RWAs Archives - Page 3 of 3

March 1, 2023

Essential thinkers on authoritarian personality theory

Many people around the world were shocked in the aftermath of World War II. How could “polite” society break down so utterly, so swiftly, and so zealously? Why did authoritarian personality traits come to dominate human affairs, seemingly out of nowhere? How thin is this veneer of civilization, really?

The authoritarian personality is characterized by excessive strictness and a propensity to exhibit oppressive behavior towards perceived subordinates. On the flip side, they treat authority figures with mindless obedience and unquestioning compliance. They also have an aversion to difference, ambiguity, complexity, and diversity.

How did they get this way? Are people born with authoritarian personalities, or is the authoritarian “made” predominately by circumstance?

Authoritarian personality studies

A braintrust of scholars, public servants, authors, psychologists, and others have been analyzing these questions ever since. Some of the most prominent thinkers on the subject of authoritarianism were either themselves affected by the Nazi regime, or lived through the war in some capacity. Other more recent contributions have built on those original foundations, refining and extending them as more new history continues to unfold with right-wing behavior to observe.

February 26, 2023

Authoritarianism Dictionary

We glibly believed it could never happen here even though we’ve been warned again and again. And in some sense, even though it’s been here all along — hiding in plain sight. It could happen here, and it did, because it’s happened here before. This dictionary of American authoritarianism collects definitions and charts the rise of language, ideology, tactics, and historical movements of American authoritarians, to arm us with the knowledge we need to understand the tricks of the trade.

For a long time it was convenient to think of authoritarian personality as primarily a European problem, or in any case, a phenomenon that happened elsewhere. We are still waking up (…again) to the scope and depth of the problem, while anti-government groups organize relatively openly and we have yet to see justice for the January 6 attack on our capital. There is much work to be done, and in the meantime we can always continue to educate ourselves about our nation’s history — and the role of slavery, white nationalism, and racism in the shaping of the country and the future class structure of today’s America.

The myth of white innocence is toxic to this understanding. Those who say they “don’t see” race or “don’t want to talk about” race put their white privilege on full display in demanding their right to opt-out of the discussion on race. They’re not interested in having a discussion on race — they’re interested in silencing events like the Tulsa Race Massacre and ensuring we lack the language even to describe the horrors being visited upon human beings by the silencers. The only “discussion” they want to have about the matter is spoken in the words of Smith & Wesson, Chapter AR-15.

American Authoritarianism

White supremacy, in fact, in part inspired Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In turn, the Nazis inspired the original America First movement at the hands of Charles Lindbergh, a notoriously avowed anti-Semite who vociferously opposed America’s involvement in World War II. Lindbergh and the other early movement conservative extremists lost the battle, and the Allies won the war — thus, fascism as an ideology was defeated in the popular mind for a goodly while.

But prejudice and bigotry are beasts that never sleep — only fitfully slumber and simmer beneath the surface. Bigotry has been rebuilding covertly for years and decades, if it can even be said to have gone away. America has always had its strain of autocratic fascination — and that strain of authoritarianism began flirting with what became fascism in the 20th century. The extremists yearning for a consummation of American fascism have continued to work diligently for almost a century, and have now largely succeeded in injecting a virulent form of nationalism, xenophobia, and isolationism into mainstream GOP politics in the 21st century.

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 seemed to unleash these latent forces that have been amassing since the Reagan years, growing more virulent during the 1990s. From Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich of yesteryear to Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ron DeSantis today, the American right-wing is more and more overtly appealing to anti-democratic methods and ideologies — and no longer seem to be regarded as the kooks and cranks of the Republican Party as their equivalents were during the John Birch Society era.

Authoritarianism Dictionary

I’ll be adding to this authoritarianism dictionary over time, as I can chip away at it and as new words get added to the lexicon. It’s highly encouraging that the American people were able to throw off the would-be dictator Trump, but the Republican party continues to press their seditious aims in his name. They continue to trade on the Confederate ideals long defeated, discredited, and dishonored in this nation. Let’s educate each other on the techniques being used against us by the powerful to limit our frames, and to inhibit our awareness, our choices, and our awareness of our choices.

The hour is late, and we must act with all haste.

