Authoritarian Aggression. When I say authoritarian followers are aggressiveI don’t mean they stride into bars and start fights. First of all, high RWAs go to churchenormously more often than they go to bars. Secondly, they usually avoid anythingapproaching a fair fight. Instead they aggress when they believe right and might areon their side. “Right” for them means, more than anything else, that their hostility is(in their minds) endorsed by established authority, or supports such authority. “Might”means they have a huge physical advantage over their target, in weaponry say, or innumbers, as in a lynch mob. It’s striking how often authoritarian aggression happensin dark and cowardly ways, in the dark, by cowards who later will do everything theypossibly can to avoid responsibility for what they did. Women, children, and othersunable to defend themselves are typical victims. Even more striking, the attackerstypically feel morally superior to the people they are assaulting in an unfair fight. Weshall see research evidence in the next chapter that this self-righteousness plays a hugerole in high RWAs’ hostility.

In fact they’d send just about anyone to jail for a longer time than most peoplewould, from those who spit on the sidewalk to rapists. However, as noted earlier,authoritarian followers usually would go easy on authorities who commit crimes, andthey similarly make allowances for someone who attacks a victim the authoritarian isprejudiced against.

Prejudice has little to do with the groups it targets, and a lot to do with the personalityof the holder

Finally, just to take this to its ludicrous extreme, I asked for reactions to a “lawto eliminate right-wing authoritarians.” (I told the subjects that right-wingauthoritarians are people who are so submissive to authority, so aggressive in the

name of authority, and so conventional that they may pose a threat to democratic rule.)RWA scale scores did not connect as solidly with joining this posse as they had in theother cases. Surely some of the high RWAs realized that if they supported this law,they were being the very people whom the law would persecute, and the posse shouldtherefore put itself in jail. But not all of them realized this, for authoritarian followersstill favored, more than others did, a law to persecute themselves. You can almost hearthe circuits clanking shut in their brains: “If the government says these people aredangerous, then they’ve got to be stopped.”

High RWAs tend to feel more endangered in a potentially threatening situationthan most people do, and often respond aggressively.

Conventionalism. By conventionalism, the third defining element of the rightwingauthoritarian, I don’t just mean do you put your socks on before your shoes, andI don’t just mean following the norms and customs that you like. I mean believing thateverybody should have to follow the norms and customs that your authorities havedecreed. Authoritarians get a lot of their ideas about how people ought to act fromtheir religion,

But I also discovered that if you ask subjects to rank the importance ofvarious values in life, authoritarian followers place “being normal” substantiallyhigher than most people do. It’s almost as though they want to disappear asindividuals into the vast vat of Ordinaries.

P36-40 Game

Supposedly the future authoritarian follower was severely punished as a childby his cold, distant parents for any signs of independence or rebellion. So such urgeswere repressed. Instead through a reaction-formation the child became obedient, loyal,even adoring of his parents. But deep down inside he hated them. However the

Freudian “deep down inside” doesn’t have a shredder or burn-basket, so ultimately therepressed hostility has to come out some way. Thus the authoritarian followerprojected his hostility onto safe targets, such as groups whom the parents disliked orpeople who couldn’t fight back, and decided they were out to get him. That projectionprovided the rationalization for attacking them and, voila, you have authoritarianaggression--thanks to just about all the ego defense mechanisms in Freud’s book.

One gets nowhere with a theory that can “predict” whatever happened, after ithappens.

High RWAs are, in general,more afraid than most people are.

Almost everybodythinks she’s more moral than most. But high RWAs typically think they’re way, waybetter.

appreciate the cruelcontradiction that the people who feel holiest are likely to do very unholy thingsprecisely because they feel holiest.

Most people seem spring-loaded to becomemore right-wing authoritarian during crises.

The only situation I found in which acrisis lowered RWA scores involved a repressive government that assaultednonviolent protestors (which I have termed “the Gandhi trap”). Otherwise, whenthere’s trouble, people generally look to the authorities to fix things. And someauthorities will gladly amass greater power in times of peril, whether they have anyintention of fixing the problem or not.

By and large the students were probably pretty authoritarian as children, submittingto authority, learning whom to fear and dislike, and usually doing what they weresupposed to do. But when adolescence struck with all its hormones, urges, and desires

for autonomy, some of them began to have new experiences that could have shakenup their early learnings. If the experiences reinforced the parents’, teachers’, andclergies’ teachings (e.g. that wrecked car), authoritarian attitudes would likely remainhigh. But if the experiences indicated the teachings were wrong (e.g. “Sex isn’t bad.It’s great!”), the teen is likely to become less authoritarian.

Interestingly enough, authoritarian followers show a remarkable capacity forchange IF they have some of the important experiences. For example, they are far lesslikely to have known a homosexual (or realized an acquaintance was homosexual)than most people. But if you look at the high RWAs who do know someone gay orlesbian, they are much less hostile toward homosexuals in general than mostauthoritarians are. Getting to know a homosexual usually makes one more acceptingof homosexuals as a group. Personal experiences can make a lot of difference, whichis a truly hopeful discovery. The problem is, most right-wing authoritarians won’twillingly exit their small world and try to meet a gay.

