Interesting interview about authoritarianism, R4, Helen Lewis/Karen Stenner

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000y7sq

30 minutes long. Broadcast on Friday 30/7, 11am as part of a series of conversations called The Spark, presented by Helen Lewis.

Karen Stenner is a former academic, now independent consultant, who has researched authoritarianism. She thinks there is a genetic/heritable predisposition towards this in about a third of the population, and it doesn't correlate to having right or left-leaning political views, or being of a conservative disposition. A lot of it is about being afraid of difference and diversity, not coping well with complexity and ambiguity, and lacking the trait of 'openness to experience'.

She mentioned in passing that some extremely left-wing people and others with very liberal views can be authoritarian because they are convinced they are right and therefore divergence from their world view must be punished. This rings true for me. Many of the young fanatics on Twitter on any of a range of subjects are incredibly intolerant of difference, and as we know if anybody puts a foot wrong on anything they must be 'cancelled'.

I strongly recommend this too, it's one of those programmes that had me going "ahh" in recognition all the way through. It is so good I'll be listening to it again. It will be rebroadcast this coming Thursday:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y7sq

Look what's happening in the US, losing god but gaining an authoritarian mindset and it's on the left. Although I disliked Trump, I was staggered at the absolute violent tirades and I now worry about how the Democrats are using authoritarian methods to undermine the right. I'm on the left but it frightens me.

Good call OP, I listened and found it extremely interesting and quite eye opening too.

I must not play this now.

I have work to do within a tight timescale so I must not indulge my desire for procrastination.

This will be a treat for later.

I too will listen to this later.

This and the Savage Minds podcast with Julia Long and Julian Vigo are feeling very relevant at present.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4309443-Savage-Minds-Substack-Julian-Vigo-interviews-Julia-Long-on-inconsistencies-within-the-feminist-and-gender-critical-movements

Stenner's research is disturbing and unsettling. It's providing much food for thought while reminding me that it is collective action that matters and they swamp individual action.

I'm going to have to listen to this.

I read Bob Altermayer's The Authoritarians a few years back - I imagine it's a little out of date now, but it is available free online.

theauthoritarians.org/

I was a fan of Helen Lewis and The Spork until it became clear that she isn't GC (I believe she has a family member who is trans and is an ally).

Only a few months ago, when Graham Linehan dressed up as a woman to make a point about all the men appearing on lesbian dating apps in wigs and make-up pretending to be lesbians, she wilfully misinterpreted his actions as mocking transwomen and created a pile-on. Glinner responded with this:

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/helen-lewis-is-a-dishonest-unethical

So I would now handle anything Helen Lewis is involved in with extreme care and want to examine it from all sides. She is not a rational thinker and her actions with regard to Glinner were very questionable.

A lot of it is about being afraid of difference and diversity, not coping well with complexity and ambiguity, and lacking the trait of 'openness to experience'.

It’s so interesting that it’s become highly socially desirable to signal that you have high Openness and embrace difference. Which of course has led to a massive diversity industry policing people’s thoughts and crowds of blue-haired conformists chanting slogans about inclusion.

Authoritarians who can’t actually acknowledge their own authoritarian tendencies are scarier than the other kind, I think.

Is the percentage of the population who actually do have high openness to experience about the same as it ever was?

Interesting podcast. Lots of food for thought.

2 things that struck me though. I’m not seeing the link between lack of intelligence and authoritarian tendencies (e.g.academia is a hot bed of cancel culture).

And mirroring @allmywhat s comment, is the irony of the woke , diversity brigade, who claim to be embracing diversity, ‘be kind’ etc. but is ACTUALLY doing the opposite.

So if a woke, pompous, sanctimonious Diversity officer listened to this, they could well think that this applies to the people they don’t agree with?

I’m not seeing the link between lack of intelligence and authoritarian tendencies (e.g.academia is a hot bed of cancel culture).
Haven't listened to any of it yet (but I will) but I would say that there is little to no link between lack of brain power and being authoritarian. I've come across far too many academics who really resist and resent anything that counters their own world view (sorry, their 'view of the topic based on years of meticulous research') and who will try and squash that dissent out of a student (sorry, 'urge you to re-examine your sources to ensure that what you say can be fully supported' - when it's just been thoroughly referenced).

Authoritarians who can’t actually acknowledge their own authoritarian tendencies are scarier than the other kind, I think.

I agree. Also, donning tin hat to say, another problem in a democratic society is that everybody has a vote, even those who are not well-informed and good at critical thinking, and who don't know how little they know and understand. One of the great advantages of being open to new experiences and wanting to find out about new things is that you grasp along the way that there's an enormous amount to know and most people only know a small amount about a few areas.

The education system could have a lot to contribute here, but the big push of recent years in the UK to drill children relentlessly in a few facts and skills they need to pass exams and shut down enquiry about other areas has been extremely unfortunate - not least because younger teachers now mostly grew up in that system themselves. I was very lucky to go to school in less exam-driven times and some of the best bits of my education were the lessons where everything went off-piste and we had a discussion about something.

