How should the discourse of governing authoritarian parties look like?
November 5, 2024 11:44 PM Subscribe
It is often assumed that right-wing authoritarian and populist parties appeal primarily to negative feelings such as frustration, fear or alienation, and that positive sentiments appear in their discourse mostly in the form of nostalgia. Our hypothesis is that this description fails to apply to leaders in power. from They can do it. Positive Authoritarianism in Poland and Hungary [Frontiers]
Nazi presidents fuck off
posted by talking leaf at 2:51 AM on November 6 [22 favorites]
posted by talking leaf at 2:51 AM on November 6 [22 favorites]
Wow that is too hard to handle reading right now. But thank you for posting it. A reality we're going to have to learn to somehow exist in as Americans.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 2:54 AM on November 6 [5 favorites]
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 2:54 AM on November 6 [5 favorites]
From the paper:
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:21 AM on November 6 [7 favorites]
Interestingly however, not all psychological research equates authoritarianism with negative emotions. Altemeyer (1983), while confirming that fear from a dangerous world plays a major role behind the submissiveness, aggressiveness, and conventionalism of right-wing authoritarians, detected a force that is as important as fear, but is gratifying: self-righteousness, the firm belief that one is on the right side of history.That is an appeal to fear. "We're the cool kids. If you want to be a cool kid you have to be exactly like us, and if you're not exactly like us then look out."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:21 AM on November 6 [7 favorites]
This research seems very strange to me. I never had any doubt that fascist are happy, for me the problem is they are happy when they get to kill and hurt people. And writing a paper that discovers pride as one of the basic positive things fascists use to unite a bunch of cunts.. I mean maybe it's just this moment in time that makes this thing seem sort of stupid
Analysing how fascists gain popularity and their tactics to win elections seem like the exact thing researchers should be doing at this moment in time.
Research is research. There's more to this than "they're happy" or "not happy". The specifics of the language and psychology they use does matter. Shrugging it off and proclaiming we already know how they operate.... Well, that's one way we'll keep losing elections, for sure. And it's exactly what's happening.
The political situation in Poland and Hungary is creeping up where I am, in Germany, with the continual rise of the AfD and BSW. We're a few years behind, compared to those countries, but every election those parties grow stronger and get normalized.
And yet we seem to learn nothing from the experiences of other countries. It's extremely frustrating to watch. Politicians from the main parties aren't offering anything to counter what's going on and they're getting devoured for it.
posted by UN at 4:37 AM on November 6 [15 favorites]
Analysing how fascists gain popularity and their tactics to win elections seem like the exact thing researchers should be doing at this moment in time.
Research is research. There's more to this than "they're happy" or "not happy". The specifics of the language and psychology they use does matter. Shrugging it off and proclaiming we already know how they operate.... Well, that's one way we'll keep losing elections, for sure. And it's exactly what's happening.
The political situation in Poland and Hungary is creeping up where I am, in Germany, with the continual rise of the AfD and BSW. We're a few years behind, compared to those countries, but every election those parties grow stronger and get normalized.
And yet we seem to learn nothing from the experiences of other countries. It's extremely frustrating to watch. Politicians from the main parties aren't offering anything to counter what's going on and they're getting devoured for it.
posted by UN at 4:37 AM on November 6 [15 favorites]
Learning to Love Big Brother
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:07 AM on November 6 [3 favorites]
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:07 AM on November 6 [3 favorites]
It is no surprise thatmonsters are happy in their monstrosity.
posted by evilDoug at 5:08 AM on November 6 [4 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 5:08 AM on November 6 [4 favorites]
"The question that returns here in a haunting fashion is to know why the immense processual potentialities carried by all these computational, telematic, robotic, bureaucratic, biotechnological revolutions so far still only result in a reinforcement of previous systems of alienation, an oppressive mass-mediatization, infantilizing consensual politics. What will enable them finally to lead to a postmedia era, setting them free from segregational capitalist values and giving a full lease of life to the beginnings of a revolution in intelligence, sensibility and creation?