I teach at the “big state university” in my province, and over the four years ofan undergraduate program at the University of Manitoba students’ RWA scale scoresdrop about 10%. Liberal arts majors drop more than that, “applied” majors such asmanagement and nursing drop less. But the students who drop the most, no matter whatthey major in, are those who laid down high RWA scale scores when they first camein the front door.

High RWA parents may anticipate this and try to send their kids to “safe”colleges.

In all three studies, alumni who were parents showed much smaller dropsin authoritarianism (i.e. they showed noticeable rebounds) than did those who werechildless.

Higher education matters, and its effect lasts a long, long time.

Thekey to the puzzle springs from Chapter 2's observation that, first and foremost,followers have mainly copied the beliefs of the authorities in their lives. They havenot developed and thought through their ideas as much as most people have. Thusalmost anything can be found in their heads if their authorities put it there, even stuffthat contradicts other stuff. A filing cabinet or a computer can store quite inconsistentnotions and never lose a minute of sleep over their contradiction. Similarly a highRWA can have all sorts of illogical, self-contradictory, and widely refuted ideasrattling around in various boxes in his brain, and never notice it.

But research reveals that authoritarian followers drive through life under the influenceof impaired thinking a lot more than most people do, exhibiting sloppy reasoning,highly compartmentalized beliefs, double standards, hypocrisy, self-blindness, aprofound ethnocentrism, and--to top it all off--a ferocious dogmatism that makes itunlikely anyone could ever change their minds with evidence or logic.

they do not in general have a very criticaloutlook on anything unless the authorities in their lives have condemned it for them.Then they can be extremely critical.

Highs simply have a big fat double standardabout homosexuals and punish the person as well as the crime. A jury composed ofhigh RWAs would hardly administer “blind justice.”

It turned out to be “no contest,” because in both studies authoritarianfollowers wanted to impose more censorship in all of these cases--save the oneinvolving the sex education teacher who strongly believed all premarital sex was a sin.

In fact, despite their own belief that they are quite honest with themselves,authoritarians tend to be highly defensive, and run away from unpleasant truths about

themselves more than most people do.

High RWAs were quite interested in finding out the test was valid IF theythought they had done well on the scale. But if they had been told they had low selfesteem,most right-wing authoritarians did not want to see evidence that the test wasvalid. Well, wouldn’t everyone do this? No. Most low RWA students wanted to seethe evidence whether they had gotten good news, OR bad news about themselves.

They are so ethnocentric that youfind them making statements such as, “If you’re not with us, then you’re against us.”There’s no neutral in the highly ethnocentric mind. This dizzying “Us versusEveryone Else” outlook usually develops from traveling in those “tight circles” wetalked about in the last chapter, and whirling round in those circles reinforces theethnocentrism as the authoritarian follower uses his friends to validate his opinions.

They then maintain their beliefs against new threats byseeking out those authorities, and by rubbing elbows as much as possible with peoplewho have the same beliefs.

High RWAs tend to ignore themany devious reasons why someone might lie and say something they find agreeable.They’re just glad to have another person agree with them. It goes back to their relyingon social support to maintain their ideas, because that’s really all they’ve got besidestheir authorities (and one “last stand” defense to be discussed soon).

So (to foreshadow later chapters a little) suppose you are a completelyunethical, dishonest, power-hungry, dirt-bag, scum-bucket politician who will saywhatever he has to say to get elected. (I apologize for putting you in this role, but itwill only last for one more sentence.) Whom are you going to try to lead, high RWAs

or low RWAs? Isn’t it obvious? The easy-sell high RWAs will open up their arms andwallets to you if you just sing their song, however poor your credibility. Those crabbylow RWAs, on the other hand, will eye you warily when your credibility is suspectbecause you sing their song? So the scum-bucket politicians will usually head for theright-wing authoritarians, because the RWAs hunger for social endorsement of theirbeliefs so much they’re apt to trust anyone who tells them they’re right. Heck, AdolfHitler was elected Chancellor of Germany running on a law-and-order platform justa few years after he tried to overthrow the government through an armed insurrection.

Authoritarian followers arehighly suspicious of their many out-groups; but they are credulous to the point of selfdelusionwhen it comes to their in-groups.

But everything is not correct, for the authoritarian follower makes himselfvulnerable to malevolent manipulation by chucking out critical thinking and prudence as the price for maintaining his beliefs. He’s an “easy mark,” custom-built to besnookered. And the very last thing an authoritarian leader wants is for his followersto start using their heads, to start thinking critically and independently about things.

It’s easy to see why authoritarian followers would be dogmatic, isn’t it? Whenyou haven’t figured out your beliefs, but instead absorbed them from other people,you’re really in no position to defend them from attack. Simply put, you don’t knowwhy the things you believe are true. Somebody else decided they were, and you’retaking their word for it.

Well first of all you avoid challenges by sticking with your own kind as muchas possible, because they’re hardly likely to ask pointed questions about your beliefs.