Term	Topic	Definition
1st Amendment	government	"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
2nd Amendment	government	"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
13th Amendment	white supremacy	The Amendment that put an end to slavery. It was passed by Congress and ratified by 2/3 of the states in 1865.
14th Amendment	white supremacy	The second Constitutional Amendment passed following the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment granted citizenship to freed African American former slaves, along with equal civil and legal rights as specified in the Constitution.
15th Amendment	white supremacy	Third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments, the Fifteenth gave African Americans the right to vote -- and prohibited any type of voter discrimination on the basis of race.
19th Amendment	misogyny	The woman's Suffrage Amendment gave women the right to vote in the United States.
4chan	alt-Right	A notorious internet message board with an unruly culture capable of trolling, pranks, and crimes.
4GW		Fourth-generation warfare, a model of hybrid warfare proposed by William S. Lind (of "cultural Marxism" fame)
8chan	alt-Right	If 4chan wasn't raw and lawless enough for you, you could try the even more right-wing "free speech"-haven 8chan while it still stood (now 8kun). Described by its founder Frederick Bennan as "if 4chan and reddit had a baby," the site is notorious for incubating Gamergate, which morphed into PizzaGate, which morphed into QAnon -- and for generally being a cesspool of humanity's worst stuff.
8kun	alt-Right	The rebranded incarnation of 8chan after being booted offline and haggling with its founder, Frederick Brennan.
abortion	religious extremism	The safe medical procedure for ending a pregnancy.
active measures	Russian	A style of political warfare originating in the Soviet Union in the 1920s incorporating spycraft, disinformation, propaganda, sabotage, and destabilization, among other offensive programs targeting the USSR's geopolitical foes including the United States.
ad populum		Rhetorical fallacy that assumes an opinion shared by the majority is correct -- without consideration of the credentials of the group.
aggrieved entitlement	white supremacy	A term coined by sociologist Michael Kimmel, who documents the perceived emasculation of America's white male uneducated class and their reactionary rage against social justice and marginal groups getting the spotlight.
America's "original sin"	white supremacy	A reference to the institution of slavery.
amoral	abuse & control	Without morality; without empathy or compassion.
anti-abortion	religious extremism	Political movement formed in the 1970s to overturn Roe v. Wade, that has become a major pillar of the Republican Party
anti-Communist	conspiracy theory	The Cold War Red Scare was promulgated by Senator Eugene McCarthy with help from lawyer Roy Cohn -- who later famously weaned Donald Trump in his image. The John Birch Society and movement conservatives seethed about ehe enemies within, as middle America set about booming with the Boomers for an entire generation of widely shared prosperity.
anti-intraception	psychological warfare	Psychologist Theodor Adorno's term for individuals who resist self-reflection and exhibit the absence of looking inward.
anti-racism		A proactive stance against racial prejudice and systemic discrimination, advocating for policies and practices that promote racial equity and justice.
anti-Semitism		Hostility, prejudice, or discrimination against Jewish people, manifesting in social, economic, and political exclusion or violence.
anti-tax	plutocracy	A political position opposing taxation, often advocating for reduced government spending and intervention in economic affairs.
armed robbery	organized crime	The act of stealing from a person or place using weapons or the threat of violence, constituting a serious criminal offense.
aryan		Historically misappropriated by Nazi ideology to denote a supposed "master race," originally referring to Indo-Iranian language speakers.
Ashe experiments	psychological warfare	A series of 1950s social psychology studies by Solomon Asch demonstrating the influence of group pressure on individual conformity.
ASPD	abuse & control	A mental health condition characterized by a pervasive disregard for others' rights, often leading to deceitful, manipulative, or criminal behavior.
assassination	paramilitary	The killing of a head of state or other important figure for political or ideological reasons, as opposed to murder as a crime of passion.
astroturfing	psychological warfare	The deceptive practice of creating the illusion of grassroots support for a cause or organization, often orchestrated by vested interests.
authoritarianism	government	A governance system where power is concentrated in a single authority, limiting political freedoms and often suppressing dissent.
banality of evil		Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “banality of evil” to refer to the confoundingly commonplace motives of the Nazis who perpetrated some of the worst war crimes in history -- they would never have struck anyone as potential mass murderers before the war.
banana republic	plutocracy	politically unstable countries whose economies are monocultures controlled by an oligarchy; puppet states
bandwagon		The phenomenon where individuals adopt beliefs or behaviors because others do, often leading to a majority opinion or trend.
Biblical inerrancy		The doctrine asserting that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is without error in all its teachings, encompassing theology, history, and science
The Big Lie		A propaganda technique involving the repetition of a colossal falsehood to make it accepted as truth; notably used by Adolf Hitler to describe the deceit he attributed to his enemies.
birth control	misogyny	Methods or devices used to prevent pregnancy, enabling individuals to plan if and when to have children.
birtherism		Conspiracy theory started by Donald Trump claiming that Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and thus, ineligible for the presidency
bitcoin	alt-Right	A decentralized digital currency operating without a central authority, utilizing blockchain technology for secure transactions.
Black Codes	white supremacy	Laws enacted in the post-Civil War Southern United States aiming to restrict African Americans' freedom and compel them to work in a labor economy based on low wages or debt.
black-pilled		A term denoting a pessimistic worldview, often associated with the belief that societal decline is inevitable and irreversible.
BLM	white supremacy	A decentralized social and political movement that began in 2013, aiming to address systemic racism and violence against Black individuals, particularly focusing on issues like police brutality and racial inequality
BLM (Bureau of Land Management)	government	An agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior, established in 1946, responsible for administering public lands, primarily in the western United States, overseeing activities such as energy development, livestock grazing, and recreation.
blockchain	alt-Right	Digital ledger of events and transactions that powers cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
blood libel	conspiracy theory	A false and anti-Semitic accusation alleging that Jewish people use the blood of Christians, particularly children, in religious rituals.
Blue Checks	psychological warfare	Reference to Twitter's "verified" feature for certain members, who have satisfied the company that they are who they say they are. Originally the feature was meant to identify the official accounts of news sites and reporters, so it has both an association with -- and a legitimate lineage from -- the media industry.
bolt hole	End Times	A type of retreat or refuge for those in the survivalist subculture, to be absconded to in case of disaster or apocalypse (see also: bug-out location).
Brooks Brothers Riot	Sedition Caucus	A coordinated protest by Republican operatives led by notorious dirty trickster Roger Stone on November 22, 2000, aimed at halting the vote recount in Miami-Dade County during the U.S. presidential election, effectively influencing the election outcome
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)	white supremacy	Supreme Court decision ordering the desegregation of schools. Resistance to the ruling took the form of "states' rights" advocates, among much else.
bugman		A derogatory term used by some in the New Right to describe liberal men perceived as lacking traditional masculinity and practical life skills.
bug-out location (BOL)	End Times	A predetermined, often remote, refuge selected by survivalists to retreat to in case of emergencies or societal collapse (see also: bolt hole).
Calexit	Sedition Caucus	A movement advocating for California's secession from the United States to form an independent nation, drawing inspiration from Brexit and gaining attention after the 2016 presidential election
Calvinism		The ideology of predestination means you can't do anything to change your fate, but you can act like you're saved and that's close enough, to Calvin.
capital gains tax	plutocracy	A tax levied on the profit realized from the sale of a non-inventory asset, such as stocks or real estate, with rates often lower than those for ordinary income, leading to debates over tax equity.
carried-interest tax		A tax provision allowing investment managers to pay capital gains tax rates on their share of profits, rather than higher ordinary income rates, prompting criticism for favoring wealthy investors over average wage earners.
the Cathedral	conspiracy theory	A term used in certain conspiracy theories to describe an alleged alliance of academia, media, and government institutions purportedly working together to promote a unified ideological agenda (see: Curtis Yarvin)
cathexis		A kind of fusion the people of a nation may claim to feel with the fascist leader.
Citizens United		A Supreme Court case that opened the doorway wide to the influence of dark -- i.e. untradeable, not transparent -- money in American politics.
civil society		The sphere of voluntary associations, organizations, and institutions that exist independently of the government and market, facilitating collective action and public discourse.
Civil War	white supremacy	A conflict between factions or regions within a single country, often over political, social, or economic issues; notably, the American Civil War (1861–1865) was fought over primarily slavery.
climate change denialism		The rejection or dismissal of the scientific consensus on the extent and causes of global climate change, often hindering environmental policy and action.
clown world	conspiracy theory	A slang term used to describe a perception of modern society as absurd or illogical, often employed in a derogatory context to criticize contemporary social and political developments
CloudFlare	Big Tech	A company that protects websites from cyberattacks, it dropped support for 8chan after the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso. The shooter had posted his anti-immigrant manifesto on 8chan before the event, another in a series of eerily similar patterned shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand and a San Diego synagogue.
Cluster B	abuse & control	A category in the DSM-5 encompassing personality disorders characterized by dramatic, emotional, or erratic behaviors, including antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic personality disorders
collective narcissism	abuse & control	A psychological phenomenon where individuals exhibit an inflated, unrealistic belief in the greatness of their in-group, leading to sensitivity to criticism and hostility toward out-groups.
Columbine Massacre	political violence	The April 20, 1999, school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, where two students killed 13 people and wounded over 20 others before committing suicide, profoundly impacting U.S. discourse on gun control and school safety.
Communism	government	A political and economic ideology advocating for a classless society where the means of production are communally owned, aiming to eliminate private property and achieve equal distribution of resources.
The Confederacy	political violence	The Confederate States of America, a coalition of 11 Southern states that seceded from the United States in 1860–1861, leading to the Civil War, primarily over the issue of slavery.
conscience		An individual's internal sense of right and wrong, guiding moral decisions and ethical behavior.
conspiracy theory	psychological warfare	A belief or explanation suggesting that events or situations are the result of a secret, often sinister, plot by a group of people or organizations, typically lacking credible evidence.
convict leasing	white supremacy	A system, prevalent in the Southern United States after the Civil War, where prisoners were leased to private businesses for labor, effectively perpetuating forced labor and racial oppression.
copperheadism	white supremacy	A citizen of the North who was against the Civil War and favored negotiating a settlement with the South was referred to, pejoratively, as a copperhead.
covert narcissist	psychological warfare	An individual exhibiting narcissistic traits in subtle or concealed ways, often appearing modest or self-effacing while harboring a strong sense of entitlement and a need for admiration.
Critical Race Theory (CRT)	white supremacy	An academic framework that examines how laws and systems perpetuate racial inequalities, emphasizing the role of institutional and structural racism in society.
Critical Theory	conspiracy theory	A philosophical approach originating from the Frankfurt School of ex-pat Germans who had either escaped or survived Nazi Germany, aiming to critique and change society by analyzing power structures, ideologies, and social injustices.
crocodile tears		A term describing insincere or feigned expressions of sorrow, derived from the ancient belief that crocodiles shed tears while consuming their prey.
crying wolf		The act of raising false alarms or exaggerating dangers, leading others to become skeptical of future warnings, based on Aesop's fable "The Boy Who Cried Wolf."
cultism		The practices and behaviors associated with cults, often involving extreme devotion to a person, idea, or organization, sometimes leading to manipulation or exploitation.
cults	abuse & control	Groups characterized by unorthodox beliefs, intense devotion to a charismatic leader, and practices that may include manipulation, coercion, and isolation from mainstream society.
cultural Marxism		A conspiracy theory alleging that Marxist theorists are subverting Western culture to undermine traditional values, often criticized for its anti-Semitic and far-right origins.
Dark Enlightenment		Also known as neoreaction, a political and philosophical movement rejecting egalitarianism and democracy, advocating for a return to hierarchical and authoritarian governance structures.
Dark MAGA		A fringe movement within the pro-Trump community that embraces authoritarian imagery and rhetoric, often depicted through dystopian and aggressive visuals, advocating for a more radical approach to achieving political goals.
dark money	plutocracy	Political spending by nonprofit organizations that are not required to disclose their donors, allowing for anonymous influence on elections and policy decisions.
death cult		A pejorative term used to describe groups or ideologies that glorify death or engage in practices leading to mass casualties, often applied to extremist organizations or apocalyptic movements.
deep state	conspiracy theory	A term referring to an alleged clandestine network of non-elected government officials and private entities purported to operate independently of elected leadership, influencing and enacting policy without public oversight
democratic socialism	government	A political ideology advocating for a socialist economy characterized by social or collective ownership of the means of production, integrated within a democratic political system that emphasizes political democracy alongside social ownership
desegregation	white supremacy	The end of segregation between white and Black society in the U.S., ending formally in the 1950s and 60s.
disinformation	psychological warfare	Deliberately false or misleading information spread with the intent to deceive or mislead, often used to manipulate public opinion or obscure the truth.
dispensationalism		A theological framework within Christian eschatology that divides history into distinct periods or "dispensations," each marked by specific divine revelations and covenants between God and humanity.
domestic violence	abuse & control	A pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship used by one partner to gain or maintain control over another intimate partner, encompassing physical, emotional, sexual, or psychological harm.
