On the authoritarian personality

Well well.. look at how the elections went again, they seem to be a repetition every couple of years. A right party gets the majority, then some scandals emerge and then a re-election happens again and a somewhat more centrist coalition gets elected, that coalition turns out to be a struggle and annoying to the electorate so we get again a right majority.

It’s as if a famous partially misquote of Karl Kraus¹ is true:

Austria is the only country which get’s dumber by experience.

Which brings me to the book, which I have read, Erich Fromm’s classic “Escape from Freedom”. Originally I found this book in my local library ².

I borrowed it to deal with my own struggles with the feeling of “freedom” and where to go as I’m basically still standing in front of a giant void of hopelessness, fear, powerlessness, etc.

What this book reveals is that the feeling of powerlessness and fear are basic feelings of the modern human, which were created by the industrialisation and the collapse of the middle age society, where everybody had his place ³.

And the vile emotional framework of the middle class, which were the fertile ground of the fascist movements in Germany, Austria, Italy, etc. was caused by numerous cultural and economic changes in society ⁴.

When you read this book you see the reasons of why things are like they are:

1. Ads everywhere! Fromm criticize the very notion of being bombarded all the time by ads. They make you feel inadequat, they make you feel small, they make you feel things by being everywhere all the time. They nudge you into conformity. They create thoughts and needs in you, which are not your own.

2. A rise in negative freedoms, the freedoms of being left alone by the state, with almost no rise in positive freedoms, which are the freedoms to do things. You are free from everything but at the same time have not so much the freedoms to something.

3. No sense of community, because the primary bindings got lost. Previously they were religion, the family, guilds and other kinds of tribal-esque communities which were fixed during your whole life. Today you are alone.

4. Authorities everywhere. Authorities are seen as something to be believed unquestioned or give a cynical notion of relativism that all truths are “relative” that the average citizen can’t have a meaningful thought of his own and thus we need to believe authorities. Which lead into unquestioned conformity or rebellion of everything what an authority says. The middle ground where thinking for yourself is tried and where sometimes an authority is believed and sometimes not, is rarely followed.

And many other nuanced points, which would blow up this blog post.

Erich Fromm also brings the so called authoritarian character into play, who is a basically sado-masochistic personality, who looks down on the weak and is himself just submissive towards a stronger “leader”. That leader can be a person, god, nature or a principle like “morality”.

This character has two notions:

1. Sadistic notion, he treats humans who are beneath him in any way objectified inhumanely. But he is deeply depending on them as he basically wants to “consume” them. He has the notion of helping his own feelings of loneliness and powerlessness by controlling others. That can go to the extreme of complete destruction of what he controls. He is the wife-beater who can’t survive without his daily victim.

2. Masochistic notion, he wants to be part of something greater than him. Getting lost by these feelings of inadueqacies by taking the identity of something greater than himself. All while that greater thing treats himself in a bad manner. He destroys himself, just so he can escape loneliness.

Those two notions are way more nuanced than this blog post could provide, but basically this is what they are. And the combination of these two make up the authoritarian character.

Combined with the notion in “modern society” of conformity they can be a breeding ground for fascism according to Erich Fromm, if I understand him correctly.

The interesting thing about these notions are according the author of the book, that they are escape mechanisms for escaping individual freedom. As we humans can’t stand solitude, but our societies produce loneliness, powerlessness, meaninglessness and similar feelings. So we try to escape this unbearable situation.

In his book he mentions another escape mechanism besides conformity or fleeing into authoritarianism: destructiveness. This escape mechanism tries to destroy everything from the outside, anything which intrudes the own solitude and is perceived as threatening is destroyed. Members of echo chambers come here to my mind, who treat others like shit.

Which reminded me of how associations, minority groups or people deal with other people these days, they build their own echo chambers where every “bad intruder” is pushed out or tried in some way or another destroyed. By doing that this in turn creates a social situation where the people who are pushed out feel lonely and may choose this or the other escape mechanisms from freedom again in turn.

What then Erich Fromm proposes as a “healthy way” of escaping those escape mechanisms, if I understood him correctly, is to broaden the individual positive freedoms. So getting spontaneously active and following what you want to do, similar to an artist or a child, in the moment without the control of an authority over you. As you then say what you can do, this gives you back the lost security and overcomes feelings of self-doubt.

In the end of the book he explain that what he supports is basically some kind of anarchy with a planned economy, which would again allow these positive freedoms – if done right.

Reading it is certainly an eye-opener and would add a lot of the detailed nuances, which I can’t adequately repeat in this blog post.

For example what caught my eye at the beginning of the book you find a quote which in itself makes his thoughts relevant for today ⁵:

Also it makes no difference, which symbols the enemies of human freedom have selected: Freedom is not lesser threatened regardless of if it’s done in the name of antifascism or fascism.

Which shows to me that to escape authoritarianism you have to escape the notion of authoritarianism, thus you leave the authoritarian personality. You think outside what others think of you and you don’t automatically conform or subordinate under an authority. And even if you would do that for a time, you leave that group as soon as it’s not according to your own believes. You live according to yourself, whatever that means.