But if you meet someone who does, you’ll probably defend your ideas as best you can,parrying thrusts with whatever answers your authorities have pre-loaded into yourhead. If these defenses crumble, you may go back to the trusted sources. Theyprobably don’t have to give you a convincing refutation of the anxiety-producingargument that breached your defenses, just the assurance that you nonetheless areright. But if the arguments against you become overwhelming and persistent, youeither concede the point--which may put the whole lot at risk--or you simply insist youare right and walk away, clutching your beliefs more tightly than ever.

But as I just said, religious fundamentalism does promoteauthoritarianism in some ways

Well, by creating this category of what the family is, you instantly create the categoryof people who are not that, who are different. You’re laying down an in-group versusout-group distinction. Even if you never say a nasty word about other religions, theenormous human tendency to think in ethnocentric terms will create a preference for“people like me.”

Religious prejudice does not draw as much attentionor produce as much hatred in North America as it does in (say) the Middle East andsouthern Asia, but it’s still dynamite looking for a place to explode because it’s sooften accompanied by the self-righteousness that releases aggression.

For example,David Winter at the University of Michigan recently found that fundamentaliststudents, when evaluating the war in Iraq, rejected a series of statements that werebased on the Sermon on the Mount--which is arguably the core of Jesus’ teachings.Fundamentalists may believe they follow Jesus more than anyone else does, but it

turns out to depend a lot on where Jesus said we should go. And we can augment suchfindings by considering the thinking behind three of the fundamentalist’s favoriteissues: school prayer, opposition to evolution, and the infallibility of the Bible.

Like the arguments against evolution, you can tell theyjust swallowed this “explanation” without thinking because it is, in fact, an admissionthat contradictions and inconsistencies do exist. The “different angles”story justexplains how the contradictions got there.Ultimately the true believers were saying, “I believe so strongly that the Bibleis perfect that there’s nothing, not even the Bible itself, that can change my mind.” Ifthat seems like an enormous self-contradiction, put it on the list. We are dealing withvery compartmentalized minds. They’re not really interested in coming to grips withwhat’s actually in the Bible so much as mounting a defense of what they want tobelieve about the Bible--come Hell or Noah’s high water.

As notedin the last chapter, it takes no effort to be dogmatic, and you don’t need to know verymuch to insist you’re right and nothing can possibly change your mind. As well,dogmatism gives the joy and comfort of certainty, which fundamentalists cherish.

But the religion-versus-science comparison proved especially striking amongfundamentalists. They said religion brought them enormous amounts of happiness. Itbrought them the joy of God’s love. It showed how they could spend all eternity inheaven. It assured them they would rejoin their loved ones in the kingdom of God. Itbrought them closer to their loved ones on earth. It brought forgiveness of their sins.It made them feel safe in God’s protection. In contrast, they got almost no happinessfrom science. Notably, they said science did not enable them to work out their own

beliefs and philosophy of life, it did not bring the joy of discovery, it did not providethe surest path we have to the truth, it did not make them feel safe, it did not showhow to live a happy life, and it did not bring the satisfaction of knowing their beliefswere based on objective facts.

We should note that fundamentalists indeed get great joy from their religion.While most people tell pollsters they are happy, highly religious people numberamong the happiest of us all. You can see why they would. They believe they knowthe meaning of life on its deepest level. They believe they are in personal touch withthe all-good creator of the universe, who loves them and takes a special interest inthem. They say they are certain they will enjoy an eternity of happiness after they die.In the meanwhile they have answers at their fingertips to all the problems of life thatdepress others, such as sickness and personal failure. And they are embraced on all sides by a supportive community. Why wouldn’t they be very happy? The realquestion ought to be: why do so many people, including some of the fundamentalists’own children, turn their backs on all this happiness?

They are especially likely to say their religion colors and shapesalmost everything they experience in life, that it is the solution to all of humanity’sproblems, that it is very important to them to support the leaders of their religion, thatthey are learning everything they can about their religion, that nothing else is asimportant in their life, and no other outlook could be as true and valid.

Fundamentalists, you may have heard, proselytize.Whether they go door to door, or just gently approach co-workers and neighbors, orpleasantly invite classmates to their youth group, fundamentalists usually believe theyhave an obligation to try to convert others.

Even though

fundamentalists often speak of parents’ sacred right to raise their children as they seefit, the vast majority of the fundamentalists said they’d tell the teen his parents werewrong. And virtually all said they would try to persuade the teen to join their religion.

Still the decision to leave was almost always wrenching, because it could meanbecoming an outcast from one’s family and community. Also, fundamentalists arefrequently taught that no one is lower, and will burn more terribly in hell, than aperson who abandons their true religion. What then gnawed away so mercilessly at theapostates that they could no longer overpower doubt with faith?

Again, it’s just a verbal thing. No admission ofwrong-doing to injured parties is required, no restitution, and no change in behavior.But it works really well: Instant Guilt-Be-Gone; just add a little prayer. And whywouldn’t you sin again, since it’s so easy to erase the transgression with your Easyoff,

Fundamentalists therefore might feel little after-effect of their wrong-doingstwitching away in their psyches.