Doomsday Clock	End Times	A symbolic clock created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, representing the likelihood of a man-made global catastrophe, with midnight symbolizing the apocalypse; the time is adjusted based on current global threats.
double standard	misogyny	The application of different sets of principles for similar situations, leading to unfair or biased treatment of individuals or groups.
down ballot	government	Refers to political races or issues listed below the top positions on an election ballot, such as local or state offices, which often receive less attention from voters and media.
doxing	abuse & control	The act of publicly revealing an individual's private or personal information without their consent, typically with malicious intent, often leading to harassment or threats.
Drain the Swamp	MAGA	Campaign slogan of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential contest and an ironic political metaphor advocating for the elimination of corruption and entrenched interests within government institutions, signifying reform and transparency; in reality, Trump dramatically increased corruption and self-dealing.
eco-fascist		An individual or ideology that combines environmental concerns with authoritarian, nationalist, or racist beliefs, often advocating for extreme measures to reduce human impact on the environment, sometimes at the expense of marginalized groups.
El Paso Walmart shooting		A mass shooting that occurred on August 3, 2019, in El Paso, Texas, where a gunman killed 23 people and injured 23 others at a Walmart store, targeting Hispanic individuals in what was deemed an act of domestic terrorism.
Emancipation Proclamation	white supremacy	An executive order issued by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War, declaring the freedom of all enslaved people in Confederate-held territory, paving the way for the abolition of slavery in the United States.
empathy		The ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, fostering compassion and connection by recognizing and appreciating others' emotional experiences.
estate tax	plutocracy	A tax levied on the net value of a deceased person's estate before distribution to heirs, applicable when the estate's value exceeds a certain threshold, and often subject to debate regarding its impact on wealth transfer and economic inequality.
"Eternal Rome"		Ideology positing Russia as a geopolitical bulwark of conservatism against a weak-kneed West (part of Alexander Dugin's reformulation of Eurasianism theory)
ethnic cleansing
exfiltration	cybersecurity	The removal or copying of data from one server to another without the knowledge of the owner
extra-Constitutional
facial recognition	surveillance capitalism	Technology that matches surveillance video and photography with large databases of known subjects' faces to identify them
Fairness Doctrine		1949 FCC policy requiring broadcast networks to present controversial issues important to the public in a non-partisan way, that was repealed under Reagan in 1987.
fake news	disinformation
false flag	Russian	covert operations designed to deceive by appearing as though they are carried out by other entities, groups, or nations than those who actually executed them
fascism	government
fellow travellers
fifth column
fifth world war	Russian	non-linear war; the war of all against all
filibuster
Financial Crimes Enforcement NEtwork (FinCEN)	organized crime	Department within the Treasury that handles and maiontains FBAR filings from US persons holding in excess of $10,000 in foreign banks.
FISA Court	organized crime
FISA warrant	organized crime
fiscal policy	plutocracy
flat earthers	conspiracy theory
Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)	psychological warfare	Legal statute requiring those persons lobbying on behalf of a foreign government or other entity to register such with the U.S. government.
foreign bank account report (FBAR)	organized crime	Required disclosure to the US treasury by persons holding in excess of $10,000 in funds in foreign banks.
forensics	law enforcement
forever wars
The Frankfurt School
Freedmen's Bureau
FreedomFest		Conservative evangelical event annually in Las Vegas
Free Speech
free trade	plutocracy
fronto-paralimbic area		Part of the brain associated with empathy, along with the anterior insula
fundamentalism
Gab	alt-Right
GamerGate	alt-Right
genocide
gerrymandering	government	The practice of selecting voter districts based on party registration lines so as to make it easier to control larger blocks of the elctorate.
gift tax	plutocracy
"global cabal"	conspiracy theory	euphemism in far-right Russian discourse to refer to a perceived "Jewish conspiracy" behind the international order of institutions like NATO and the EU
globalists
Grand Jury		16 to 23 people impaneled to hear evidence from a legal prosecution, and decide if said prosecution has a caseworthy set of evidence to bring charges.
Greensboro Massacre	white supremacy
Great Awakening
Great Migration	white supremacy
Great Society	government
greed
Guantanamo
happy talk		Tim Snyder's term for the ubiquitous affect of technology & unquestionable conviction that tech is helping significantly and never harming.
human trafficking	organized crime
hybrid warfare	psychological warfare
hypercapitalism
incel	misogyny	"involuntary celibate" -- a male individual who believes society owes him sex
inflation	plutocracy
information warfare	disinformation
integralist
interest rates	plutocracy
internationalist	conspiracy theory	Another word for "globalist" or "cosmopolitanist," all of them also words for Jewish people
interposition	white supremacy	Dubious theory underpinning the idea of states' rights, which is that individual states have veto power over any laws passed by the federal government
Iran-Contra
iron triangle		A conspiracy between organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders to turn the state into a kleptocracy -- or "rule by thieves"
Jim Crow South	white supremacy
Johnson Amendment	prosperity gospel	Allowed televangelists to funnel tax-free riches into luxury goods and political advocacy
Karen	white supremacy
kayfabe		The "play pretend" convention of presenting a staged performance as if it were spontaneous and authentic -- a trope of professional wrestling.
kleptocracy		Literally, "rule by thieves" -- a system of government in which the people at the top steal wealth from the nation and its people for themselves and their cronies.
Kochtopus	plutocracy	Term for the sprawling political machinery of the Kansas-based billionaire Koch Industries inheritees, Charles and David.
kompromat	Russian	compromising material on a head of state or other important figure; typically used for blackmail purposes
lamestream media	alt-Right
late Republican period		A way of stating a common belief on the New Right, that America is a kind of late-stage Rome awaiting its Caesar
leaderless resistance
liberalism	government	Political and ethical framework based on individual liberty via human rights and equal protection
libertines
literacy tests
lobbying	government
"Lock her up!"	MAGA	Chant led by Mike Flynn at the RNC in 2016, referring to Hillary Clinton's email scandal which turned out to be a nothingburger
Logan Act	government
Lost Cause religion	conspiracy theory	After the Civil War, the Confederates never accepted defeat. Instead, they wove a noble victim mythology into white southern Christianity, in an attempt to memory hole the terrorism they'd wrought -- and wished to continue practicing without scrutiny or accountability, thank you very much.
lynching	white supremacy	Extrajudicial murder, sometimes publicly, of Black men and women -- often for invented crimes
Machiavellian
machine learning	Big Tech
Mafia state	organized crime	A systematic corruption of government by organized crime syndicates.
MAGA	MAGA	"Make America Great Again" -- one of Donald Trump's campaign slogans.
malignant envy	psychological warfare
malignant narcissism	abuse & control
"man code"		Mentioned by Raffensberger in relation to the Trump extortion call: that if Trump hadn't lied about it in public, he might not have released the tape, just chalking it up to "private criminal attempts between two men" aka "man code"
manosphere	misogyny
Marxism	government
the matrix
mental predation	abuse & control
#MeToo	misogyny
microaggressions
micropenis	misogyny
micro-propaganda machine		The “micro-propaganda machine” (MPM) — an influence network that can tailor people’s opinions, emotional reactions, and create “viral” sharing episodes around what should be serious or contemplative issues
millennarianism	conspiracy theory
minority rule
mirror neurons
misogyny	misogyny
MK Ultra		Reportedly a CIA program in the 50s that conducted research into mind control and brainwashing -- its findings were apparently so shocking that the program was shut down and never heard from again.
money laundering	organized crime	Attempts and processes to obscure the sources of funds moving into or through a system
multiculturalism
narcissism	abuse & control
narcissistic collusion	abuse & control
natality		Hannah Arendt's term, and her most hopefuly theory for the future of humankind -- that it will continually be renewed by the literal birth of new generations of humans to reinterpret the human condition and our existence in the world.
national debt	plutocracy
national deficit	plutocracy
national security
NDA		Non-disclosure agreement
negging	abuse & control
neomania		obsession with the new -- a hallmark of American culture
neo-reactionaries
New Deal	government
New Jim Crow	white supremacy
New Right
non-linear warfare	Russian
normalcy bias
novichok	Russian	military-grade nerve agent developed by Russia and used in the poisoning of former FSB agent turned Putin critic Andrei Skripal and his daughter in Lonson in March, 2018
nullification	white supremacy
NRx		neo-Reactionary, an extremist techophilic ideology popular on the right
obstruction
Oklahoma City bombing
oligarchy	plutocracy
one-party state	government
open source intelligence	intelligence
oppo	intelligence	short form of opposition research
outrage industry	surveillance capitalism
PAC
Palantir	surveillance capitalism
paralipsis	disinformation	A rhetorical device in which the speaker feigns ignorance of the thing he or she is saying; "Saying / not saying" -- it offers a thin veneer of plausible deniability in a naked attempt to escape accountabilitty for saying exactly that.
paralogic	psychological warfare
paranoia		Extreme fear to the point of (or beyond) psychological pathology.
pathocracy	organized crime
patriarchy	misogyny
peculiar institution	white supremacy	slavery
peonage	white supremacy
plausible deniability	organized crime
Plessy v. Ferguson	government	1896
plutocracy	government	Political rule by the rich.
political correctness
poll tax
ponerology		The study of evil
populism	government
post-leftist
postmodernism	disinformation
post-truth	disinformation
Potemkin village	government	Any structure or facade built expressly for the purpose of making the situation appear more favorable than it really is
Powell Memo	plutocracy	Lewis Powell's 1970s memo to the wealthy white male elite, in anger over the crackdown against tobacco companies, as a call to arms to organize politically against "anti-capitalist" forces
PR	abuse & control	public relations
previous question rule		A parliamentary rule present in the initial decades of the Senate, borrowed from British law, that allowed the majority proponents of a bill or measure to call an end to debate about the provision with a short warning period of usually about 5 minutes.
Progressive Era	government
propaganda	abuse & control
prosperity gospel
prosocial behavior
psychopath	abuse & control
psyops	Russian	Psychological operations
PUA	misogyny	"Pick Up Artist" -- a self-styled lothario who helps train other would-be casanovas in his ways of manipulative charm
Pulse Nightclub shooting
race riots	white supremacy
race war	white supremacy	The goal of the accelerationist neo-Nazi idealogues is to start a race war and bring down the American government
RAGE	abuse & control	Retire All Government Employees
rape culture	misogyny
Reagonomics	conspiracy theory
the "real economy"	conspiracy theory	What folks on the New Right consider legitimate parts of the American economy: farm and factory jobs that used to sustain a middle-class income
Reddit	Big Tech
the regime	conspiracy theory
regression
repression
retweet	Big Tech	When a Twitter user amplifies the tweet of another, by "retweeting" it out to her or his network
RICO
Right anterior insular cortex		Part of the brain associated with empathy; psychopaths have a deficit here
right-wing authoritarian	government
Roe v. Wade
Ruby Ridge	white supremacy
running out the clock
RWDS	paramilitary	Right-wing Death Squads -- an acronym used by Proud Boys and worn as patches by some members and branches
sadism	abuse & control
sadopopulism	government
Sandy Hook school shooting	abuse & control
savior complex		Like the arsonist who sets the fire and then calls it in to play the hero, right-wingers with the savior complex are constantly holding up the sky as the Evil Democrats try to destroy everything good and holy -- and they want CREDIT for it, dammit!
Second Wave Feminism	misogyny
Section 230	Big Tech
senicide
sexual assault	misogyny
sexual harassment	misogyny
shadow profiles	surveillance capitalism	Data that Facebook collects on people who are not members of Facebook, via association with their friends who are
sharecropping	abuse & control
shared reality
show trials	Russian
Signal	Big Tech	encrypted messaging app
Silicon Reich
sit-ins		Nonviolent demonstration method used heavily in the 1960s
SJW	white supremacy	Social Justice Warriors -- used as a pejorative by the alt-Right
socialism	government
sociopathy	abuse & control
sockpuppet accounts	disinformation	Fake social media accounts used by trolls for deceptive and covert actions, avoiding culpability for abuse, aggression, death threats, doxxing, and other criminal acts against targets.
SMS	Big Tech	texting
special interest groups	government
spearphishing	cybersecurity	An email designed to appear as if from a trusted source, to solicit information that allows the sender to gain access to an account or network, or installs malware that later enables the sender to gain access to an account or network
spite voter	government
stand your ground
stochastic terrorism	paramilitary
suffrage	government	The right to vote, sometimes referred to as "the franchise."
SuperPAC	government
supremacy
surveillance capitalism
surveillance state	abuse & control
swatting	alt-Right	hoaxed reports to emergency services intended to provoke a SWAT team response at the target's home; a form of Internet-based attack used by Gamergate, the alt-Right, and other groups and individuals
symbiosis
symbolic violence
tax avoidance	plutocracy
tax fraud	organized crime
tax havens	plutocracy
Third Wave Feminism	misogyny
totalism	psychological warfare
total war	Russian
trial balloon	psychological warfare	Information put out or leaked to the media to gauge public reaction.
trickle-down economics	conspiracy theory
truth decay	conspiracy theory
The Turner Diaries	white supremacy
Tulsa Race Massacre	white supremacy	A mob of murderous whites descended on the Greenwood neighborhood of Tulsa, dubbed Black Wall Street, and razed it to the ground. They dropped homemade bombs in the first ever domestic aerial attack on American soil. Over three hundred Blacks were murdered and hastily buried or burned. Police and other state officials were complicit; no one was ever charged for the crimes and insurance companies refused to honor Black business owner's claims from the destruction of their livelihood and senseless slaughter of their friends, families, and community.
Twitter	Big Tech
Uberman
unmasking	cybersecurity	Intelligence protocol redacting American identities from transcripts of foreign intercepts
vast right-wing conspiracy
volcel
Voting Rights Act	white supremacy
Waco, TX	paramilitary
wag the dog	abuse & control
wage gap	misogyny
war crimes
Watergate
watering hole	cybersecurity	hacker attacks that infect entire websites
whataboutism	Russian	Classic debate tactic of old Soviet apologists to deflect criticism of Soviet policy; whenever an American would levy a critique, the response would be, "What about the bad things America does?"
white collar crime	organized crime
white nationalism	white supremacy
women's liberation	misogyny
word salad
World War I		WWI gave job opportunities to blacks in the North, causing a great migration -- as well as a backlash and resistance from Southern law enforcement.
World War II
Yes California		Movement to secede from the US entirely, run by Marcus Ruiz Evans, Louis J. Marinelli

