Ragged Authoritarianism
In his own analysis of the way we tend to reason and make decisions, William Perry (1998) describes ragged stages of cognitive development. We tend to be mature and advanced in some areas of our thinking but remain quite infantile in other areas. I am quite enlightened and flexible when it comes to my perspectives and practices regarding services being offered to the elderly citizens in my community but tend to be much more rigid and old fashion in my attitudes about the use of illegal drugs by teenagers.
Furthermore, these differing levels of development will tend to shift depending on the amount of anxiety associated with challenges in specific areas. I might become rather rigid when I see that the senior services are being offered primarily by a church that is founded in tenants and doctrines that I strongly oppose. I might instead become much more open-minded about teenage drug abuse when it comes to the arrest of a decent young man whom I have known for many years.
This more nuanced analysis offered by Perry suggests that authoritarian trait and state dance with one another in an intricate manner. We are never just authoritarian or just equalitarian. Rather, at any one point in time, we might be quite mixed in our level of cognitive development regarding specific issues. Of greatest importance might be our attitudes regarding those citizens who tend to reside at the other end of the political spectrum. We can be downright nasty and rigid in our analysis of their “unyielding” perspectives and their inhumane practices. In other words, we can be just as unyielding and just as inhumane in our views regarding and treatment of those with whom we disagree. In Perry’s world of ragged development, authoritarian perspectives and practices can be quite infectious. We all catch this malignant virus on occasion.
The Real Problem are those Right-Wing Conservatives: Right? Wrong!
In addition to the perplexing issue regarding authoritarian traits or authoritarian states, there is the lingering question of the political orientation that is prevalent among those who embrace an authoritarian perspective and stance – regardless of whether it is trait-based or state-based. Is there a bias in the nature of biases that are being analyzed? Are liberal and progressive social observers being closed-minded and rigid regarding their own belief that authoritarianism to be found primarily in the conservative right-wing? Should these left-wing critics living in their own glass houses quit throwing stones at those who hold quite different beliefs and advocate quite different policies and actions. Can neither the left-wing or right-wing live with the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity, turbulence—and particularly the contradictions—that reside in our 21st Century world?
The great preponderance of research and political focus to date has been on the notion of Right Wing Authoritarianism and the attitudes and behaviors that manifest from these individuals and groups. But what about similar behaviors from other groups, particularly the willingness for violence to support their social and political views? Indeed, as psychiatrist Sally Satel (2021) notes, “people purporting to be antiracist or antifascist protesters have set fires and committed other acts of violence since the summer of 2020.
These acts stop short of, say, the 1970s bombing campaign by the far-left Weather Underground, but surely call the prevailing wisdom (that authoritarian personalities are all conservatives) into doubt. (Supporters of revolutionary regimes overseas have demonstrated even more clearly that some people on the left try to get their way through intimidation and force)”. Clearly, the psychological predisposition to be resentful against out-groups and “get my way” through violence is not simply a right-wing conservative phenomenon.