I have then, at a later date, asked my students to let their Hidden Observersanswer a question about the existence of God. “Does this person (that is, you) havedoubts that (s)he was created by an Almighty God who will judge each person andtake some into heaven for eternity while casting others into hell forever?” A third ofthe high RWA students checked off an alternative that read, “Yes, (s)he has secretdoubts which (s)he has kept strictly to herself/himself that this is really true.” Anothertwenty percent said they had such doubts, but at least one other person knew aboutthem. That adds up to most of the highly authoritarian students.I don’t think I was actually communicating with tiny Munchkins inside thestudents’ heads. I suspect the Hidden Observer angle just gives people a chance to

admit something without taking full responsibility for admitting it--sort of like, “Thedevil made me do it.”

Being “religious” does not automatically build a firewall against acceptingtotalitarianism, and when fundamentalist religions teach authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism, they help create the problem. Can wenot see how easily religious fundamentalists would lift a would-be dictator aloft aspart of a “great movement,” and give it their all?

But in the firstinstance it meant persons who scored highly on the social dominance test were seldomhigh RWAs, and high RWAs were almost never social dominators. That’s why the two tests could predict so much together: each was identifyinga different clump of prejudiced persons--sort of like, “You round up the folks in thewhite sheets over there, and I’ll get the pious bigots over here.” So it looks like mostreally prejudiced people come in just two flavors: social dominators and high RWAs.Since dominators long to control others and be authoritarian dictators, and high RWAsyearn to follow such leaders, most social prejudice was therefore connected toauthoritarianism

This agreement will probably convince the follower, ever scanning for akindred spirit who will confirm her beliefs, that she and the dominator lie side by sidein the same pod of peas. But huge differences exist between these two parts of anauthoritarian system in (1) their desire for power, (2) their religiousness, (3) the rootsof their aggression, and (4) their thinking processes

High scorers are inclined to be intimidating, ruthless, and vengefulThey scorn such noble acts as helping others, and being kind, charitable, andforgiving. Instead they would rather be feared than loved, and be viewed as mean,pitiless, and vengeful. They love power, including the power to hurt in their drive to

the top. Authoritarian followers do not feel this way because they seldom have sucha drive to start with.

“For any group to succeed, all its members have to give it their complete loyalty.”We saw that authoritarian followers endorse such sentiments. But social dominatorsdo not. Oh sure, they want their followers to be super loyal to the group they lead. Butthey themselves are not really in it so much for the group or its cause, but more forthemselves. It’s all about them, not about a higher purpose. If trouble arises, don’t besurprised if they start playing “Every man for himself” and even sell out the group tosave their own skin

High RWAs, we know, strongly tend to be religious fundamentalists.Social dominators do not. In fact, like most people in my samples, most dominatorsonly go to church for marrying and burying. This would be “Three strikes and ye’reout” as far as the religiously ethnocentric high RWAs are concerned except for onething. Dominators can easily pretend to be religious, saying the right words andclaiming a deep personal belief and, as we saw in chapter 3, gullible right-wingauthoritarians will go out on almost any limb, walk almost any plank to believe them.

Why are social dominators hostile? Well unlike high RWAs who fear anexplosion of lawlessness, they already live in the jungle that authoritarian followersfear is coming, and they’re going to do the eating. They do not ask themselves, whenthey meet someone, “Is there any reason why I should try to control this person?” somuch as they ask, “Is there any reason why I should not try to gain the upper hand with him right now?” Dominance is the first order of business with them in arelationship, like dogs encountering each other in a school yard, and vulnerableminorities provide easy targets for exerting power, for being mean, for domination.

It’s an open question whether the aggression mainly serves a desire to dominate, orif the domination mainly serves a desire to hurt others. But either way in the dog-eatdogworld of the social dominator, they’re out to claw their way to the top.

Dominators aren’tusually afraid that civilization might collapse and lawlessness ensue. Laws, they think,are not something you should necessarily obey in the first place, so much as thingsyou should not get caught disobeying. And as for self-righteousness, it’s prettyirrelevant to people as amoral as most social dominators tend to be. They may speakof the righteousness of their cause, but that’s usually just to assure and motivate theirfollowers. Might makes right for social dominators.

Their image of themselves as the good people leaves no room for believing theyare cold-blooded, ruthless, immoral manipulators after power at almost any cost. Sosocial dominators might incite authoritarian followers to commit a hate crime, but thedominators and followers probably launch the attack for different reasons: thedominator out of meanness, as an act of intimidation and control; the follower out offear and self-righteousness in the name of authority.

After all, they holdthat there’s no such thing as “right” and “wrong.” It all boils down to what you canget away with.

Given all of this, do you really believe the social dominator who says peopleshould have to earn their success in life? He’s quite willing to let the children of therich get rich merely through inheritance. Do you trust him when he says he’s in favour of a level playing field? He’s against programs that would give the disadvantaged abetter chance. Does he really believe the poor can pull themselves up by theirbootstraps, or is he content to let them face an uphill struggle that very few canovercome? It doesn’t bother the social dominator that masses of people are poor.