May 17, 2022

Great Replacement Theory

Great Replacement Theory is a conspiracy theory animating the radical right wing that claims non-white immigrants are being brought to the U.S. and the west to “replace” white voters with their woke political and cultural agenda. Those who believe this white supremacist ideology see routine immigration policy as a white genocide and extinction of the white race. They also point to low birth rates among white europeans and the promotion of multiculturalism, or “wokeness,” as responsible for the alleged effects.

Promoters of this derivative of Nazi ideology (the claim is that Jews are responsible for this immigration plot) claim that the United States must close its borders immediately to immigration. Many advocate isolationism (“America First!”), white nationalism (and/or forms of nationalism more broadly), and claim that violence may be necessary to keep America under the control of white men.

🚨 🚨

NEW WHITEBOARD

The racist terrorism in Buffalo is a direct extension of the long history of violence & propaganda used to advance white supremacy.

And…that’s exactly what those censoring history and banning books don’t want people to know. It all ties together.

WATCH: pic.twitter.com/uwiTjKS88K
— David Pepper (@DavidPepper) May 16, 2022

History of Great Replacement Theory

The term “Great Replacement” was popularized by French writer Renaud Camus in his 2011 book “Le Grand Remplacement.” According to Camus, the alleged replacement is a result of the European elites intentionally allowing mass immigration and promoting multiculturalism to undermine national identity and traditional Western culture.

The Great Replacement Theory has been widely discredited and criticized by experts, as it is based on misinformation, selective data, and biased interpretations. It is important to note that this theory often fuels xenophobia, bigotry, racism, and anti-immigrant sentiments, and has been linked to a number of far-right extremist attacks worldwide.

Demographic changes in Western countries are driven by a complex interplay of factors such as economic migration, political instability, globalization, and changing birth rates. These factors are not part of any orchestrated plot, but rather reflect broader social, economic, and political trends. Unfortunately, it’s in the interest of the right-wing to keep its rabid base riled up — and the Great Replacement Theory conspiracy is an effective tool for generating anger and injecting vitriol into the broader political discourse.

March 22, 2022

Radical Right

The radical right is a fervent anti-government strain of Libertarian ultraconservative, emerging out of the anti-New Deal ideology of the 1930s. From McCarthyism to the John Birch Society, from fiscal conservatives to Christian nationalists, the radical right contains some of the most extreme ideologies in the right wing.

Conservative ideology has gotten more and more extreme over the past few decades — as well as being mainstreamed within the Republican Party. Formerly moderate Republicans are referred to as “RINOs” (Republican In Name Only) and are being pushed out of the party, whether by primary defeat or ostracism by the right-wing base.

Only those who pass the utmost purity tests are allowed to remain amid, and especially atop of, the right-wing political establishment in recent years. They persist in holding some truly debunked, thoroughly delusional “explanations” for phenomena in the real world.

Radical Right myths and beliefs:

Government assistance makes people weak and lazy.
Unemployed people don’t want to work.
FDR and the Democrats destroyed our system of free enterprise.
Wealthy people are job creators and we must do more to preserve their wealth.
Cutting taxes creates jobs — aka Trickle Down Economics
Hierarchy and the maintenance of a de facto caste system — despite the nation’s founding ideals of Equality
Strict Father Morality — adherence to rigidly traditional gender roles and the absolute power of authority
Originalism — the idea that we cannot fundamentally make new laws; that all we can do is peer into the past and try to imagine the original intent of the Founders when writing the Constitution
Independent State Legislature Theory — so-called “states’ rights” by another name, taken to a more extreme twist in which only the state legislature — unchecked by executive power or judicial review — can have any say in the state’s election procedures
- nullification
- anti-federalism
New World Order old conspiracy theory & the Illuminati
anti-UN
Communist spies in the government
Communists in Hollywood
Fear of creeping socialism
Anti-social security
“Second Amendment remedies” and other thinly-veiled calls to political violence
Coming to “take our country back”
right-to-work laws — to break unions
anti-abortion
anti-LGBT
anti-feminism
anti-liberal
anti-immigrant

January 24, 2022

Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians, a Summary

Professor Altemeyer has studied authoritarianism and the authoritarian personality since 1966. He first published a refinement of Theodor Adorno’s work on authoritarian personalities, known as the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale in 1981. In 2006, Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians was slated to be his last work pending retirement — but in 2020 a new work co-authored with Watergate whistleblower John Dean titled Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers aimed to warn America about the dangers of Donald Trump’s personality to unleash the very worst in the very worst sorts of individuals.

Meanwhile Bob has made The Authoritarians available free of charge here, and I absolutely encourage you to read it — it’s fascinating stuff and he’s an entertaining as well as informative writer. In this post I’ll do my best to summarize the main points of the book, because I know people are busy and not everyone has time to read a whole book much less scrape together hours to volunteer and do activist work.

Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians

Dr. Altemeyer defines authoritarianism as “something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves.” Followers submit blindly to the leaders and give them too much free rein to do anti-democratic, brutal, and tyrannical things. Power corrupts absolutely, and power seems to corrupt authoritarians most of all.

He classifies the authoritarians into three primary groups:

Authoritarian followers — typically this group follows the established authorities in their society, including government officials, clergy and traditional religious leaders, business leaders, and self-appointed gurus of all stripes. They tend to have a “Daddy and Mommy know best” approach to the government, believing that authorities are above the law. Psychologically, authoritarian followers exhibit a high degree of submission to authorities they accept as legitimate, high levels of aggression in the name of those authorities (if so called upon), and a high degree of conventionalism and conformity. They tend to be bigots, with prejudices against many types of groups.
Authoritarian leaders — tend to be Social Dominators, who long to control people and affect others’ lives. They are overall highly prejudiced and bigoted, do not believe in the American value of equality, and feel justified in wielding great power over society with little qualification and even less self-reflection. They believe the world is divided into wolves and sheep, and they have no qualms fooling the sheep into opening the pasture gate so they can eat. “Might makes right” is their personal motto.
Double Highs — about 10% of any given sample score highly on both the social dominance test and the right-wing authoritarian scale, which is odd given the social dominator’s otherwise reluctance to be submissive. They exhibit extra prejudice and extra hostility — beyond either the social dominators or the RWAs. They tend to be the “religious” social dominators, who had a fundamentalist upbringing, or had a conversion experience as an adult (George W. Bush, e.g.) and now tend to believe in some form of Strict Father Morality.

More traits of authoritarian followers

They tend to feel more endangered in potentially threatening situations that most people do (think: Dick Cheney‘s descent into bunker mentality after 9/11)
More afraid than most people; they tend to have overactive amygdalas
Were raised by their parents to be afraid of others — both parents and children have told researchers so
More likely to issue threats than low authoritarians
Most orthodox — were raised fundamentalist and are highly repressed
Most hardline
Believe “whatever I want is right”
Paradoxically, want to “be normal” very badly — they tend to get tugged by the people around them

Authoritarian aggression

Authoritarians prefer not to have fair fights out in the open — they tend to aggress when they believe their hostility is welcomed by established authority, or supports established authority. They also often aggress when they have an obvious physical advantage over the target — making women, children, and others unable to defend themselves as ideal targets. These cowards have the gall to feel morally superior to the innocent victims they assault in an ongoing asymmetrical warfare between supremacists and marginalized groups.

To make matters worse, authoritarians do their dirty deeds in the shadows and scream bloody murder at anyone who dares try and expose their dark secrets to the light. Their theatrical and performative self-righteousness is just an act to avoid accountability and responsibility for what they do — even unto themselves.