Various varieties of dogmatism claim to find a way out of these problems by violently affirming one of these three capitalistic paths, to the detriment of the others. In matters of power, there are those who dream of returning to the legitimacies of yesteryear, to the well-delimited circumscriptions of people, race, religion, caste, sex, etc.... Paradoxically, neo-Stalinists and social-democrats, who can only think the socius in the framework of a rigid insertion into Statist functions and structures, are to be classed in this category. There are those whose faith in capitalism leads them to justify all the havoc wreaked by modernity on man, culture, the environment...- because they gauge that as a last resort they will be the bringers of benefits and of progress. Finally, there are those whose phantasms of the radical liberation of human creativity ended up being relegated to chronic margin- ality, in a world of pretences, or who turned back to seek refuge behind a façade of socialism or communism. It is for us, on the contrary, to try to rethink these three necessarily interwoven voices/pathways." - Felix Guattari, Schizoanalytic Cartographies
posted by Richard Saunders at 5:41 AM on November 6 [4 favorites]
Various varieties of dogmatism claim to find a way out of these problems by violently affirming one of these three capitalistic paths, to the detriment of the others. In matters of power, there are those who dream of returning to the legitimacies of yesteryear, to the well-delimited circumscriptions of people, race, religion, caste, sex, etc.... Paradoxically, neo-Stalinists and social-democrats, who can only think the socius in the framework of a rigid insertion into Statist functions and structures, are to be classed in this category. There are those whose faith in capitalism leads them to justify all the havoc wreaked by modernity on man, culture, the environment...- because they gauge that as a last resort they will be the bringers of benefits and of progress. Finally, there are those whose phantasms of the radical liberation of human creativity ended up being relegated to chronic margin- ality, in a world of pretences, or who turned back to seek refuge behind a façade of socialism or communism. It is for us, on the contrary, to try to rethink these three necessarily interwoven voices/pathways." - Felix Guattari, Schizoanalytic Cartographies
posted by Richard Saunders at 5:41 AM on November 6 [4 favorites]
Do note that Poland has kicked PiS out, chiefly on the back of revealing their corruption/outright stealing and blocking EU funds due to judiciary shenanigans. Of course the centrists currently in power are doing a lot of the same mistakes Biden's people did, including being slow in actually prosecuting said corruption, as well as having inherited a country on the edge of bankruptcy, but I remain semi hopeful.
Another thing that can't be discounted about Eastern Europe: we all spent the 90s being told by the West we are doing everything wrong and need to immediately implement the most liberal free market ideas or perish. This had predictable results in impoverishing the population and depressing the national spirits. I would assume that has a lot to do with how populists sell their messages here, especially harking back to a glorious past - Imperial Hungary or 1920s miraculously resurrected Poland as bulwark against the Soviets.
(Also missing: comparison of both to Putin, because argh.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 6:51 AM on November 6 [9 favorites]
Another thing that can't be discounted about Eastern Europe: we all spent the 90s being told by the West we are doing everything wrong and need to immediately implement the most liberal free market ideas or perish. This had predictable results in impoverishing the population and depressing the national spirits. I would assume that has a lot to do with how populists sell their messages here, especially harking back to a glorious past - Imperial Hungary or 1920s miraculously resurrected Poland as bulwark against the Soviets.
(Also missing: comparison of both to Putin, because argh.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 6:51 AM on November 6 [9 favorites]
I think "fascism feels good" is underselling it. There's more than a few studies relating oxytocin with defining an in-group and defending it.
Fascism feels secure, but not in a vague border checkpoint sense. It feels secure like an infant in their mother's arms. Somewhere in our brains, building fascism feels like family or cuddling someone special.
The drivers of our economy have made work and life in general more atomized and transactional and lonely. Social media reduces community to a mercurial dripfeed, and people in real life got stranger and ruder after COVID. The Democrats make vague institutional promises that never get implemented right, and their solutions end up being stressful to access. And while Trump uses extreme invectives, he always buries it in doublespeak and with an in-group exception. Notice that he also often includes some light, negging praise for that in-group. He can be your big man, if you behave.
I can see why young men who feel alienated from adult milestones would want to enter the psychic orange shade of protection. It hurts to be afraid, fighting fascism is hard, and let's be real: Most well off liberals probably won't move over this election. I'm trans and I'm not looking to flee the country, yet. People like us have means. Guys stuck in the gig economy can't just get a visa to work in tech in New Zealand.
posted by MuppetNavy at 7:31 AM on November 6 [12 favorites]
Fascism feels secure, but not in a vague border checkpoint sense. It feels secure like an infant in their mother's arms. Somewhere in our brains, building fascism feels like family or cuddling someone special.
