the researchers behind the authoritarian personality were interested in exploring was instead what people's responses to a fascist regime might be should it come to power and what it is that separates those likely to resist such a movement from those who might end up participating in it it's important to begin by recognizing that fascism as an ideology is notoriously difficult to define the novelist and critic umberto echo who grew up in fascist italy notes that the various forms of fascism which existed in europe in the mid 20th century varied wildly in their ideological content and predicts that should it re-emerge its mottos and insignia would be different once again he describes fascism as a fuzzy totalitarianism a collage of different philosophical and political ideas a beehive of contradictions as echo goes on to articulate however there are a handful of key traits that have been consistent across movements which have described themselves as fascist these include nationalism a cult of tradition and a view of social relations that holds that life is permanent warfare between the powerful and the power less with the establishment of an equitable society being a complete impossibility although as we'll see many of these aspects of fascism did eventually come to be of interest to the researchers behind the authoritarian personality they were primarily focused on another consistent aspect of fascism and its most pernicious the popularization of racism prejudice and bigotry for as ekko writes fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference fascism to echo is racist by definition adorno atal's primary focus then was what it is that causes some people to be won over by this racist rhetoric where others might be more resistant to it rather than engage in mere philosophical speculation adorno frankel brunswick levinson and sanford decided to launch an empirical study into why people might be drawn to fascism this study utilized two main methods the first was the distribution of 2099 anonymous questionnaires to primarily white non-jewish women and men living in the san francisco bay area with smaller groups being recruited in los angeles oregon and washington dc these questionnaires featured two main types of question the first were factual questions which in the researcher's own words had to do mainly with past and present group memberships church preference and attendance political party vocation income and so on the second set of questions were opinion attitude scales or leichrt scales in which the participants were asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements these questionnaires were later followed by a series of interviews in which the researchers were able to get a better sense of why participants had agreed or disagreed to with certain statements led by the particular focus of the racism of the nazi regime the researcher's initial focus was on anti-semitism amongst the statements the participants were invited to signal their level of agreement or disagreement with then were a series of anti-semitic propositions the more tame of these included i can hardly imagine myself marrying a jew and most hotels should deny admittance to choose as a general rule based upon our participants responses the researchers then placed them along what they called an anti-semitism scale ranging from not anti-semitic at all to very anti-semitic this on its own obviously doesn't tell us anything more than that some people are anti-semitic while others aren't alongside these statements then the researchers included a further set which aimed to measure the participants broader level of what they called ethnocentrism as they explain it ethnocentrism refers to group relations generally it has to do not only with numerous groups towards which the individual has hostile opinions and attitudes but equally important with groups towards which he is positively disposed where the previous set of statements had focused entirely on the participants thinking about jewish people this element of the questionnaire thus broadened the focus inviting participants to agree or disagree with a series of statements about black people and other quote-unquote minority groups they also included some statements which sought to gauge how loyal or otherwise participants felt to their own in-group one such example being the main threat to basic american institutions during this century has come from the infiltration of foreign ideas doctrines and agitators as with the anti-semitism aspect of the questionnaire based upon each participant's responses the researchers then placed them along a scale this time referred to as the ethnocentrism scale what they found was that participants who scored highly on the anti-semitism scale were likely to also score highly on the ethnocentrism scale and this might initially seem unremarkable we might expect that someone who holds racist views towards one group is also likely to be racist towards other groups the consequences of proving this empirically however are significant as one of the researchers levinson wrote this seems to strongly suggest that we are faced here not with a particular set of political convictions and a particular set of opinions about a specific ethnic group but with a way of thinking about groups and group relations generally that anti-semitism in particular goes hand in hand with a broader ethnocentrism suggests that people are not won over by fascist bigotry due to them being simply convinced through facts and logic that the particular group they're being encouraged to support the persecution of are inferior instead it suggests that one's susceptibility to fascist propaganda might be the result of something more deeply rooted in the way that they view the world or in short their personality the notion that someone's susceptibility to fascist and racist propaganda might be connected to something deeper about their personality was further supported by the next stage in adorno atalla's research in which they sought to find out whether there might be a correlation or connection between the participants position on the ethnocentrism scale and their opinions on politics and religion the researchers invited the studies participants to agree or disagree with a further series of statements which sought to ascertain in a very rough way where the participants sat on a left-right political economic spectrum statements in this portion of the questionnaire included in general full economic security is harmful most men wouldn't work if they didn't need the money for eating and living and it is a fundamental american tradition that the individual must remain free of government interference free to make money and spend it as he likes analyzing the responses the researchers then placed the participants on what they referred to as a politico economic