cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17079522
To keep it short the reason why some people are ok with authoritarianism is because most structures that we deal with on a daily basis are authoritarian.
Here is evidence that shows a significant amount of people are ok with authoritarianism:
This should be concerning.
And the thing is that it makes sense once you look at what are the most common systems that people interact with the most.
A clear example would be the Boss-Worker relationship. The boss creates a set of objectives/tasks for the worker and the worker sees them out. Rarely does the worker get the chance to set the higher level direction of what they are supposed to be doing with their time leaving them obedient to the boss and their demands.
Another example would be some Parent-Child relationships. Some parents treat their children as people that should show absolute respect towards them just because they are the parents not because they have something that is of value to the child (experience).
Even in the places where we do make democratic decisions those are usually made in ways that are supposed to be supplemental to authoritative decision making. An example would be how we don’t vote on decisions but instead how we vote on others to make decisions for us.
Once you add up all the experiences that someone has throughout their whole life you will see that most of them come into direct contact with authoritarian systems which means it makes that kind of way of thinking familiar and therefore acceptable.
Unlike democracy which is an abstract concept and something we only really experience from time to time.
If we want people to actually stop thinking authoritarianism is ok then we as a society are gonna have to stop using these kinds of systems / ways of thinking in our daily lives.
For the vast majority of people currently saying they support authoritarianism, particularly in western countries, it’s not because of parent-child relationships or boss-worker relationships or the fact that we elect representatives to make decisions rather than have a referendum on every decision (which is unworkable in countries of millions of people). It’s purely because the democratic system in their country isn’t working for them.
There was some polling in the UK last year, where a bunch of people were asked about their preferred form of government, and the demographic that had the strongest support for “a strong leader that makes decisions without parliament or courts getting in the way” were the 18-30 age bracket. And it’s not because this group inherently think that having some authority figure telling everyone what to do is a good thing, because they’re of the age when they should be more independent, not less. But they know the democratic system isn’t working, because there are decisions that need to be made on jobs, housing, childcare, healthcare, public transport, climate change, etc, and those decisions aren’t being made. So when people answer a question about whether they want a “strong leader”, they’re not really saying they want authoritarianism (and everything that goes with it). They’re saying “the decisions that need to be made aren’t being made, so we need stronger leaders”.
“Supporting authoritarianism” isn’t really support for the horrors of authoritarianism for the majority. It’s a symptom of economic inequality and politicians who have been captured by vested interests. I note that in the research you linked to, one of the individual comments from respondents was listed:
An authoritarian leader isn’t going to listen to the working class, or do any of the things that person said they wanted (which are all things a lot of people in the UK want). The relationships you described, boss-worker and some parent-child relationships, are not known for the authority figure listening to the subordinate one. The kind of people supporting authoritarianism right now aren’t looking at their boss, who refuses to listen to them about the problems the workplace, employees, and customers are facing, and thinking “yeah, we need more of this”. They’re not looking back fondly at the childhood where their parents refused to listen to them, and just ordered them around.
The only thing they’re thinking is that the economic system they live in is rigged against them, and politicians have stopped listening. They think (incorrectly, in my view) that if the leader of the country was strong enough, they could make the right decisions without being influenced by hedge fund managers and fossil fuel executives and all the other people with economic motivation to prevent those decisions being made. I think if the surveys used a followup question of “is a strong leader who doesn’t listen to the working class, and just uses their power to benefit themselves and their friends, a good way to run a country?” (which is the reality of what authoritarianism is), support for authoritarianism would drop like a stone.
You are bringing up many good points.
I agree that if decisions that benefited the public were being made under our current system then less people would be in favor of “strong leaders”.
I also agree that people don’t look at the authoritative systems in their lives in a good light most of the time.
The thing is that you don’t have to like a system to be able to accept it. Just having repeated exposure makes you more willing to go along with stuff you might usually be opposed to.
Secondly as the saying goes “with great power comes great responsibility” and right now we are concentrating power in the hands of these leaders so people believe that it is up to these individuals to fix our problems for us because they are responsible for us (which include them making the right decisions).
Edit: specifically they believe that as individuals they don’t have the power to affect the world therefore they are putting the responsibility in the hands of the people that do have that power which is the only way they have been taught they can affect the world.
The thing is, most of the things that decisions need to be made about cannot be made on an individual basis. I have to agree with @abbadon420@lemm.ee’s comments on that point. By the time you get more than a handful of people together, nothing gets done without someone taking the lead and providing strategy (I personally am watching a group project at university fall apart because nine people cannot work in tandem without an effective leader.) At this point most countries in the world consist of millions of people (and China and India each have more than a billion). It’s simply not viable to expect millions or billions of people all to pull in the same direction without someone pointing which way to go.
But you do actually want communities to pull in the same direction rather than scatter randomly. For every decision where the pooling of resources is more efficient and effective than each individual doing whatever they want (healthcare, education, climate change, childcare, and many other areas), someone has to be responsible for collecting and then spending that pool of resources. You cannot have a society without that collective pooling of resources put towards the common good.
The way democracy is supposed to work is that a group of people gets to choose who has responsibility for resources everybody puts into the pot. This makes sense. If everyone puts resources into the pot for, say, healthcare, and then every person individually decides that they know best how to manage the pot, the pot will be empty before the end of the day, and most of it will have been spent ineffectively. Each person will have individually spent it on travelling to see a doctor in another community, because that’s what they personally need right now, when the more effective use of the money was to pay for a doctor to move to that community and stay there long-term, available to everyone whenever they need. Or two people will individually decide to spend the money on paying a doctor to come to the community, but they chose different doctors, and now both doctors are pissed off because there’s only enough money for one doctor, and both doctors leave because neither got what they were promised.
So there is an implied contract with democracy: “we choose YOU to manage the pot of money, and you’re responsible for making sure that pot is spent in the right way so that when we need the service that pot is for, the service is there.”
The breakdown we’re seeing in this social contract is because the people who were chosen to manage the pot of money gave it all to their friends instead of spending it on dcotors and hospitals like they were supposed to. The people that “support” authoritarianism don’t really believe that one person assuming control of the pot by force is actually better than the community choosing the most trustworthy person to be in control of the pot. They also don’t really believe that the problem is the existence of the pot in the first place. They still want the pot to exist, and they still recognise the practical need for someone to be in charge of the pot so that it is used in the most efficient way that benefits the highest number of people.
I actually wonder if what they perceive to be the problem is that by choosing multiple people to manage the pot of money, it has led to the same problem you’d get if nobody was in charge of the pot: a free for all where no effective decisions get made at all. So they conclude: “why can’t there just be ONE person in charge of the pot?” They do not want someone to take the pot by force and take it for themselves. They still want to choose who is in charge of the pot. They just want the pot to be used properly.
Support for authoritarianism, in most cases, is the result of a (likely) correct diagnosis, wrong prescription.