Moreover, authoritarians are extra punitive against lawbreakers they don’t like (though exceedingly permissive for lawbreakers they *do* like, which is infuriatingly hypocritical), because they believe fervently in the value of punishment. Many advocate child corporal punishment — spanking and worse — for children as young as 1 year old. Authoritarian followers tended to report feelings of “secret pleasure” when hearing of the misfortunes of high school classmates who had misbehaved, believing they got what they deserved in life.

It would be accurate to think of authoritarians as “little volcanoes of hostility,” almost heat-seeking their way into authority-approved ways to erupt and release their pent-up anger. Many of them do not, and will not ever realize that their fundamentalist upbringing has sadly left their brains underdeveloped, and ill-equipped to navigate the modern world with its rapid changes, accelerating inequality, advancing climate change, and political instability.

Lethal Union

When a social dominator becomes an authoritarian leader, and leads his authoritarian followers down malevolent roads from informing to threatening to vigilanteism, researchers refer to this state of affairs as a “lethal union.” It’s a highly dangerous and volatile time for a democracy, one warranting caution and vigilance from concerned citizens.

Throughout history, these are the situations that tend to devolve further into aggression, political violence, civil war, genocide, and worse. We need to be very damn careful about who we elect as our leaders — we cannot allow our government to be captured by special interests and the narrow, quixotic delusions of old billionaires outshining daddy and staving off death.

More books about authoritarians

If you’ve already read Bob Altemeyer The Authoritarians, or you’re just looking for more resources on authoritarianism — here’s a list to get started:

Authoritarianism Books

More resources on authoritarianism

Essential thinkers on authoritarian personality theory ↗

The authoritarian personality is characterized by excessive strictness and a propensity to exhibit oppressive behavior towards perceived subordinates.

Authoritarianism Dictionary ↗

This dictionary collects definitions and charts the rise of language, ideology, tactics, and historical movements of American authoritarians.

Koup Klux Klan: The authoritarian movement trying to take over America ↗

We are facing an unprecedented crisis of democracy under attack by a roster of extremists, hardliners, theocrats, plutocrats, and others of their ilk.

September 12, 2021

Safety Blanket Theory

For all their angry rhetoric and now, overtly political violence, I maintain that it is the right wing that is profoundly insecure, anxious, and in need of soothing. They are panicking at the idea that the world can possibly change without their approval, and deprive them of their stolen superiority — they do not want the party to end for white male dominance of this entire planet.

Right-wing authoritarian adults latch on to symbols and ideologies and demagogues as “surrogates” for the childhood safety blanket they once needed — these are the “adult-acceptable” pablum substitutes.

August 4, 2021

American Fascists & the Global Right 😈

It feels like the 1930s all over again — and with good reason. The rise of American fascists and right-wing extremism around the world has been a known trend for decades, and America’s past flirtations with fascism had been largely swept under the rug by the then anti-semites who tried to put a stop to FDR‘s New Deal and prevent the U.S. from getting into World War II.

They fought against labor unions and labor organizers, often using private militia as henchmen to do their dirtywork with plausible deniability for themselves. The Ku Klux Klan — the principle paramilitary organization formed during Reconstruction to undo egalitarian gains from the Civil War — was just one of many instruments put to use in service of plutocratic aims to quell any “communist awakening” amongst their workers, lest they get any uppity ideas for themselves. They fell for the popular conspiracy theories of their time, which included Hitler’s bogus assertion that Jewish bankers controlled the world and had to be stopped before they destroyed the white race.

Fascist revanchism

Those fascists, butthurt over America’s overwhelmingly popular decision to enter the war and stop Hitler from exterminating the Jews, seethed with jealousy at the post-war “liberal consensus” that flourished alongside the booming US economy, propelled first by the war effort and later by the peacetime success of the New Deal‘s long shadow and the burgeoning of the American middle class.

The American fascists turned into the John Birch Society, and the McCarthyites, and the Libertarians, and the Moral Majority, and the Gingrich Revolution, and the Tea Party, and the MAGA / QAnon stew sloshing around mass media. The kooks on the far right — the kind of ilk so cray cray that even William F. Buckley excommunicates you from the Republican Party — have taken over the hen house now. Outrage sells, as Facebook well knows — and as two-bit dictators around the world have bribed Mark Zuckerberg to brainwash the masses using the most inanely illogical propaganda prolefeed, the world tilts dangerously towards authoritarianism and the end of our democracy as we know it. And with it, all hope for truth and light into the future for some time to come — the equivalent of a political meteor hitting the Earth.

The American fascists are still around, and now they have tools of propaganda that Goebbels could never have even wet dreamed of. They’re more powerful and more well-connected — to other sociopaths, malignant narcissists, and other pathological cult-leader types who might be of transactional service to each other from time to time. Many of them cling to ideas of Christian nationalism and Strict Father Morality. We’d be wise to keep an eye on these folks.

