Modulous writes:
quote:
The scale under question only measures Right Wing Authoritarianism. While it is presumably true that LWAs would score low on this scale, it doesn't follow that scoring low makes you an LWA. You would have to also score high on an LWA scale.
I think you need to go back and read the paper. His use of "right" is not the political "right." Rather, it is the use of "right" as in "correct," "proper," "expected." Following "liberal" leaders is just as much "RWA" as following "conservative" leaders. It's just a question of what the status quo is.
His use of "left" is more to do with upsetting the status quo, the revolutionaries. Thus, those who are trying to destroy authority would score high on an "LWA" test. His comments are that there aren't any LWA's left and when they do exist, they tend to bicker amongst themselves.
In North America people who submit to the established authorities to extraordinary degrees often turn out to be political conservatives, 2 so you can call them right-wingers both in my new-fangled psychological sense and in the usual political sense as well. But someone who lived in a country long ruled by Communists and who ardently supported the Communist Party would also be one of my psychological right-wing authoritarians even though we would also say he was a political left-winger. So a right-wing authoritarian follower doesn’t necessarily have conservative political views. Instead he’s someone who readily submits to the established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly conventional. It’s an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics. Rightwing authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being characteristically bashful or happy or grumpy or dopey.
You could have left-wing authoritarian followers as well, who support a revolutionary leader who wants to overthrow the establishment. I knew a few in the 1970s, Marxist university students who constantly spouted their chosen authorities, Lenin or Trotsky or Chairman Mao. Happily they spent most of their time fighting with each other, as lampooned in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea devotes most of its energy to battling, not the Romans, but the Judean People’s Front. But the left-wing authoritarians on my campus disappeared long ago. Similarly in America the Weathermen blew away in the wind. I’m sure one can find left-wing authoritarians here and there, but they hardly exist in sufficient numbers now to threaten democracy in North America. However I have found bucketfuls of right-wing authoritarians in nearly every sample I have drawn in Canada and the United States for the past three decades. So when I speak of authoritarian followers in this book I mean right-wing authoritarian followers, as identified by the RWA scale.
Thus, it is a coincidence that RWAs tend to be politically conservative, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Rrhain
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