That’s their tough luck. And some racial groups are just naturally inferior to others,he says. Justice should not be applied equally to all. The rich and powerful shouldhave advantages in court, even if that completely violates the concept of justice. Whocares if prejudice plays a role in the justice system? He certainly doesn’t. The “rightpeople” should have more votes than everybody else in elections. And so on.

High socialdominators among university students say it has been their experience that:Deceit and cheating were good tactics because it led to what they wanted.Taking advantage of “suckers” felt great.They’ve enjoyed having power and having people afraid of them.“Losers” deserved what happened to them.It’s smart to use whatever power you have in a situation to get what you want.Life boils down to what you can get away with.People who suffer misfortunes deserve them because they are lazy or dumb ormade bad moves.And of course, they say their lives have taught them that “Life is a jungle.”

Students’ social dominance scores correlate only weakly with their parents’scores (about .25), so it seems unlikely they learned “Life is a jungle”the same waysome high RWA students learned “You are a Baptist”as they grew up. Whatever theparental influence might be, it’s usually strongest between fathers and sons--implicating the Y chromosome, or a lot of cultural shaping on the roles of males.

Your division can get better, legal containers that would add 44% to the wastemanagement costs of making “It’s So Clean,” or it can move to Argentina. WhyArgentina? Because, you are told in this exercise, the government there will let youuse your leaking containers, and will give you tax breaks as well if you re-locate.Also, your labor costs will go down because wages are low in Argentina and theworkers don’t expect benefits or pensions. So what are you going to do?

This is now called the “lethal union” in this field of research.7 When socialdominators are in the driver’s seat, and right-wing authoritarians stand at their beck

and call, unethical things appear much more likely to happen. True, sufficiently skilledsocial dominators served by dedicated followers can make the trains run on time. Butyou have to worry about what the trains may be hauling when dominators call theshots and high RWAs do the shooting. The trains may be loaded with people crammedinto boxcars heading for death camps.

So Double Highs have stronger prejudices than do commonplace socialdominators (i.e., the ones who don’t score highly in right-wing authoritarianism, thesilver medal winners). And they are more prejudiced than ordinary high RWAs (i.e.,the ones who don’t score highly in social dominance, the ones who get the bronze).They seem to have piled the prejudice of the high RWA atop the prejudice of thesocial dominator and reached new depths.

The vast majority of people who score highly onthe RWA scale can be called submissive followers, champing at the bit for theirchampion. But aspiring dictators can sometimes score highly on the RWA scale too.

Such a low return rate immediately raises the question of a self-selectionsample bias, right? What would the results have been if everybody had responded,instead of only one-quarter?Luckily you can estimate this with one of the crafty stratagems in the surveygivers’bag of tricks. Let’s say, just to pick a wild possibility, you’re interested inwhether Republican lawmakers score higher on the RWA scale than Democrats do.You look at the states you barely heard from, and then at the states where you got amuch better return. Obviously you’re inclined to trust the latter results more. Makingthis comparison, you find that the higher the return rate was, the more Republicanstended to differ from Democrats. The smaller samples tended to cloud this

relationship--which is a major problem with small samples. But it also means that ifI had heard back from everyone, the difference would likely be substantially biggerthan what actually turned up.

Authoritarian followers probably don’t run forpublic office very often. So ordinary high RWAs are not at all likely to becomelawmakers, unless they are hand-picked for the role of Unquestioning PartySupporters by powerful leaders to run in safe, “yellow dog” districts. Thus when youfind someone in a legislature who scores highly on the RWA scale, it figures that he’sprobably a Double High, as this study indicates.

How organized are they? After their leaders have decided who will run on theRepublican ticket in an election, religious fundamentalists donate money, work thephones for hours on end, canvass night and day, bring the candidate to their socialgroups, talk to their neighbors, and drop leaflets over and over again to win the race.After all, proselytizing is one of the things they do best, and politics is now directlyconnected to their religion. In fact political “education” and “guidance”come directlyfrom the pulpit in many churches now.

Would the victors then all clap each other on the back and live happily everafter in Taliban America? Maybe they would. But recalling what we know about thedominance drives and prejudices of Double Highs, wouldn’t a subsequent Catholicversus Protestant struggle for control be just as likely? Coalitions last only as long asthe common enemy does, and few things provoke animosity the way religiousdifferences do among the very religious. And if the Protestants subdued the Catholics,would that be the end of religious warfare, or the beginning of the next round? Afterall, Baptists and Pentecostals don’t really like each other all that much.

Partly they did it, I am sure, because people think they lose their independence

and right to act freely when they become part of a psychology experiment (whereasthe researcher usually wants them to act exactly as they feel like acting).6 But thebigger reason has to be that the vast majority of us have had practically no training inour lifetimes in openly defying authority. The authorities who brought us upmysteriously forgot to teach that. We may desperately want to say no, but that turnsout to be a huge step that most people find impossibly huge--even when the authorityis only a psychologist you never heard of running an insane experiment. From ourearliest days we are told disobedience is a sin, and obedience is a virtue, the “riht”thing to do.