Name	Type	Location	Known for
Greg Abbott	Politician	Texas	The 48th governor of Texas since 2015 who has presided over multiple energy grid disasters, a self-induced economic fiasco at the border, and ghoulish vigilante legislation designed to terrorize women seeking abortion services, and a perversion of the child sex trafficking apparatus to instead target and tyrannize trans youth
Roman Abramovich	Foreign agent		Russian oligarch close to both Putin and Trump
ACU Strategic Partners	Foreign agent		A company seeking to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East in partnership with a sanctioned Russia company; Mike Flynn was working for them without having disclosed it to the US government as required.
Sheldon Adelson	Businessperson	Las Vegas, NV	CEO billionaire of the Sands Corp casino empire (died, 2021)
AggregateIQ	Corporation		Canadian data firm connected to Cambridge Analytica parent company SCL Group that played a role in spreading Brexit propaganda
Roger Ailes	Media personality	Deceased	Primogenitor of Fox News whose downfall came over dozens of women testified to his decades of sexual assault and blackmail behaviors
Todd Akin	Politician	Missouri	Politician who lost his Senate race to Clairse McCaskill in 2012 when he made the comment on TV about women having a way to "shut the whole thing down" to avoid becoming pregnant if raped.
Nelson W. Aldrich
Ali Alexander	Extremist		One of the primary organizers of the Stop the Steal rally on January 6 that turned into and/or attempted to mask a coup attempt
Samuel Alito	Judge	Washington, DC	Supreme Court Justice who penned a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, riddled with Christian nationalist tropes and arbitrary Originalist interpretations
American Energy Alliance	Non-profit		A tax-exempt nonprofit that advocated for corporate-friendly energy policies. Koch's Freedom Partners donated $1.5 million in 2012.
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)	Non-profit		Corporate-funded nonprofit that writes legislation for Republican legislatures, including spearheading the efforts to wrest partisan control over election results in 49 states.
Americans for Prosperity	PAC		The Koch Brothers' Libertarian political advocacy arm
Philip Anschutz	Businessperson	Colorado	CO oil and entertainment billionaire and founder of Qwest Communications
Michael Anton
Lee Atwater	Political Operative		Infamously brutal Republican strategist for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush who promoted the "abstraction" of racism via Southern Strategy and ran the infamous Willie Horton ad against Michael Dukakis in 1988.
Michele Bachman	Politician	MN	Minnosota Republican politician who was the first woman in her state to be elected to the House of Representatives, she is known for her extremist Dominionist views
Steve Bannon	Media personality	Houseboats	Former Breitbart provocateur who joined the Trump administration as a key advisor and dark propagandist for Trump intent on sowing chaos
Ross Barnett
William Barr	Public Sector		Donald Trump's Attorney General who shielded him from public awareness of his crimes, corruptions, and compromises during the 45th presidency.
Maurice Barres	Author	France	French nationalist author in the early 20th century who introduced Great Replacement theory
Louis Beam	White Supremacist
Roy Beck	White Supremacist		Executive Director of NumbersUSA, member of the white supremacist Tanton Network
Andy Biggs	Politician	AZ	House Republican subpoena'd by the January 6 Commission for his role in the attempted coup
Black Legion	Extremist	Michigan	Secret society of black-hooded terrorists working in MI against labor unions and labor organizers in the 1930s. Legionnaires talked of staging a coup to oust FDR and imposing a fascist regime in the United States
David Bogatin	Oligarch	NYC	A top figure in the Russian mafia who bought 5 luxury condos in Trump Tower to launder money, he admitted in 1987.
Jacob Bogatin	Oligarch		David Bogatin's brother, and a partner of notorious Russian mob moss Semion Mogilevich
John Wilkes Booth	Criminal	Deceased	Stage actor and Confederate sympathizer who shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of the head in April 1865, a few months after his re-election in 1864.
L. Brent Bozell	Extremist		BFF of William F. Buckley and author of Conscience of a Conservative to support Barry Goldwater's candidacy in 1960.
Harry and Lynde Bradley	Kochtopus		Midwesterners who built their wealth on defense contracts
Andrew Breitbart	Media personality		Founded both Brietbart and the Huffington Post
Anders Breivik	Extremist	Oslo, Norway	Mass murderer who killed 77 people in Oslo, Norway as inspired by the white supremacist ideology of Great Replacement theory
Mo Brooks	Politician	Huntsville, AL	House Republican from Alabama subpoena'd by the January 6 Committee for his role in the attempted coup
Brother's Circle	Criminal		Organized crime gang pursued by then-FBI head Robert Mueller circa 2011
Michael Brown		Ferguson, MO	Unarmed black man killed by the police in Ferguson, Missouri, sparking a series of riots in the city.
Pat Buchanan	Politician	Washington, DC	Politician and paleoconservative who worked for presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan before running against incumbent George H.W. Bush in 1992; widely considered a bigot, racist, and antisemite.
William F. Buckley Jr	Media personality
Doug Burley	Political Operative		Founding and leading both The Family and the National Prayer Breakfast of right-wing power brokers
Cambridge Analytica	Corporation	London, UK	Data firm implicated in the propaganda campaigns of both Brexit in 2015 and Donald Trump in 2016 that stole hundreds of millions of Facebook profiles and mined the treasure trove of information for weaknesses to manipulate in attempts to persuade
Renaud Camus	Author	France	French writer and critic who created the recent 2011 formulation of the Great Replacement Theory
Tucker Carlson	Media personality	NYC	Fox News evening opinion anchor and fish stick heir who promotes the Great Replacement conspiracy theory to his primetime audience of older white men.
Doug Casey	Businessperson		Ayn Rand devotee and "anarcho-capitalist" who specializes in how to profit from turmoil
Michael Catanzaro	Lobbyist		Partner at the CGCN Group lobbying firm who headed "energy independence" for the Trump transition team.
Cato Institute	Think Tank
Madison Cawthorn	Politician	NC
Center to Protect Patient Rights	Kochtopus		Dark money group funded by the Kochs to attack the ACA with fearmongering and vitriol
Mike Cernovich	Media personality
CGCN Group	Lobbyist		Lobbyist for the Koch brothers
James Chaney	Activist	Neshoba County, MS	One of 3 civil rights activists murdered by local white supremacists when engaging in non-violent civil disobedience, along with Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman
Jeremy Joseph Christian	Extremist	Portland, OR	stabbed 3 people who tried to intervene while he was hurling anti-Muslim slurs at 2 young women in Portland, OR
Chris Christie	Politician		Former governor of NJ and former Trump supporter and transition team lead who became a Trump critic
Michael Cohen	Businessperson	NYC	Donald Trump's personal lawyer, sentenced to 3 years in federal prison for felony crimes, including campaign finance crimes
Steven A. Cohen	Businessperson		Finance (SAC Capital Advisors)
Roy Cohn	Political Operative	Deceased	Lawyer who represented Senator Joseph McCarthy in the infamous televised 1954 hearings, and later went on to become a mafia-connected fixer in NYC and mentor to budding real estate developer Donald Trump
Competitive Enterprise Institute	Think Tank	Washington, DC	A Washington think tank that had been bankrolled by fossil fuel industries, particularly the Kochs.
Continental Resources	Corporation	Oklahoma	OK-based shale oil company with a large and profitable fracking operation
Coors brewing family	Koch Investor	Colorado	The Coors gave money to Oliver North to fund the Iran-Contra operation
Council of Conservative Citizens (CoC)
Ted Cruz	Politician	Texas
Jefferson Davis
Kim Davis	Public Sector	Kentucky	Former county clerk of Rowan County, KY who defied a US federal court order to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in 2015
Devos family	Koch Investor		Founders of the Amway marketing empire; Betsy DuVos was the Secretary of Education under Trump
Amadou Diallo		New York	a West African immigrant mowed down by 41 shots from police when leaving his apartment on February 4, 1999.
James Dobson	Media personality		conservative talk-show host and fundamentalist Christian who strongly advocated spanking and corporal punishment be applied liberally to children
Chester Doles			Former KKK leader who runs the white supremacist American Patriots USA. Nearly beat a Black man to death in 1993. Marched in 2017 in Charlottesville.
Rod Dreher	Extremist		Benedict Option author and traditionalist
Dinesh D'Souza	Media personality		Conservative gadly who alleged that Obama was "African" in outlook rather than American, absorbing his "radical" views from his Kenyan father
Doug Ducey	Politician	AZ	Governor of Arizona
Aleksandr Dugin	Extremist	Russia	Russia's primary fascist political philosopher and originator of Eurasianism conspiracy theory
David Duke	White Supremacist
John Eastman	Political Operative		Ran against Kamala Harris in 2010 for California AG, then showed back up in 2020 to write an outrageous op-ed that Newsweek for some reason actually published, that claimed that she was "secretly" not a US resident and therefore not eligible to be the VP! Now the Kamala Harris birther
Myron Ebell	Political Operative		Outspoken climate change skeptic, who headed the Trump transition team for the EPA
Election Integrity Project California	Extremist		Election fraud group working with Leonard Leo
Larry Ellison	Businessperson		Gave $5 million to Marco Rubio
Cassandra Fairbanks
Jerry Falwell, Jr	Televangelist
The Family	Lobbyist		Shadowy DC group with tremendous sway in Congress and around the world, following a distorted "strongman Jesus" version of Christianity.
The Federalist Society	Extremist
Scott Fitzgerald	Politician	WI	House Republican
Michael Flynn	Cult Leader
For America	PAC
Nathan Bedford Forrest
Fox News	Corporation
Free Congress Foundation
Freedom Caucus	Politician
Freedom Partners	Kochtopus		The Koch Brothers' secretive donor club.
FreedomWorks	Extremist
Matt Gaetz	Politician
Kevin Gentry	Kochtopus		VP of Special Projects and VP of the Koch Foundation
Greg Gianforte	Politician		body-slamming Guardian reported Ben Jacobs while running for a GOP House seat in Montana
Newt Gingrich	Media personality
Tim "Baked Alaska" Gionet	White Supremacist
Rudy Giuliani	Politician	NYC
GiveSendGo			"Christian" donation platform
Barry Goldwater	Politician	AZ
Seb Gorka	Political Operative
Billy Graham
Madison Grant	Political Operative		Close personal friend of Herbert Hoover who helped draft the exclusionary Immigration Act of 1924 -- the Stephen Miller of his day. His "Passing of the Great Race" was beloved by Hitler as "his bible."
Chuck Grassley	Politician		Senator
The Great Awakening
Marjorie Taylor Greene	QAnon	GA
Eric Greitens	Politician	MO
Harold Hamm	Kochtopus		Billionaire founder of Continental Resources, an OK-based shale company with large fracking business & one of the charter members of the Kochs' donor circle.
James Henry Hammond	Extremist
Warren G. Harding	Politician		Enthusiastically supported the white-supremacist work of Lothrop Stoddard et al
Billy James Hargis	Extremist
Orrin Hatch	Politician		Sen. Orrin Hatch raised concerns about funding certain entitlement programs. “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything,” he said.
Josh Hawley	Politician	MO	Missouri Senator funded by Peter Thiel who gave the January 6 mob a fist bump on his way in to object to certifying the electoral count
Matthew Heimbach	Extremist		White nationalist and one of the founders of the Traditionalist Workers Party
Jesse Helms	Politician
Leona Helmsley
Diane Hendricks		WI	The wealthiest woman in Wisconsin at $3.6 billion
Heritage Foundation	Think Tank	Washington, DC
Honest Elections Project	Extremist		A conservative legal organization connected to Leonard Leo that files legal briefs to SCOTUS opposing mail-in ballots and other voting reforms that help more people to vote,
Herbert Hoover	Politician	Washington, DC	White supremacist and wealth supremacist, he was adamant about doing nothing to help people during the Great Depression.
Mike Huckabee	Politician
Laura Ingraham	Media personality		Fox News host
Andrew Jackson	Politician	Deceased	US President
John Birch Society	Extremist
Andrew Johnson	Politician	Deceased	US President
Chuck Johnson	Media personality		Alt-right super troll
Ron Johnson	Politician		Wisconsin Republican Senator who supported Donald Trump, promoted ivermectin for covid, and said he wasn't afraid of the January 6 mob because they were white people
Alex Jones	Media personality		Host of InfoWars, the 9/11 conspiracy show that put the genre on the map
Jim Jordan	Politician	OH	A long-time Tea Party hyena, the Congressman known as Gym once helped his buddy cover up decades of sexual abuse of young wrestlers in their care.
Judicial Education Project	Extremist		A legal group tied to Leonard Leo, working to advance conservative takeover of the judiciary.
Islam Karimov	Oligarch	Uzbekistan	Former Communist official who became the first president of Uzbekistan in 1991, and remained the country's dictator until his death in 2016.
Alex Kaschuta	Media personality		Right-wing podcaster
Brett Kavanaugh	Judge	DC
Dr. D. James Kennedy			creating a Dominionist "conversion" playbook
John F. Kennedy	Politician	Deceased
Robert F. Kennedy	Politician	Deceased
Anna Khachiyan
Martin Luther King	Activist	Deceased	Civil Rights leader in the 1960s, and enemy of Southern politicians
Charlie Kirk	Media personality
Walter Kirn	Author	MT	Up in the Air author and disaffected former member of the American intellectual class
KKK	White Supremacist
Bill Koch	Businessperson
Charles Koch	Kochtopus	Kansas	industries: pipelines, oil refineries, lumber and paper, coal, chemicals, commodity futures, etc.
David Koch	Kochtopus	Deceased	industries: pipelines, oil refineries, lumber and paper, coal, chemicals, commodity futures, etc. (now deceased)
Fred Koch	Kochtopus	Kansas	Father of Charles and David, Fred Koch was an early and fervent acolyte in the ultra-conservative John Birch Society
Frederick Koch	Businessperson	New York
David Koresh	Cult Leader	Waco, TX
Ku Klux Klan (see KKK)	White Supremacist
Kylie Jane Kremer
David Lane	White Supremacist		Member of the white supremacist group The Order who coined the 14-word slogan popular with Great Replacement adherents: "We must secure the exisatence of our people and a future for white children"
Ken Langone	Businessperson		Founder of Home Depot
Lyndon LaRouche	Cult Leader
Robert LeFevre	Kochtopus		Charles Koch's mentor, a quasi-anarchist, who said, "government is a disease masquerading as its own cure"
Leonard Leo	Extremist		Chairman of the Federalist Society, a legal organization working to pack the courts with conservative judges.
Marine Le Pen	Politician	France
Honor Levy
Liberty Counsel			Christian special rights group
The Liminal Order
William S. Lind	Political Operative
Kelly Loeffler	Politician	Georgia	Insider trading immediately upon arriving at her unelected Senate seat when her husband, President of the NYSE, found a way to have some money arrive at Brian Kemp, the Governor, who appointed her.
Dana Loesch	Media personality		NRA spokeswoman
Sen. Huey Long	Politician	Deceased
Thomas Mair	Extremist		Assassin of British MP Jo Cox, who was outspoken against the UK's Brexit campaign
Paul Manafort	Lobbyist
Clarence Manion
Blake Masters	Politician	AZ
John McAfee	Businessperson	Deceased
Sen. Joseph McCarthy	Politician	Deceased	Senator best known for his demagoguery against alleged Communist agents in the US government during the Cold War in the early 1950s
Kevin McCarthy	Politician	CA
Michael McKenna	Kochtopus		Lobbyist and President of MWR Strategies lobbying firm, who have the Koch brothers as clients
Timothy McVeigh	Extremist	Oklahoma City, OK	White supremacist McVeigh was a disgruntled former military guy who took up with the white power movement and executed the Oklahoma City bombing -- as inspired, he said, by enacting "revenge" for Waco.
Andrew Mellon	Businessperson
Rebekah Mercer	Oligarch		Daughter of NY hedge fund manager Robert Mercer; she helped guide the Trump transition team following the 2016 election, and funded right-wing social network Parler
Robert Mercer	Oligarch		Father of Rebekah Mercer and longtime right-wing donor
MicroChip			Pro-Trump bot-king
Stephen Miller	Extremist
Michael Milken
Cleta Mitchell	Extremist	OK	Lawyer who represented various right-wing entities including the NRA, and was considered the "fringe of the fringe" -- at age 70 she "represented" Trump during his telephone call to Brad Raffensperger asking him to find ~11,000 votes
Semion Mogilevich	Criminal		Notorious Russian mob boss
Stefan Molyneux	Media personality		Alt-right troll
Sun Myung Moon	Cult Leader		Leader of the Moonie cult and self-proclaimed deity, Mr Moon served time in federal prison for tax fraud, among other charges.
Roy Moore	Politician	AL	Trump-backed politician and pedophile who narrowly lost the Alabama Senate race to Doug Jones in 2018.
JP Morgan	Businessperson
Rupert Murdoch	Oligarch		Fox News owner famous for his amoral media
Jack Murphy
Benito Mussolini
MWR Strategies	Kochtopus		Lobbying firm for the Koch brothers
Dasha Nekrasova
neo-Nazis	Extremist
Terry Nichols	Extremist		Blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building with Timothy McVeigh
Richard Nixon	Politician
Ralph Norman	Politician		House Republican who skirted the metal detectors to enter the House floor after the January 6 insurrection
NRA	Extremist		National Rifle Association
NYPD	Public Sector		New York Police Department
Barack Obama	Politician	Chicago, DC, Los Angeles	The 44th President of the United States, and the first black person to hold the job. He was widely loathed by the Right despite his positive record.
John M. Olin	Kochtopus		Chemical and munitions company titan
Viktor Orban	Politician		Radical right president of Hungary and Putin supporter
The Order			White supremacist group
Candace Owens	Extremist
Matt Parrott	Extremist		Co-founder with Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Workers Party
Laszlo Pasztor
Norman Vincent Peale	Businessperson		Christianity as a business man's religion
Mike Pence	Media personality		Donald Trump's VP
Rick Perry	Politician
Scott Perry	Politician		House Republican who skirted the metal detectors to enter the House floor after the January 6 insurrection
Jordan B Peterson	Academic		A sort of hero figure to the incel crowd
William Pierce
Pioneer Fund			A white supremacist group set up for "race betterment" in 1997 at a private club.
Jeanine Pirro	Media personality		Fox News host known for having a bit of a drinking problem and a brash on-air personality
Mike Pompeo	Public Sector		Sec of State after the firing of Rex Tillerson; former CIA Director; former Republican congressman from KS and largest recipient of Koch campaign funds in all of Congress
Jack Posobiec	Media personality
Lewis Powell	Businessperson		Wrote a 1971 memo that rallied the largely white and male business community around a plan to dismantle the New Deal and the liberal consensus
Sydney Powell	Political Operative		Also Associates with UFO believers and anti-vaxxers
Proud Boys	Extremist		Militia group involved in the January 6 coup attempt
Thomas Pyle	Businessperson		president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and the Kochs
QAnon	QAnon		Conspiracy theory about Democratic pedophiles that recycles Nazi ideology
Jean Raspail	Author	France	French author of the 1973 Camp of the Saints novel about migrants organizing to take over France; the racist fiction inspired the white power movement of the 1980s, Steve Bannon, and a host of other fascist movements in Europe, America, and around the world
Nancy Reagan	Media personality	Deceased
Ronald Reagan	Politician	Deceased	Actor and Republican who became the 40th President from 1981 through 1989
Kyle Rittenhouse
Pat Robertson	Televangelist
Dylann Roof
George Romney
Mitt Romney	Politician	UT
Murray Rothbard	Extremist
Dave Rubin
Richard Mellon Scaife	Koch Investor		Heir to the Mellon banking and Gulf Oil fortunes, and Koch donor
David Schnare	Political Operative		"Free-market environmentalist" who accused the EPA of having blood on its hands, who joined climate change denier Myron Ebell on the Trump transition team for the EPA
Stephen Schwarzman			Finance
Rick Scott	Politician
Jeff Sessions	Politician	AL
Marc Short	Political Operative		Ran the Koch Brothers' secretive donor club, Freedom Partners, before becoming Mike Pence's senior advisor during the 2016 presidential transition
Sinclair Broadcasting Group	Corporation
Paul Singer	Koch Investor		Finance (Elliott Management hedge fund). Supported Rudy Giuliani.
SNCC	Non-profit
Social Contract Press	White Supremacist		A racist publishing company, part of the Tanton Network, that published the white nationalist novel Camp of the Saints
Richard Spencer	White Supremacist
Balaji Srinivasan	Businessperson
State Policy Network	Kochtopus		Funded in part by the Kochs
Dan Stein	White Supremacist		President of Tanton Network organization FAIR
Lothrop Stoddard	White Supremacist		Author of the 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy
Roger Stone	Lobbyist
Richard Strong	Businessperson		Strong Capital Management Mutual Fund
Sen. Robert Taft	Politician
John H. Tanton	White Supremacist	Michigan	White nationalist who organized The Tanton Network of 13 anti-immigrant organizations
Tea Party	PAC		Intensely antitax group
Peter Thiel	Businessperson	Los Angeles, CA	Eccentric Silicon Valley billionaire and pocketbook for the New Right project
Clarence Thomas	Judge	Washington, DC
Ginni Thomas	Political Operative	Washington, DC
Three Percenters	Extremist		Militia group who had a heavy presence at the January 6 attempted coup
Traditionalist Workers Party	Extremist
Turning Point USA	Extremist		Charlie Kirk's right-wing PR organization
Unabomber	Criminal
Unification Church	Cult Leader
Unite the Right	Activist	Charlottesville, NC	Charlottesville, NC event in 2018 where white supremecist groups marched with tiki torches, and activist Heather Hyer was killed by a right-wing extremist who drove his car through the crowd.
University of Texas at Austin	Academic	Austin, TX
JD Vance	Politician	OH	Venture capitalist and Peter Thiel acolyte running for Senate in Ohio
Ricky Vaughn
Ruben Verastigui	Criminal	DC	Former RNC and other GOP offices staffer who made social media ads for the Trump campaign and was later arrested with child porn on his phone after a DHS sting.
John Vinson	Extremist		Head of the Tanton Network-backed anti-immigrant hate group American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF)
George Wallace	Politician	Alabama
Joe Walsh	Media personality
Kelli Ward	Politician	AZ	GOP Chair
Ron Watkins	Extremist		Identified as the most likely suspect to be Q of QAnon
Randy Weaver	White Supremacist	Naples, ID
Vicki Weaver	White Supremacist	Naples, ID
Weev	White Supremacist		Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer
Paul Weyrich	White Supremacist		Arch-deacon of the New Right ultraconservative movement and hugely influential figure who founded the Heritage Foundation, Council for National Policy, and ALEC.
White Citizens Councils	White Supremacist
Geert Wilders
Darren Wilson	Public Sector		Police officer who brutally killed a Black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, MO in 2014.
WikiLeaks	Foreign agent
Milo Yiannopoulos	Media personality

