The Authoritarian Personality Then and Now
SOC4-5a-Tue1
Jeff Kichen
This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email.
September 10 - October 8
The year 2020 marked the 70th anniversary of the publication of The Authoritarian Personality. After the experience of World War II, the book attempted to identify the type of person who might be susceptible to the rise of fascism in post-World War II America. The basic theory behind the book was that the potential for political fascism is associated with certain authoritarian personality characteristics that exist in wide swaths of the population and these characteristics are a function of both psychology and sociology, although the study itself emphasized the psychological over the sociological. The 1950 conclusion was that “it could happen here” and the book commands our attention today as authoritarian movements are on the rise here and abroad.
We will explore the book’s relevance today through summaries of the book’s contents and early and later critiques. From the book we will read two introductory chapters and the F-scale (F for fascist) chapter, which is widely considered the book’s most controversial chapter. As a class exercise, we will attempt to devise an updated F-Scale. We will consider the contemporary debate of whether authoritarianism is only a right-wing phenomenon or whether a left-wing authoritarian threat also exists. We will attempt to draw some conclusions as to why the threat of political authoritarianism looms so large now. What perhaps are the necessary and sufficient causes? And based on the news cycle at the end of our course, we will offer some predictions regarding authoritarianism in the United States.
More facilitated discussion than lecture.
Purchase required: Authoritarianism, Wendy Brown, Peter E. Gordon and Max Pensky, University of Chicago Press, 2018. ISBN 13:9780226597270. Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, W.W. Norton and Company, 2021, ISBN:9781788161244. Additional material including chapters from The Authoritarian Personality will be provided through the class website.
I estimate approximately three hours per week for session 2 through 5. The assignment for the first session, which includes the welcome video, the syllabus, and the specially prepared video on The Authoritarian Personality, and readings, will likely be around 4.5 hours.
Jeff Kichen has been a BOLLI SGL since 2013. He has led BOLLI courses on the history of health care reform, the history of medicine, Toni Morrison, George Eliot, Lafcadio Hearn, Hannah Arendt, Theodor Adorno, Reinhold Niebuhr, Professional Wrestling and Politics, and The Year 1954. He co-edited the college text Advancing Health Through Education and published one of the first national studies on continuing care community residents. He was formerly Vice-President of Strategy and Planning for the Massachusetts Medical Society and Director of Health Care Policy at The Roche Associates. He has degrees in public health and history.