14% of the population predisposed to far-left authoritarianism

[Pluvia]

14% of humanity is predisposed to far-left authoritarianism. 19% are predisposed to far-right authoritarianism.

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

Very interesting (and scary) interview with political psychologist and behavioural economic Karen Stenner. It enabled me to understand a bit more about all the misogyist woke dudes who support transgender ideology and explains Billy Bragg.

Something explains Billy Bragg? What about aliens, then?

authoritarians from any side is the same beast. Just different clothes.

Treating authoritarianism as a behavioural issue that can be manages, rather than a political problem that needs to be fixed by stamping on it, seems to me to be the most sensible approach.

So 1 in 3 is a ducking lunatic who can’t wait to tell you you’re wrong? Explains the internet I suppose…

Well, MN at the very least... Next time I get attacked for not thinking the right way, I'll console myself that they're one of the 23. Hehe.

Is this from the same report which claimed 27% of all statistics are made up?

This article was posted here the other week. It is from the NYT but in this format you can read it. For those who may not have read it, it is has some relevance though it doesn’t state percentages.

The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women dDn’t Count.

www.akilligundem.com/the-far-right-and-far-left-agree-on-one-thing-women-dont-count/

A couple of years ago I took this quiz from a big university research project into politically extreme attitudes - like whether you were moderate, right, far left, etc. - and one of the questions was “have you ever worn a t-shirt with a political slogan” and I said yes, and that was an example of a red flag for extremism. If I remember correctly, other questions were things like whether you believed mainstream media is biased and has an agenda. Like really basic stuff that they then listed as extreme views on either side.

I don’t know if that’s the data this is drawn from, but if it is it was a really absurd test.

No thats not the sort of survey they used. They didn't talk about politics, as that might to trigger a defensive reaction.

How Right is Kemi Badenoch? - UnHerd

unherd.com/2022/07/how-right-is-kemi-badenoch/

This article is interesting about the cross-overs happening between left and right, and how the terms are losing some of their usefulness.

So that was a very interesting interview (in the OP) but I do have a complaint. They started out with the idea, which I believe to be true, that there is this authoritarian personality found on both the right and left, and they have a similar kind of personality profile.

But later in the interview they seemed to revert a little, talking about immigration - saying people on the left trying to convince authoritarian personalities to want immigration because it is nice is like saying "you should like differences just like I do."

Whereas it seems to me the people on the left who are basically unwilling to have these discussions (be nice) are also on the authoritarian pert of the spectrum and are themselves unhappy with difference, they just frame that difference another way.

Anyway, it was a good interview I think and I really agreed with her about the fact that there need to be things that everyone can rally around if you want to create a society where people can have a sense of solidarity together. Like holidays or celebrations that are for anyone, not just people who belong to a certain sub-group.

Oh, and that Unherd article is worth reading too, it's not really so much about KB as how the idea of left and right in politics is becoming less relevant.

MangyInseam · Today 20:28
Oh, and that Unherd article is worth reading too, it's not really so much about KB as how the idea of left and right in politics is becoming less relevant.

Yes, that’s right. it isn’t really about Kemi Badenoch as such. She is mentioned as a spring board to the argument.

I posted the link to the interview because I sometimes find myself driven to distraction about why so many men on the left, men who preach inclusion and tolerance and apparently want to raise everyone up and save the world, are actually intolerant arseholes. Obviously I know that Stalin and pals were the kind of left-wingers who, in their zeal to improve the lot of the proletariat, murdered many millions of them. I guess it's easy to think of those far-left dictators as psychopaths, not like the rest of us. But understanding that a third of people in the world are psychologically predisposed to authoritarianism explains a lot. I'd imagined that a penchant for authoritarianism was pretty rare, but no. It's surprisingly common and it's linked to IQ. Basically, the less intelligent you are, the more inclined to authoritarianism you are. Worth remembering when Bill Bragg et al get going.

Pluvia · Today 22:13
I'd imagined that a penchant for authoritarianism was pretty rare, but no. It's surprisingly common and it's linked to IQ. Basically, the less intelligent you are, the more inclined to authoritarianism you are.

I was thinking how much contradictory thinking goes on within some of the trans activist thinking such as the the word woman cant’t be used in all sorts of written material including say to advertise Tampax in the US but trans woman themselves are the forbidden word [woman].

You read the insistence that there is no such thing as a mental condition of body dysphoria behind someone wanting to transition, yet words like ‘breast’ or ‘woman’ are so triggering of body self-loathing for trans men that they must be removed from the language, and they may also have mastectomies; and a few men may have their penis removed.

Trans woman are women, yet they had to ‘trans’ because they aren’t one.

A trans woman may say they are trans because they feel like a woman, but they cannot know what feeling like a woman is like as they aren’t one.

There is no such thing as a two fixed sexes, as all people’s sex is on a spectrum and there is proof because of ‘Intersex’ people, but there are definitely two genders.

Despite having a great deal more muscle, broader shoulders, larger lungs and rib cage, a trans woman and their allies seriously considered it fair competition for that trans woman to swim against much less powerful women and appeared victorious on winning.