July 20, 2021

Trump is driving Evangelicals from the flock

It’s been said that the devilish ways of pedophiliac liberal Democrats are killing Christianity in America, but the numbers tell a different story. Following the 2016 Armistice in the War on Christmas, Donald Trump yet managed to drive 1 in 7 Evangelicals from the fold, according to data from Pew and PRRI.

Far from the surge in True Believers prophesied by the right wing, the religious right’s deal with the proverbial and/or literal devil seems to have driven members away. Trump is losing Evangelicals, and really — should we be so shocked? If it doesn’t matter (to some) whether our leaders are serial philanderers and lifelong business cheats, or earnestly striving public servants spreading compassion — what use is their moral code, then? None. It is bankrupt.

Shrödinger’s Moral Leadership

The religious right can’t have it both ways — either moral leadership is important, or it isn’t. It can’t selectively be important *only* when a Democrat is in power. Evangelicals also need to make a choice between God and Caesar. Prosperity gospel is the latter and not the former, but many pretend otherwise or are fooled — after all, fool’s gold can still fool.

Cognitive dissonance upon dissonance continues to fall in the totally unraked forest of right-wing values. I’m aiming to continue pulling on a few threads connecting the religious right, and Evangelicals in particular, to the rise of political extremism in the Republican Party:

The pitch that winning the culture war is more important than God’s law is thin at best
Donald Trump is not a Christian
The “imperfect vessel” fails as moral justification
Jesus didn’t care about tax cuts
Christian leaders’ claims that politics is amoral ground beyond the reach of God’s teachings is self-evident nonsense
Christians are leaving their own moral house unguarded. No one is showing the living proof of Jesus’ teachings anymore — and it’s not the fault of the people on the left who weren’t doing it before.