I agree there's a strong authoritarian tendency in some areas of academe. Whole careers can be shut down if you don't subscribe to certain theories. Lamentable.

In recent decades, the education system has been inherently left wing.

But….maybe linking cancel culture and authoritarian tendencies with lack of intelligence is what is needed in the wider social consciousness, in order to counter the social status or credits the woke narcissists and gullible allies gain from performative virtue signalling.

Helen Joyce makes the point in this interview that the more intelligent and educated a person is, the more susceptible they are to being fooled because their education may well have included the need to learn and rely on counter-intuitive but useful things and they have been trained to accept that what they have been taught in their very expensive university courses is true. She cites quantum physics as an example of how the counter-intuitive is useful.

She also talks about the fact that Judith Butler doesn't actually make sense to an ordinary intelligent reader, but academics and students can't/ won't point that out because 'understanding' Butler gives them kudos, so they gain credits and virtue points for continuing to pretend they understand her writings and teaching them to other people who learn that to join the club you don't say 'But this is bullshit!'

You only have to look at the bizarre interview with Butler in the New Statesman last year to see how out of touch with reality Butler has become, with her assertion that everyone bar a few radical feminists (on the margin, as she puts it) is pro-trans and pro self-ID. All the evidence indicates that here in the UK the average person in the street is GC, whether they know it or not. Just look at the Mumsnet poll on whether men should compete in sport: 98%+ of ordinary Mumsnet readers don't think men should compete in women's sport.

www.newstatesman.com/international/2020/09/judith-butler-culture-wars-jk-rowling-and-living-anti-intellectual-times

Here's Helen Joyce with Graham Linehan:

Just found time to listen to the feature properly and I agree it's excellent and thought-provoking. It's left me feeling that the world makes a little more sense that it did an hour ago. A third of people who are naturally, psychologically, inclined to favour an authoritarian style of government. I'd never have believed it and yet now I know I understand why I feel a lot more nervous about the future of liberal democracy and social progress than I did 20 years ago.

Thanks, OP, for highlighting it. I still don't know how Helen Lewis can do an interview like this and be a trans ally.

I agree, it’s very readable.

Much lighter going than Arendt.

I've not read any Arendt, but I really should. I've now listened to the interview and I'm keen to pick up Stenner's book. Going to have to make myself a reading list.

Thanks, OP, for highlighting it. I still don't know how Helen Lewis can do an interview like this and be a trans ally.

I think the same about many diversity officers and feminists i come across, and Phillip Pullman and Margaret Atwood, or even lawyers who defend someone they know/believe is guilty.

Either they know exactly what they are doing and consciously choose to take their position, or they are gullible and truly believe it.

I'm not sure which is worse.

The Origins of Totalitarianism is a very different read indeed. It continually refers to a background and a context that you'd need to be a scholar of European history from the 40s and 50s to fully understand.

But it does contain so much startling stuff. I was shocked to read her analysis of why it was easy to stir up hatred of the Jews in the relevant historical period, what she wrote would probably get her shunned today.

a very different difficult read indeed

It's important to bear in mind that when people like Karen Stenner and Bob Altermayer take about authoritarians they are talking about people with specific personality profile that inclines them to support poltical authoritarianism. That doesn't mean that everyone who ever behaves in an authoritarian way has that personality type.

There are probably comparatively few academics who have an authoritarian personality because the need for fluidity and openess of thought that's required to be succesful as an academic runs counter to the desire for order and rigidity that characterises the authoritarian personality type. The authoritarian turn in academia is a lot more driven by social and cultural factors (e.g. belief in the "right side of history") than it is by there being lots of academics that are authoritarian by disposition.

As far as intelligence, I will say that in my experience, lots of the people in academia who really evidence this kind of thinking are, in my opinion, stupid. They may be able to do the work required to get degrees, but that perhaps speaks to the quality of some degrees these days. There are some pretty shit meaningless grad and post-grad writing out there which seems to get a pass.

But also, I would say that it's a specific kind of lack of intelligence in many cases. They may be able to take certain premises and follow them to a conclusion, but what they don't seem to be able to do is integrate them into a larger reality, or think about meta-systems and the validity of the systems in their own discipline. They can follow a line but not see a net that the line is part of. They can't draw inferences or make comparisons with other areas of study.

Some of the worst examples seem to come out of "studies" programs, where seem to be based on an activist or ideological basis rather than anything else.

I agree @SmokedDuck. In the social ‘sciences’ and humanities, they seem to specialise in logical fallacies, linking one thing to another in a linear way, if this is true than that is also true, missing out on a whole hosts of other factors that make the reality. Often the more obscure or tenuous the link, the more ‘clever’ or innovative they think they are , because …..bingo, new 💡 idea! Doesn’t seem to matter if it is true or not…