The Fear-Anger-Authoritarianism Connection

A college professor, my father used to assign his students the book The Lord of the Flies. That 1954 novel by William Golding imagines the plight of a group of British schoolboys whose plane crashes on a deserted island. As the story unfolds, readers find themselves confronting the question: Are people basically civilized and respectful, or are they guided by darker, power-seeking impulses?

Those unacquainted with the book should know that the group quickly divides into two camps. The first is led by Ralph, who has been elected by all the boys to manage their affairs, summon them to meetings, and ensure that they maintain a signal fire to encourage their rescue. The second leader is Jack, an adventurous fellow who heads up hunting parties and disregards Ralph’s requests to maintain the signal.

Over the course of the novel, many of the boys become fearful there is a dark beast on the island that threatens them and from which only Jack offers protection. A grotesque pig’s head—the lord of the flies—is placed on a post as a kind of sacred totem. The civilized boys lose their standing and are hunted down.

My father once described this book as the most exciting novel he’d ever read. Readers may decide for themselves.

I recall Golding’s work here because his central concern—whether society should organize itself around people’s brighter hopes for their collective welfare or around their worst fears—is especially pertinent in this political season. Of similar importance is his worry that circumstances might “tip” ordinary, law-abiding citizens into becoming quite different versions of themselves. All of us are familiar enough with positive emotions like love, kindness, and hope, just as we are with negative ones like anger, hatred, and fear. But which set is the stronger motivator of human behavior?

I’ve written previously about what I call the “circle of compassion,” that is, the extent to which we exhibit concern and respect for other people. Most of us include our family and close friends in that circle. With less enthusiasm, we concern ourselves with others we know, perhaps coworkers and neighbors. By degrees, that commitment weakens.

The challenge of the civilized person is to acknowledge the worth of as many people as possible, even those who are complete strangers or who hold viewpoints quite different from their own.

It is fair to say that most of us do not live up to this high standard. Frequently, we are indifferent to those who do not know. Worse, we may become hostile to those we consider “different.”

One might imagine this “we and they” attitude to be a relic of past centuries. Regionalism, ethnic prejudice, class antagonism, and religious hostility were important elements of that past. Far from being left behind, they are resurfacing in our own age. Because contemporary societies are now gigantic in scale, feature extensive immigration and social mobility, and exhibit complicated economic changes, some in the dominant groups hold that minorities are now “dangerous.” As the argument has it, those disadvantaged groups take jobs at lower rates of pay, overpopulate neighborhoods, exhaust the resources of schools and social services, commit crimes, and change the tenor of community life. An extreme version of this partisan view holds that the long-established groups should expel the outsiders and otherwise defend themselves against their incursions. The only way to ensure these changes is to have “our group” be in charge.

The dangers of authoritarianism

After the end of World War II, a group of scholars at the Institute for Social Research in New York pondered a difficult question: How could a powerful and sophisticated country like Germany have succumbed to an anti-intellectual demagogue like Adolf Hitler? How could the horrors of that war, and more specifically those of the Holocaust, have occurred?

To be sure, there were many causes—the national shame of losing the First World War and the peace terms that were imposed, the terrible economic conditions of the Great Depression, unmet imperialist ambitions, the rising threat of the Soviet Union, and a weak and divided Europe among them. To this mix of factors, the scholars proposed a different, more psychological theory. As they saw it, many Germans who supported Nazism had a set of guiding concerns and beliefs that made them vulnerable to Hitler’s appeals.

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That “authoritarian personality” theory, as it is commonly called, stresses that large parts of the German population felt disoriented by the dramatic societal changes they saw all around them. In a time of economic deprivation, they objected to the fact that some social groups seemed to be doing well. They disliked the freer behavior and decadence of the 1920s. Intellectuals, artists, foreigners, and Jewish people were blamed.

Against this emerging city culture, a mythology of the German folk community was reaffirmed. Germany would reclaim its historic destiny, or so Hitler claimed, if only it would return to the solid foundations of its rural past. Eliminating outsiders and non-conformists was one element of that commitment.

In that context, the theory focuses on some people’s fascination with strong dynamic leaders who promise to cleanse and clarify society. Authoritarians prefer answers rather than questions, clearly defined structures instead of vague, changing situations. Disliking deviants and others who seem contemptuous of traditional norms, adherents want to believe that they have been restored to their rightful place in the scheme of things.

The fear-anger-authoritarianism connection

The authoritarian personality theory was criticized as an overly broad interpretation of national character. Focusing on the dangers of fascism, it gave too little attention to other forms of authoritarianism, especially that found in left-wing totalitarianism.

A better interpretation, then, is to consider authoritarianism as a pattern found in every society and at every time. Today, some of us find ourselves attracted to charismatic leaders, would-be strongmen who claim to have all the answers to our social ills. Commonly, those leaders trade in the currency of fear. Without them, or so they insist, society will collapse. Their followers will lose the levels of success they’ve worked hard to obtain. Outsiders will infiltrate every dimension of social living. Returning to older social patterns is surely the antidote to what ails us now.

Fear, I should emphasize, is a clearly negative emotion, a condition that feels bad to possess. For that reason, many convert this to anger, an emotion that restores agency, direction, and self-esteem. Anger becomes most effective when it is coupled with capability or power, the sense that one can achieve his or her ambitions. And that sense of capability is expanded dramatically when those ambitions are shared by millions of others.

Pledging fealty to a dynamic leader seems to supporters the surest route to regaining the personal power they feel slipping away. Granting that leader “authority” means acknowledging that they not only have the power but also the right to do as they wish. Such is the psychology—and the ever-present danger—of modern politics.