June 7, 2021

Global Right-Wing Authoritarianism

It’s not just here at home in the US that fascism seems to have taken root in the population. There are many burgeoning nationalist movements resurrecting right-wing populism around the world, and as per many experts’ warnings, right-wing authoritarianism is on the rise around the globe.

Many of the right-wing populist thatches that have sprung up are at least in part, seeds planted by Vladimir Putin in his quest for Russian revanchism against the West following the end (or so we thought…) of the Cold War. Rumoured to be the richest man in the world by far, the former KGB agent was working in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell, and has been pursuing his Lost Cause grievance ever since.

Learn more:

The right-wing authoritarianism movement is global

Given how seemingly easy it is for Charles Koch to buy American elections as the 15th richest person in the world, imagine what someone far wealthier and less provincial could accomplish. Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France took campaign cash directly from The Kremlin, Viktor Orban’s Hungary is Vladimir Putin’s strongest ally in the EU, the Belarusian dictator is propped up by Putin, who still occupies Ukraine’s Crimea, and the UK’s Brexit campaign acted as the canary in the coalmine for later disgraceful invasions of other nations’ sovereignty — perhaps most notably, election interference in the 2016, 2018, and 2020 US elections.

As such, it would be foolish not to see what’s happening here in America as part of a broader wave of right-wing populism and authoritarian fever that is very dangerous. We need to find out a lot more information about how all these puzzle pieces fit together, and get to the bottom of the real conspiracy clearly going on — if we can find it through all these smokescreen conspiracy theories clogging the propaganda waves.

Here’s a list of some of the extreme right-wing parties on the rise around the globe:

Country	Flag	Party	Abbreviation
Austria	🇦🇹	Freedom Party	FPO
Belgium	🇧🇪	Flemish Block	VB
Britain	🇬🇧	UK Independence Party	UKIP
		Britain First
		National Front
Czech Republic		Freedom and Direct Democracy	SPD
Denmark	🇩🇰	Danish People's Party	DPP
Finland	🇫🇮	True Finns
France	🇫🇷	National Front	FN
Germany	🇩🇪	Alternative for Germany	AfD
		Patriotic Europeans Against Islamization of the West	Pegida
Greece	🇬🇷	Syriza
Hungary	🇭🇺	Movement for a Better Hungary	Jobbik
		Fidesz
Italy	🇮🇹	Northern League
		National Alliance
Japan	🇯🇵	Nippon Kaigi
The Netherlands	🇳🇱	Party for Freedom	PPV
		Liveable Netherlands
		Pim Fortuyn's List	LPF
Norway	🇳🇴	Progress Party
The Philippines	🇵🇭
Poland	🇵🇱	Law and Justice party
Portugal	🇵🇹	Popular Party
Serbia		Serbian Radical Party	SRS
Spain	🇪🇸	(Catalonian secession)
Sweden	🇸🇪	Sweden Democrats
Switzerland	🇨🇭	Swiss People's Party	SVP
United States	🇺🇸	Republican Party	GOP

January 9, 2021

Ghost skins

Ghost skin is short for ghost skinhead. It refers to a white supremacist who hides his racist beliefs in order to blend into wider society, with the goal of remaining undetected and covertly continuing his Nazi agenda.

Over at least the past 2 decades, white supremacists have been specifically infiltrating law enforcement. Going into the police is an attractive career option to begin with, for someone with controlling tendencies, an interest in power, and often an incentive to use the badge as a shield for one’s own crime schemes.

Ghost skins are rebranded Nazis

White supremacy has a long and brutal history in America. This original stain not only hasn’t been washed clean, but is seeping outwards once again. It’s expanding outward through QAnon and conspiracist fear-mongering on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, the -chans, etc. It’s what resulted in the January 6 deadly siege on the Capitol building where Congress was counting the electoral college votes and certifying Joe Biden’s presidency.

Part of the larger swell of fascism in this country, ghost skins have allowed neo-Nazis and a motley assortment of thugs, violent criminals, and authoritarian personalities to hide out in the fabric of society, waiting to strike when the time is right. When The Storm comes. When it is time, the President tells them, to take their country back.

January 5, 2021

Titushki

Titushki (or titushky) are paid street thugs sent to act as provocateurs, who provoke clashes or destroy property to tarnish peaceful protests and blame the left for “violence.”

The concept is from Ukraine, where it was first employed by later ousted President Viktor Yanukovych. He hired street hooligans in civilian clothing to perform illegal acts including street beatings, carjackings, kidnappings, and murders. Their purpose was both to intimidate the opposition against his government and create pretexts for arresting pro-democracy protestors.

During the events of Euromaidan in 2013-14, Yanukovich’s Party of Regions paid titushki about $100 per day to blend into peaceful crowds and start picking fights. After violence broke out, mass arrests would disperse the gatherings and round up protestors — and the titushki were again used as either “witnesses or “victims” for the show trials of these ginned up “crimes.”

Titushki in the U.S.?

During the George Floyd protests in summer 2020, city officials in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and elsewhere reported a pattern of out-of-town agents provacateur escalating peaceful protests and instigating aggression, incitement, and property damage. A Ukranian immigrant family in Idaho with no prior political activity organized one of the most important pro-Trump demonstrations of the summer in Portland, out of nowhere. There was umbrella man. He may be more likely aligned with the white nationalist groups who were also id’d as instigating violence and who also have an undercover plot against America going on so, you know, strange bedfellows!

June 20, 2020

Authoritarian Personality Traits: Deference to a higher power

Sociologist Theodor Adorno created the “F scale” in a 1950 seminal work entitled The Authoritarian Personality, in order to rank the level of predilection to fascism in an individual, which became desirable both during and shortly after World War II. According to Adorno and his cohort, the defining authoritarian personality traits of the Platonic fascist (or the ur-Fascist as Umberto Eco would later call them) include the following:

conventionalism — following the rules; “this is how we’ve always done things”; fundamentalist thinking; dogmatic philosophy; intolerance of ambiguity (and intolerance in general)
authoritarian submission — follow the Ruler; the Ruler is always right, no matter how obvious the lie or big the myth. only ingroup authority figures matter, though.
authoritarian aggression — “send in the troops,” “when the looting starts the shooting starts,” “dominate the streets”
anti-intellectualism — distrust of experts; paranoid politics; intellectualism is unmasculine
anti-intraception — a dislike of subjectivity and imagination: “the fact is…”; black and white thinking; dislike of flamboyant self-expression; monoculture
superstition — conspiracy theory; anti-vaxxers; QAnon
stereotypy — racism, sexism, classism, ageism, all the isms; bigotry, homophobia, Islamophobia, transphobia, all the phobias
power and “toughness” — obsessed with dominance and submission; rigidly pro-hierarchy; solves problems with violence; values physical strength
destructiveness — dismantle the Federal government; remove environmental regulations; pull out of international alliances; weakening America’s place in the world, abandoning the EU, and kowtowing to dictators around the world
cynicism — “both sides do it,” whataboutism, all politicians are bad, conscience (non)voters
projectivity — everything is Obama‘s fault, almost literally; claims Biden is corrupt; Hillary’s email server (though they all used and continue to use private email servers, every single one of them); claim that the Clinton campaign started the birther controversy; accuse everyone else of lying
exaggerated concerns over sex — anti-abortion; homophobia; pedophilia; excessive taboos; excessive shame

We are seeing all of these traits today. We see the rise of authoritarianism — we see it in our leadership, we see it in our communities, and we see it surging around the world.

We see it in a much larger percentage of our populace than many of us might have imagined. Research by Karen Stenner and others shows that across populations in the developed world, about a third of a given population will be prone to authoritarian tendencies. People of good character far outnumber the Right-Wing Authoritarians, but they can be subjugated, emotionally manipulated, strong-armed, abused, intimidated, made cynical by the RWAs. And the RWA personality is driven to actively hate outgroups in many outrageously twisted and depraved ways, from pettiness to genocide.

Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Refined by professor of psychology Bob Altemeyer (The Authoritarians, et al) in 1981, the Right-Wing Authoritarianism scale (RWA) addresses some of the limitations of the F scale and exhibits more predictive power in identifying individuals exhibiting authoritarian personality.

The RWA personality is associated with all of the following traits, beliefs, actions, patterns, and signs of authoritarianism:

extreme obedience
unquestioning respect for and submission to a chosen authority
repression
forceful insistence on hierarchy
striving for dominance in social hierarchies
supremacy
wolves vs. sheep worldview
Manichaean struggle
punitiveness; vengefulness; malignant envy
destructiveness
extremism
subordination to the collective
tribalism
cult of personality
cults
traditionalism
conservatism
fundamentalism
less openness to experience
aggression towards minority groups
resistance to change
justification(s) for social inequality
Libertarianism
police brutality
psychological abuse; emotional predation
hypocrisy
projection
magical thinking
disciplinarian
control freak
mass surveillance
repression
a primary drive to achieve relief from uncertainty, even at the cost of individual freedom

Democracy vs. Authoritarianism

Maybe we could offer up the RWA test as a “good faith” gesture, if one is interested in participating in civic discourse with credibility and authenticity. It would help us identify those individuals who are going to be unlikely to play by the rules of the game or have no intention of behaving fairly. It would help us draw authoritarianism and totalitarianism out of the proverbial closet and into public discourse so we can refute it vehemently in a proper forum.

Although we have bot tests, we don’t really have great ways of measuring and identifying human beings with deceptive agendas to help us in this battle of democracy vs. autocracy. If we could screen people as authoritarians via “honorable challenge,” we could save so much time by not wasting it on the lost causes whose power trip runs so deep it can never be exposed. It could serve as a way to drag out into the light any number of intolerable, anti-democratic sentiments masquerading as “strict Constitutionalism.” We can pry open the doublespeak and arm ourselves with the secret decoder rings of understanding RWA dogwhistles.

And maybe we can finally change the conversation by more easily identifying friendlies from foes from the start, without having to wade through every minefield.

Just maybe.