conservatism scale to my mind this is where the results begin to get truly interesting for while the researchers did find that those with progressive or liberal economic views were more likely to have disagreed with ethnocentric statements amongst conservatives things were more complex as levinson wrote strong political liberalism is a pretty good indicator of anti-ethnocentrism but political conservatism is less consistently related to ethnocentrism in short as we would hope it was entirely possible for the participants to hold conservative political and economic positions without necessarily being ethnocentric or racist where there was a distinction was in why someone held those conservative views take the statement america may not be perfect but the american way has brought us about as close as human beings can get to a perfect society there are at least two reasons why someone might agree with this statement one person might do so because after careful consideration of numerous economic political and social systems which have existed throughout history they've decided that they believe that the contemporary american one is the best so far achieved another however being an american resident might support that statement out of blind loyalty to their nation what the researchers found in their later interviews was that those who had scored highly on the ethnocentrism scale were far more likely to have arrived at their conservative beliefs through the second way of thinking than the first even more than the correlation between anti-semitism and ethnocentrism that the deciding factor here is not the political and economic views that one holds but the manner in which one has arrived at those views begins to suggest that a person's susceptibility to fascist propaganda might be informed by their personality this was further corroborated through comparing participants placement on the ethnocentrism scale with their religious beliefs in which the fact that a person was or wasn't religious turned out to be far less important than how and why they had becomes those who had scored low on the ethnocentrism scale for instance were far more likely to have chosen the church they attended of their own accord whilst those who scored highly on the ethnocentrism scale if they were religious were more likely to have simply joined the same church as their parents it's worth highlighting that this doesn't suggest that everyone who goes to church and goes to the same church as their parents is a potential fascist what it does allow us to do however is to begin to get inside the minds of those who have already expressed agreement with fascistic and racist sentiments we are perhaps already beginning to see a set of shared personality traits emerge here in relation to both politics and religion we see that those who had agreed with fascistic statements being somewhat conformist and less critical in their approach to the world drawing upon these observations and others adorno frankel brunswick levinson and sanford thus set about painting a more complete picture of what the personality of the typical potentially fascistic individual might look like [Music] the researcher's method for uncovering what personality traits might be more prevalent among those who had agreed with ethnocentric statements were similar to those that they had engaged in the previous aspects of the study they added a further set of statements to their questionnaires which participants were invited to agree or disagree to different levels with a participant's responses to those questions could then be compared with their placement on the ethnocentrism scale in order to find out if there were any personality traits which were particularly prevalent among those who had agreed with fascistic statements the researchers referred to this portion of the questionnaire as the f scale with the f standing for fascist given that the researchers were now attempting to move beyond the study of what they called surface ideological trends and look instead at personality traits the statements included in this portion of the questionnaire were now far far removed from the consideration of explicit political ideology they included statements such as one should always avoid doing things in public which appear wrong to others even though one knows that those things aren't really all right and obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn on analyzing the surveys and their follow-up interviews the researchers argued that there were nine personality traits which were often present within those who had expressed sympathy with fascist talking points the first was conventionalism or a rigid adherence to conventional middle class values as we perhaps saw in the discussion of differing approaches to political and religious belief formation those deemed potentially fascistic put a great emphasis on wanting to conform to the perceived norms of the society around them the second was authoritarian submission or a submissive uncritical attitude toward idealized moral authorities of the in-group this is clearly related to the previous aspect but points more specifically to a tendency to be deferent to those within their in-group who have power over them this might include parents an employer or a politician importantly they were likely to follow the guidance of powerful individuals and institutions from within their in-group in an entirely uncritical and unquestioning manner the third was authoritarian aggression or a tendency to be on the lookout for and to condemn reject and punish people who violate conventional values alongside a desire to conform to societal norms then there was generally a belief among those who had agreed with fascistic statements that anyone else who fails to conform to those norms should be harshly punished no matter what their reasoning for breaking from those norms was the fourth was anti-interception or an opposition to the subjective the imaginative and the tender minded the researchers found those who had scored highly on the ethnocentrism scale had a hostility to any kind of subjective or emotive discussion about the world their position being that what the dominant social order holds to be facts to borrow a phrase don't care about your feelings the fifth was stereotypic or the disposition to think in rigid categories we've already seen this at play in the potential fascists views towards quote-unquote minority groups there was a tendency to view the ethnic group that a person belongs to as that person's defining trait and also to view everyone within that group as essentially the stain or as the name of this personality trait would suggest as a stereotype the potential fascist was shown to apply this kind of rigid stereotypical thinking to every aspect of the world the sixth was power and toughness or a preoccupation with the