You can use the word ‘assigned’ for a baby’s sex when a blood test will often have shown its sex chromosomes before birth, and its physical sexual characteristics will correspond to one of two kinds in all but a minute proportion of the population, which means no agency ‘assigned’ them - they could only observe or record them.

To show inclusivity to a trans colleague who tells you their pronouns, in case you might mistake their gender identity, you too must announce your own even if you don’t believe you have a gender identity; and if you don’t, you might lose your reputation or job because being trans is a protected characteristic under the Equalities Act. But if an equally protected Muslim woman colleague wears a hijab, or a Christian one a cross, no one is expected to follow suit.

These examples shows little in the way of ability to reason imo. The premises must be based on something else which is more elusive.

Specifically it sounds like it's linked to complexity.

One of the things I often notice about people who tend that way is that they have a very binary way of looking at things. They are right or wrong, good or bad, the right side of history or the wrong side of history, etc.

That's rather different than looking at things as sets of inter-related and interactive factors, more like an ecosystem, where changing one element will change others, where effects are complex, where desired outcomes often correlate to undesirable outcomes and you have to decide what trade offs you want to make, where there usually aren't any optimal courses of action.

One of the other things I have noticed is that for the ones on the left, it's often not immediately clear that they aren't complex thinkers, often they have university degrees, good jobs, a certain amount of cultural capital. People like Owen Jones. maybe.

That's a great and v relevant article.

At least all the parties agree that climate change is a very real issue; I was seriously challenged when I found myself agreeing with what Gove did for the environment (apologies if there were fuckups, I wasn't aware of them) after the monumental fuck up he did for education.

In the US this is still a left / right issue. I'm glad it's not here.

Not everyone here is particularly a fan of Grayson Perry but I saw his pre pandemic stage show where he very cleverly and hilariously wove a story of left v right (brexit focussed) which rather tricked you by asking you to "choose a side" and then by concluding there wasn't much difference in some things. He showed a table comparing Corbyn and Johnson and with their political beliefs taken away, they were the same person. White privately educated males.

It's Labour who've been fooled the most by the binary thinking around women. And the greens. I actually wish the greens would outright adopt the ideas of the deep green resistance who do not have any issues fighting to protect the planet and knowing what a woman is. They see the similarities in the abusers of the planet and abusers of women. as I feel that would then impact Labour.

Will listen to the radio prog when I can.

I love the ecosystem analogy and will remember that.

I’m autistic and so have had to “teach myself” shades of grey. I always look at this sort of stuff as like a game of chess - sure, you can predict 8 moves ahead and force your opponent’s next move - but there’s no accounting for a batshittery countermove!

it’s interesting to me that so many operate in this binary mode - because there sure as shit aren’t 1 in 3 autistic.

I think the binary thinking thing is actually from how young people are very tribal and community focussed - what ever that community is.

It's apparently a common natural phenomenon and was likely to be evolutionary; late teens/ early 20s would have been peak age for being very active members of a small society, generating social cohesion.

As you age apparently you tend to become less needy of a large group of people who all agree with you.

Personally peri menopause has made me less agreeable generally!

Now listening; really interesting including what she says about academia. Being unable to do certain types of research, so she is now free lance.

This is interesting about Rachel Reeves

Is Labour changing its mind on trans issues? | The Spectator

www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-labour-changing-its-mind-on-trans-issues-

That makes sense. Also, young people have a lot less life experience. I know when I was younger there were a lot of connections I didn't see because I had never observed them playing out over time. It's much easier to take a one sided perspective under those circumstances.

One of the most notable for me was watching an inner city community I had lived in over time. I had always believed that state social supports could only be helpful (unless they were just totally stupid,) and I'd dismissed the conservative argument that they could actually make communities less resilient or coherent. Except at a certain point I saw instances of that happening. And all of a sudden it became a much more difficult problem to balance the pros and cons of certain kinds of programs. And it was clear it was actually important to listen to other political tribes because their observations might be really important.

I think the fact that feminism has seen itself as a leftist movement has also created similar kinds of blind spots and overall weakened it as a movement.

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/politics-on-the-couch/id1507787935?i=1000569880310

Id also recommend this podcast with KS. She brilliant.

I'm still working my way through the programme thanks to multiple interruptions (mummy I made my ice cream into a new continent) and finding it quite mind blowing stuff, that I have to rewind to try to apply to society.

A key summary that Helen makes is that "going on about diversity has the opposite effect."

So basically over egging diversity training is causing more divisions and has the opposite effect.

Also really interesting discussion around how we evolved to live in smaller tightly banded groups and so are struggling with this larger society- hence finding communities with shared interests. (This is a genetic trait.)

I'm wondering if Kemi has read this stuff. As a feminist I'd like her; as a voter I'm still on the fence as I don't know her policies.

HarryTheLass · 17/07/2022 19:54
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/politics-on-the-couch/id1507787935?i=1000569880310

Id also recommend this podcast with KS. She brilliant.

I just wanted to thank you for this. I have to keep restarting it, and she speaks very quickly, but it is brilliant.