Milgram’s Variations on His Theme. Once he overcame his own astonishmentat what he had found, Stanley Milgram ran numerous variations on his experiment tosee what factors affected obedience. For example, he seated the Learner right next tothe Teacher. This understandably made it more difficult to hurt the victim, but still 40percent of a new sample of forty men went all the way to 450 volts. So Milgram thenmade another batch of Teachers hold the Learner’s hand down on a shock platethrough an insulating sheet, while throwing switches with their other hand. Thisespecially gruesome condition further reduced compliance, but still 30 percent of 40men totally obeyed.If you assume the samples were reasonably representative of the generalpopulation, it means someone who wished you dead would have to try three or fourcomplete strangers in this experimental setup before he found someone who wouldhold you down and kill you with electric shocks rather than say no to a psychologyexperimenter. If that doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, nothing will.

But, you might well argue, these experiments were run at a big famousuniversity, and Teachers in conflict over whether to throw the next switch might have

reasoned, “Yale wouldn’t run an experiment that endangered someone’s life.”

So did it matter who the individuals were who served in these Teaching Teamconditions? Do you think that the people who defied the Experimenter in the firstsituation would similarly have quit if they had been randomly assigned to the “AdolfEichmann”condition instead? Isn’t it obvious that virtually everyone simply did whatthe people around him did? If the other teachers defied the Experimenter, so did thirtysixof the forty real subjects. If the other teacher went merrily on his obedient wayshocking the Learner, nary a word was heard from thirty-seven of those forty realsubjects. Obedience of authority is one of the “strong forces” in life, but so also isconformity to one’s peers. How people acted depended very little on what kind ofpeople they were, and very greatly on the situation they were in--particularly on whattheir peers did.

That is the Great Discovery of social psychology. Experiment after experimentdemonstrates that we are powerfully affected by the social circumstances encasing us.And very few of us realize how much. So if we are tempted by all the earlier findingsin this book to think that right-wing authoritarians and social dominators are the guysin the black hats while we fight on the side of the angels, we are not only falling intothe ethnocentric trap, we are not only buttering ourselves up one side and down theother with self-righteousness, we are probably deluding ourselves as well. Milgramhas shown us how hard it is to say no to malevolent authority, how easy it is to followthe crowd, and how very difficult it is to resist when the crowd is doing the biding ofmalevolent authority. It’s not that there’s some part of “No” we don’t understand. It’sthat situational pressures, often quite unnoticed, temporarily strike the word from our

vocabulary.

Usually, however, we are in familiar situations interacting with others who arewell known to us, whom we can affect by how we act. So it matters who we are andwhat we do. And research shows it takes more pressure to get low RWAs to behaveshamefully in situations like the Milgram experiment than it takes for highs. But thedifference between low and high authoritarians is one of degree, I repeat, not kind. Toput a coda on this section: with enough direct pressure from above and subtle pressurefrom around us, Milgram has shown, most of us cave in.Not very reassuring, huh. But it makes crystal clear, if it wasn’t before, why wehave to keep malevolent leaders out of power.

Thus the men chose to become murderers rather than look bad in the eyes ofthe other men. It was a hideous, barbarous, supremely evil thing to do for mereacceptance, but as I said, researchers find the need to belong and conform, to be likedand “not make waves” powerfully affect the behavior of ordinary men. And the massmurderers in Reserve Police Battalion 101 were rather ordinary men.

So What’s Your Point?Good question. I’m not saying you and I are homicidal maniacs, or that theChristian fundamentalist down the street is ready to shoot all his out-groups at thedrop of a hat. I’m not saying that America in the twenty-first century is the ThirdReich in the 1940s. I’m not saying that the Republican Party today is the born-againNazi Party. But I am saying that we as individuals are poorly prepared for aconfrontation with evil authority, and some people are especially inclined to submitto such authority and attack in its name.Authoritarian followers, who have always been there but were usuallyuninterested and unorganized, are now mightily active and highly organized inAmerican politics. They claim to be the “real Americans,” but the America they yearnto create seems quite antithetical to the nation envisioned by the founding fathers. Far

from seeing the wisdom of separating church and state, for example, they want aparticular religious point of view to control government, and be spread and enforcedby the government. Furthermore, if research on abolishing the Bill of Rights andtolerance for government injustices is to be believed, authoritarian followers franklydon’t give a damn about democratic freedoms.