dominant submission strong weak leader follower dimension everything to the potential fascist is about power they often like to think of themselves as essentially strong but perhaps view their power as being restrained by some aspect of democratic society they often value a tough no-nonsense attitude in political leaders believing that leaders toughness to be a reflection of their own importantly their interest in power doesn't extend to how we might dissolve it and build a more equitable society for the potential fascist imbalances of power are an intrinsic part of human society with the only logical response being to ensure that you and your group are at the top of the pile the seventh was destructiveness and cynicism or a generalized hostility and a vilification of the human again here we see a celebration of strength but we also see a desire to want to unleash it on the world humanity has become so corrupted the potential fascist might posit that we will benefit from tearing everything down and starting again led by the strongest among us the eighth was projectivity or the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses in some of the previous attributes one might recognize that there are some contradictions the potential fascist for instance both values conformity while also wanting to tear everything down and start again one way in which these contradictions are dealt with in the mind of the potential fascist is by projecting them outwards onto other groups in this case destructiveness is projected outwards onto other groups in order to claim that it is they in fact who want to destroy everything the ninth and final personality trait that the researchers found to be prevalent among potential fascists was an exaggerated concern with sexual goings-on in line with the desire to punish a lack of conformity there is an acute obsession with people with sex lives which the researchers argued is perhaps also projected a consequence of the potential fascists own repressed sexual desires together these nine personality traits comprise what the researchers termed the authoritarian personality it is important to recognize that these are all personality traits that one can have to a greater or lesser degree rather than either having or not having in a binary sense it is also important to note that the researcher's focus was on potential they did not seek to make the claim that everyone who displayed this authoritarian personality would inevitably support a fascist regime should it come to power nevertheless they did argue that the possession of this collection of personality traits might make someone far more susceptible to being won over by fascist propaganda than others [Music] although it might seem to be that way on first glance the primary goal in outlining the authoritarian personality was not to create some kind of test to submit people to in order to accuse them of being likely to collaborate with a potential fascist regime the goal was primarily to propose a new way of understanding how fascism might come to appeal to a certain portion of the population some of the specific suggestions that the researchers made about the personality structure of the potentially fascistic individual have come under some criticism the broader point however the people might be won over by fascism less by the particularities of its arguments but instead by the pre-conscious desires it seems to present answers to are worth bearing in mind when it comes to thinking about how he responds to fascism as a threat when we see or hear people echoing far-right talking points or racist ideas towards a particular ethnic group our instinct is often to want to respond to the minutiae of their arguments to try and prove them wrong with facts and logic whilst calling out falsities when we see them as important however the authoritarian personality suggests that this might not be enough as adorno at all argue in their conclusion to the book if we should succeed in diverting hostility from one minority group we should be prevented from taking satisfaction by the knowledge that the hostility will now very probably be directed against some other group as we have seen the views that the potentially fascistic individual holds towards any particular group are not the sole product of them having come to believe in particular tropes associated with that group but instead by a deeper psychological structure or world view to talk such individuals back from the fascistic precipice then has to involve a much deeper level conversation about how they see the world ultimately the researchers felt that reducing susceptibility to fascism had to involve a broader societal effort for our individual personalities are not separate from society they are shaped by it the researchers thus wrote that for the fascist potential to change or even be held in check there must be an increase in people's capacity to see themselves and to be themselves whilst they regularly highlight throughout the authoritarian personality that those who held ethnocentric views were in the minority among participants in their study with most people falling towards the center of all of their scales throughout the book there is a sense that such personality traits might often be encouraged by our society in order to truly quash the potential for fascism then their suggestion was that our focus cannot merely be on changing the hearts and minds of individuals but in reforming society as a whole into one built not on hostility but solidarity and not on the pursuit of power but its deconstruction thanks for watching this video if you found it interesting then please do consider sharing it with others that you think might also find it interesting um a big thank you as ever to ash to michael v brown to jay fraser cartwright to richard to caillou and to leloumi for being signed up to the top tier of my patreon uh if you would like to join them in supporting what i do here and whilst getting early access to my videos and copies of the scripts to them and more then you can find out more about how to do so by heading to patreon.com forward slash tom nicholas thank you very much for watching once more and have a great week

Channel: Tom Nicholas

Views: 1,500,506

Keywords: fascism, fascist, f@scist, adorno, T.W. Adorno, Theodore Adorno, authoritarian personality, authoritarian, fascism definition, ideology, world war 2, Second World War, fascism World War II, mussolini, hitler, alt-right, ur-fascism, eco, Umberto eco, how to recognise a f@scist, psychology, authoritarianism, antisemitism, far right, far-right, nazi, nazis, Tom Nicholas, What the Theory, What the Theory?, Frankfurt School, The Frankfurt School, Marxism, Marxist, theory, video essay, critical theory

Id: vymeTZkiKD0

Length: 26min 54sec (1614 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020