The drivers of our economy have made work and life in general more atomized and transactional and lonely. Social media reduces community to a mercurial dripfeed, and people in real life got stranger and ruder after COVID. The Democrats make vague institutional promises that never get implemented right, and their solutions end up being stressful to access. And while Trump uses extreme invectives, he always buries it in doublespeak and with an in-group exception. Notice that he also often includes some light, negging praise for that in-group. He can be your big man, if you behave.
I can see why young men who feel alienated from adult milestones would want to enter the psychic orange shade of protection. It hurts to be afraid, fighting fascism is hard, and let's be real: Most well off liberals probably won't move over this election. I'm trans and I'm not looking to flee the country, yet. People like us have means. Guys stuck in the gig economy can't just get a visa to work in tech in New Zealand.
posted by MuppetNavy at 7:31 AM on November 6 [12 favorites]
More relevant to this election are people who are in the in group and just fail to fight fascism
Either out of privilege, despair, or the privilege of despair or the despair of being unwittingly a part of the in group
It was more the white men who voted Biden, but didn't vote Kamala, than the people who voted Trump, this time
As this election featured fewer people to vote for Trump than in 2020, it s just that the despair was higher for white male democrats
I think in the tens of millions
posted by eustatic at 10:41 AM on November 6 [2 favorites]
Either out of privilege, despair, or the privilege of despair or the despair of being unwittingly a part of the in group
It was more the white men who voted Biden, but didn't vote Kamala, than the people who voted Trump, this time
As this election featured fewer people to vote for Trump than in 2020, it s just that the despair was higher for white male democrats
I think in the tens of millions
posted by eustatic at 10:41 AM on November 6 [2 favorites]
It's an interesting paper, sort of, in that it outlines some rhetorical appeals that probably need to be understood.
However, the methodology is very limiting, IMO, due mainly to the sampling. In the case of Orban, who produced a lot more raw data to look at, the authors looked exclusively at speeches given in a university setting over the course of several years, presumably to an educated audience -- a far cry from the mouth-breathing scene at MAGA rallies. It's not much of a stretch to assume that a speaker in such a context may feel at least somewhat more obliged to lay out a rational positivity-laced vision than in a forum where red-hat blowjob pantomiming gets big laughs.
In short, this is not very convincing empirical ammo for an argument that we need to prioritize understanding the warm fuzzy side of xenophobic misogyny. I suspect that the use of positive affect, while probably a necessary part of the fascist feed bag, pales in comparison to the drumbeat of hate and the constant sandblasting away of critical thinking skills, as the primary tools of persuasion that we need to figure out how to hobble.
posted by wolfpants at 5:36 PM on November 6 [1 favorite]
However, the methodology is very limiting, IMO, due mainly to the sampling. In the case of Orban, who produced a lot more raw data to look at, the authors looked exclusively at speeches given in a university setting over the course of several years, presumably to an educated audience -- a far cry from the mouth-breathing scene at MAGA rallies. It's not much of a stretch to assume that a speaker in such a context may feel at least somewhat more obliged to lay out a rational positivity-laced vision than in a forum where red-hat blowjob pantomiming gets big laughs.
In short, this is not very convincing empirical ammo for an argument that we need to prioritize understanding the warm fuzzy side of xenophobic misogyny. I suspect that the use of positive affect, while probably a necessary part of the fascist feed bag, pales in comparison to the drumbeat of hate and the constant sandblasting away of critical thinking skills, as the primary tools of persuasion that we need to figure out how to hobble.
posted by wolfpants at 5:36 PM on November 6 [1 favorite]
...detected a force that is as important as fear, but is gratifying: self-righteousness, the firm belief that one is on the right side of history.
Using fear and shame to produce a prescribed state of joy and pride in the will of the dictator is pure social engineering.
posted by Brian B. at 10:23 AM on November 10
Using fear and shame to produce a prescribed state of joy and pride in the will of the dictator is pure social engineering.
posted by Brian B. at 10:23 AM on November 10
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posted by mayoarchitect at 2:09 AM on November 6 [9 favorites]