If being prejudiced makes it easier to commit atrocities, high RWAs rankamong the most prejudiced people in the country. If obedience to malevolent authoritymakes one more likely to persecute others--hey, authoritarian followers can chant“We’re Number One, We’re Number One!" If wanting to belong, and loyalty to yourgroup, and a tendency to conform play a role in attacks on others, high RWAs lead theleague in those things too. If inclination to persecute any group the government selectscounts for something, we know from the “posse” studies that right-wing authoritarianshead up that line as well.If illogical thinking, highly compartmentalized ideas, double standards, andhypocrisy help one to be brutally unfair to others, high RWAs have extra helpings inall those respects. If being fearful makes one likely to aggress in the name ofauthority, high RWAs are scared up one side and down the other. If being selfrighteouspermits one to think that attacks against helpless victims are justified,authoritarian followers have their self-righteousness super-sized, thank you. If beingable to forgive oneself and forget the evil one has done make it easier to attack overand over again in the future, right-wing authoritarians know all about that kind offorgiving and forgetting. If being defensive, blind to oneself and highly dogmaticmake it unlikely one will ever come to grips with one’s failings, authoritarianfollowers get voted “Least Likely to Change.”Add it all up and tell yourself there’s nothing to worry about.Our worries more than double because the Religious Right has helped elect to

high public office a lot of the power-mad, manipulative, amoral deceivers to whomthese followers are so vulnerable. Lots of unauthoritarian people voted for George W.Bush, for example, because people vote for candidates for many different reasons. Butwhat the country got was a government infested with social dominators and DoubleHighs. True, some of them got caught, or were recently voted out of office. But mostof them haven’t moved an inch. They’re still sitting in Congress or running the show from the White House. Calculate how thin the margins were, realize how good thecheaters are at cheating, and tell yourself again that things are fine, there’s nothing toworry about.

What’s to be done:Question: Is it the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out this rot thatis poisoning our country from within? No, I hope it’s obvious that that’s no solutionat all. It may be just as obvious that social dominators will want to hang onto controluntil it is pried from their cold, dead fingers in the last ditch. And authoritarianfollowers will prove extremely resistant to change. The more one learns about theproblem, I think, the more one realizes how difficult it will be to change people whoare so ferociously aggressive, and fiercely defensive.You’re not likely to get anywhere arguing with authoritarians. If you won everyround of a 15 round heavyweight debate with a Double High leader over history,logic, scientific evidence, the Constitution, you name it, in an auditorium filled withhigh RWAs, the audience probably would not change its beliefs one tiny bit.Authoritarian followers might even cling to their beliefs more tightly, the wrongerthey turned out to be. Trying to change highly dogmatic, evidence-immune, groupgrippingpeople in such a setting is like pissing into the wind.

Reducing fear. Fear ignites authoritarian aggression more than anything else.

From the crime-fixated Six O’clock News, to the Bush administration’s claim that“We fight ‘em there or else we fight ‘em here,” to Pat Robertson’s recurringpredictions of catastrophe the day-after-tomorrow, lots of people have been fillingAmerica to the brim with fear. It would undoubtedly help things if the fear-mongersratcheted down their mongering. But don’t hold your breath; they have their reasonsfor trying to scare the pants off everybody.Reducing self-righteousness. Self-righteousness is the major releaser ofauthoritarian aggression, and it is often based on theology and teachings that seem tobring out the worst in people, not the best. Couldn’t “cheap grace” become so disgracedthat it lost all currency? Well, the folks who’d have to do this may be mostreluctant to throw away their best draw, even if it does, in fact, lead to more sin.Nipping the religious roots of ethnocentrism. Fundamentalist parents could talkto their children about being Christians before talking about being Baptists. Theycould talk about being God’s children before talking about being Christians. Theycould talk about all being brothers and sisters before that. They could.Teaching children not to trust authorities automatically. Parents in generalcould teach their older children that sometimes authorities can be bad and should beresisted, the way they try to “street-smart” their kids about strangers offering candy.But somehow that suggestion leads parents to think of Pandora’s Box.

Maybe the solution is right in front of our noses. How about havingauthoritarians read this book? I mentioned in chapter 1 that when high RWAs learnabout right-wing authoritarianism, and the many undesirable things it correlates withsuch as prejudice, they frequently wish they were less authoritarian.12 So isn’t thesolution to the problem as plain as the thing that’s glaring you in the face right now?Would that it were so. But in that study the high RWAs wished they hadmoderate scores, not low ones, and they were hardly likely to put that wish on the top

of their list the next time they blew out the candles on a birthday cake. Even moredaunting, as I mentioned in chapter 3, experiments show that high RWAs are sodefensive and so unaware of themselves that when you tell them what high RWAs arelike, they almost always think you’re talking about somebody else.So I predict most authoritarian followers would sail right through this book andcompartmentalize, misinterpret, rationalize, and dogmatically deny it had anything todo with them personally. If you tried to force this self-awareness on them, they wouldprobably run away, run away, as fast as they could. So good luck if you passed on thisURL to your fascist Uncle George.Help the followers see how they’re being played for suckers. I similarly thinkyou’ll likely be wasting your time trying to convince authoritarian followers that theyare being systematically misinformed and played for dopes by their leaders. It’s tooimportant to them to believe otherwise, and just your raising the question will likelyput you into their huge out-group and make them suspicious of you.

Wanting to be “normal.” By and large, these approaches are not based on whathigh RWAs might become, but rather on what they are. For example, we can catch afavoring breeze from the fact that high RWAs want to be normal. Studies show theywill moderate their attitudes and beliefs just from finding out that they’re differentfrom most people. They don’t usually realize how extreme they are because they stickso closely with their own kind. They need to get out more.How can you possibly accomplish that since--like “Hugh”--they love staying intheir tight circles? Through common cause, believe it or not. Low RWAs and highRWAs land on the opposite ends of a certain personality test, but they’re not really,totally, from head-to-toe opposites. They disagree about lots, but not about everything.People tend to overemphasize their disagreements and overlook their commonalities.

