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'.

What drives me slightly mad is that while I can't speak so much to the social sciences, that sort of thinking is precisely what humanities education is meant to guard against.

Just look at all the ‘white privilege’, racist antiracist stuff. It’s all oppressor vs victims Marxist old wine in new bottles.

Certainly in one of the fields I work in all the youngsters are ever so groovy and do lots of theory—sorry, Theory—related usually to literary texts, as this allows them to be very meta. Despite their skepticism about meta-narratives, they are perfectly comfortable with their own version thereof. There have even been calls to cancel the whole discipline, on the grounds that it is colonialist and heterociscandidohesperoonormative, and the real thing is to be PC and to get people to be politically active. Very few recruits still do the dull boring things like editing texts properly and newbies' knowledge of the relevant languages can be abysmal.

On the other hand, my other field, philosophy, is much more open. People argue endlessly, but about the things they always have argued about, and... well... you know, they are philosophers, so being argumentative is part of the deal. There is also a good deal of intolerance of a good sort, viz. of the various kinds of woo peddled so pompously elsewhere in academe. A friend of mine once said that there are only two departments in any university: the Department of Philosophy and the Department of Unwarranted Assertions. Of course, he was a philosopher.

I find Mumsnet itself an interesting place when it comes to seeing authoritarian tendencies in full swing. The threads on self-isolation where the Op lives in the middle of nowhere (and therefore has zero risk of spreading covid) are a case in point, with poster after poster arguing that breaking the rules in these circumstances is selfish, entitled and dangerous. Now there's a rational argument for saying that covid rules should be unbending because of the need for social cohesion or whatever, but these posters seem to come from the fundamentally authoritarian position that there is a moral duty to obey any law, however patently absurd, in and of itself. Temperamentally I am at the very opposite end of the spectrum and most of my circle of friends are too. It's enlightening to see how many people have a moral universe which is utterly impervious to shades of grey.

Mumsnet is very left leaning IMO.

Left-leaning politically, but extremely Socially Conservative.

What do you mean by socially conservative?

@AffronttoBS

What do you mean by socially conservative?

I don't know about the PP but this essay is useful:

unherd.com/thepost/the-difference-between-social-and-cultural-conservatism/

@highame

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.

Are you on the left?

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

Left-leaning politically, but extremely Socially Conservative.

I don't know that they are really what I'd call politically left. Liberal, I'd say.

I'd agree with socially conservative. For me the eating threads are a big giveaway. Women berating other women for serving a small child a small portion of mayonnaise and a palpable fear of sugar and carbs. You can see the authoritarians out in force.

I'm struck by how rule-abiding so many MNrs seem to be and how this seems to have eaten away at both common sense and their own confidence. I've never been in trouble with the police (only one accidental parking ticket in 40 years driving) and am not much of a risk-taker but I don't stick rigidly to the rules.

Whatever the labels, I think the MN crowd has a tendency towards woke type hysteria and authoritarian , especially in recent years, towards things like BLM, Brexit, COVID, lockdown etc..

@AffronttoBS

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.

in the New Statesman in 2019 she wrote that she believes TWAW, TMAM but has grave concerns about self-ID and doesn't believe gender identity is an inner essence, nor does she want "gender identity" adding to the Equality Act. See www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2019/01/maria-miller-called-me-fake-feminist-over-gender-self-id-now-she-says-i Not sure if her views have evolved in the subsequent two years?

This isn't a new idea; 'authoritarian' has been accepted as one of a list of personality traits for decades. The others include honest, pleading, placating, distracting and blaming.

There are also two modifiers;
sado/masochistic and
naive/paranoid.

In the New Statesman in 2019 she wrote that she believes TWAW, TMAM but has grave concerns about self-ID and doesn't believe gender identity is an inner essence, nor does she want "gender identity" adding to the Equality Act. See www.newstatesman.com/politics/feminism/2019/01/maria-miller-called-me-fake-feminist-over-gender-self-id-now-she-says-i
Not sure if her views have evolved in the subsequent two years?

It's the attacks on Graham Linehan that I can't forgive. Yes, Graham has his loose canon moments but no one can doubt that his concern for women and girls is genuine and that he has paid a hell of a price for raising the issue publicly. He has to be one of the most brave and foolhardy men in the UK. He has nothing to gain from this except the knowledge that he fought hard on the right side of history and I can't understand why, if she isn't advocating for self-ID and gender identity, she would call out the dogs on him — and not just once.

I had a listen, and she's right. Researchers do conflate authoritarianism and conservatism. I went and searched online for some questionnaires, and all of the ones I found characterised authoritarianism as conservatism.

@JustSpeculation

I had a listen, and she's right. Researchers do conflate authoritarianism and conservatism. I went and searched online for some questionnaires, and all of the ones I found characterised authoritarianism as conservatism.

Yes.

It was a useful disambiguation. It probably contributes to a better understanding of several phenomena but I'd need to explore it further.

A push to authoritarianism is in part driven by a desire to conform. This is what gets the academicians: they are spouting ideological drivel to fit in with contemporaries they admire and feel they belong to. There is also anxiety underlying this: being different from your group is anxiety-inducing. I say this from first-hand knowledge of academicians (not from the social science field). Also known as group-think I suppose.

I listened to Karen Stenner's interview and loved it. There are authoritarians on left and right, authoritarians who are pro-trans agenda, authoritarians against it. So the IQ side of things makes sense within the sex-gender debate. Stenner's findings on IQ only describe the average so there will inevitably be high IQ individuals who are also authoritarian and on the left. But on average, more open-minded, curious people are going to have a higher IQ. I can't see how it could it be otherwise.

Agree with group think.

I don’t see the authoritarians on the anti trans side though.