And keep in mind how high RWAs open the door to those who seem to believe whatthey believe. Find your common grounds, and meet on them. E.g. environment (God’s caretakers)

Visible minorities. Along this same line, high RWAs misperceive how diverseAmerica is. It’s quite natural to think, when you are in the white, Christian,heterosexual, solvent majority that this is a huge majority. Minorities should speak outfor their rights. If they don’t, they are (among other things) helping a lot of themajority remain steeped in ignorance. People can learn, but they won’t have a chanceif the minorities remain invisible. I know, I know, the high RWAs will howl whateverchorus their leaders dictate when minorities become “uppity”. But recall the evidencethat nothing improves authoritarians’ attitudes toward homosexuals as much as gettingto know a homosexual--or learning that they’ve known one for years.Higher Education. Moving to a broader perspective in this broadening effort,evidence we encountered in chapter 2 shows that higher education can have asignificant beneficial impact upon authoritarian followers that lasts a lifetime. Itdoesn’t usually turn them into anti-matter versions of their former selves. But fouryears of undergraduate experience knocks their RWA scale scores down about 15-20%. That’s a lot when you’re talking about very dogmatic people.

Children? I know what you’re thinking. We also saw in chapter 2 thatbecoming parents raises RWA scale scores. Should we therefore stop reproducing?No. That might prove counterproductive. It would bollix up all those theories that sayhuman beings are just a way for our DNA to keep itself going.

Laws. You often hear that one cannot legislate brotherhood, but I think you sometimescan. Anti-discrimination laws, designed to make sure everyone has the rights she isentitled to, can lead many prejudiced people to equal-footing contact with minorities.It’s vital that the authoritarians believe the law will be enforced, but if they think it

will be, that contact can help break down stereotypes. Beyond that, such laws givehigh RWAs an excuse within their in-group for doing the right thing: “OK, I’ll breakthe law if you’ll pay my fine.”

Modeling and Leadership. Many times people know that something wrong is happening, but they don’t doanything because they know other people are also aware of the situation. As a result,all can trap themselves into inactivity. “Courageous leaders” can become isolates in a flash.But when things are obviously going wrong and everyone is frozen by everyone else’sinactivity, all can perish for exactly the same reason that racing lemmings do.

Non-violent protest. Here’s a “Don’t.” Don’t use violence as a tool to advanceyour cause. Besides the dubious morality of such acts, they play straight into the hands of the people whose influence you’re trying to reduce. As I mentioned in chapter 2,studies show most people are spring-loaded to become more authoritarian whenviolence increases in society. (Besides, when a reform movement turns to violence,it paves the way for any social dominators within the movement to come to the fore,and “The Revolution” seeds the next dictatorship.)

Some high RWAs may be especially energized now because the backlash that isgrowing against their causes convinces them that they are being discriminated against.Overgeneralizing the findings that reveal their shortcomings would indeed be wrong.But these highly prejudiced people appear to be performing another of their amazingmental gymnastics by seeing themselves as the victims of prejudice.

The Short Run Imperative: Speak Out Now or Forever, Perhaps, Be Silenced

“I am now writing the last page in my last book about authoritarianism. So, forthe last time, I do not think a fascist dictatorship lies just over our horizon. But I donot think we are well protected against one. And I think our recent history shows the

threat is growing...We cannot secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves, and ourposterity, if we sit with our oars out of the water. If we drift mindlessly, circumstancescan sweep us to disaster. Our societies presently produce millions of highlyauthoritarian personalities as a matter of course, enough to stage the NurembergRallies over and over and over again. Turning a blind eye to this could someday point guns at all our heads, and the fingers on the triggers will belong to right-wingauthoritarians. We ignore this at our peril.”

If the people who are not social dominators and right-wing authoritarians wantto have those same rights in the future, they, you, had better do those same things too,now. You do have the right to remain silent, but you’ll do so at everyone’s peril. Youcan’t sit these elections out and say “Politics is dirty; I’ll not be part of it,” or“Nothing can change the way things are done now.”The social dominators want youto be disgusted with politics, they want you to feel hopeless, they want you out of theirway. They want democracy to fail, they want your freedoms stricken, they wantequality destroyed as a value, they want to control everything and everybody, theywant it all. And they have an army of authoritarian followers marching with themilitancy of “that old-time religion” on a crusade that will make it happen, if you letthem.

Or you can exercise your rights too, while you still have them, and getjust as concerned, active, and giving to protect yourself and your country. If you, andother liberals, other moderates, other conservatives with conscience do, theneverything can turn out all right. But we have to get going. If you are the only personyou know who grasps what’s happening, then you’ve got to take leadership, helpinform, and organize others. One person can do so much; you’ve no idea! And twocan do so much more.But time is running out, fast, and nearly everything is at stake.