anniejohnson
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I've never seen the word so misused as on this forum. Please read this article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/05/curious-anti-authoritarian-definitions-and-divides/
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Real Definition Of Authoritarian Article
- Thread starter anniejohnson
- Start date
I see a lot of mental masturbation is going on with these political leftists in figuring out definitions, classifications and autistic abstractions for ideological constructs. The article you linked and it’s author Bruce Levine are apparently of a strong ideological and dogmatic nature. When I see this and his namesake my trust goes out the window and suspicions greatly rise since I know that the tactics of communists and other leftist extremists in the 20th century was to define definitions or own words in order to manipulate people because words are powerful.
Have any better definitions from a politically unbiased source, preferably linguists or academics that aren’t political activists?
Have any better definitions from a politically unbiased source, preferably linguists or academics that aren’t political activists?
Last edited:
"I've never seen the word so misused as on this forum."
@anniejohnson, you got a bone to pick grrrrl.
I am assuming that you do have a real bone to pick about the use of "authoritarianism" on this forum, despite the fact that you have linked to a piece that is really about those on the left should be more inclusive in their concept of "anti-authoritarianism", which as far as I can tell is not very relevant to the discussion of authoritarianism around Peat. Except to warn people from being too hard line about it, which ironically seems to be what you are doing here, in your suggestion that people are using that term wrong here.
Despite this I think there are a few things we can pick apart here. So I am going to treat this like something that more closely resembles a valid point making some assumptions about where you are coming from. If I err here, please do point it out.
To summarize the starting point, @anniejohnson, you are worried about what people here construe as authoritarianism, and you have linked an article that is primarily a plea to leftist intellectuals about *weakening* the definition of "anti-authoritarianism" to make it more inclusive. While, this seems prima facie to be pure nonsense, as though you just didn't get the point of the piece, I noticed that the author makes the same self-contradiction within the piece.
Gosh, a supposed think piece is content with a cartoon/straw man version of the Trump situation. I am not a fan of Trump and did not vote for him, but no real attempt is made to suggest why in a piece that is explicitly about expanding the anti-authoritarian tent, we are supposed to shrink the tent it in this particular case.
I say "no real" attempt. The conceit of the piece is that Trump is entirely authoritarian - like a fascist dictator lol. The first sentence of the piece establishes that it is for those who have already drunk this kind of crazy Kool aid.
Not liking Trump isn't enough... he is Mussolini! That a comparison between Mussolini's Italy and the present situation in the US strains credulity or anyone who has made a study of historical fascism. Similarly, it is a factual joke to compare Mussolini, the politician and Trump and reach the conclusion that they are quite similar. I say this despite the fact that Trump, has in fact said some things that remind me a bit of things Mussolini said. Clearly they are both extreme pragmatists. And yet to say that Trump is like a 20th Century fascist dictator is absurd. Absurd and an insult to the millions of victims who lost their lives, freedom of movement, etc. to actual fascist governments. Asserting otherwise immediately reveals someone as either an ignoramus or a zealot.
We can then see how the "argument" for all this in the linked piece is laughably bad. You see, Trump fits the dictionary definition of an authoritarian dictator! That puts him safely outside this anti-authoritarian tent we are otherwise trying to just, you know, EXPAND in this very woke think piece.
Sweet logical consistency! We can all be a bit shy of, you know, total communist anarchy, except for Trump and the ilk. And we have the f*c*i*g dictionary to prove it, lest anyone need the proof.
This amounts to a really weak bit of sophistry, which can be formalized like this
(1) Trump wants his employees to follow orders and is by some standard picky about it.
(2) Trump is a ******* fascist!
(3) He and those like him are the only one who can't claim some of the good ole anti-authoritarianism in all it's glory.
Yes, the argument here is that dumb... conflating one's attitudes about authoritarianism in different spheres so that he can call people fascists. It is, of course, not meant to be picked apart. Like many liberal "think pieces" it exists to help readers STOP thinking about things that might otherwise cause cognitive dissonance.
Those sparing references aside, what has this piece got to do with Trump, though? Nothing really. This piece exists to challenge the notion that
This has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion of authoritarianism on this site. It's completely irrelevant, leading to the suggestion that, @anniejohnson, you (a)experienced cognitive dissonance about the way authoritarianism has been discussed here, while (b)somehow thinking this article was relevant... and possibly also good, when it actually is largely irrelevant, and smacks of Levine facing an encroaching deadline without having any good ideas ready.
Even taken at face value, as a "pop scholarly" explanation of the lefty version of anarchism and anti-authoritarianism and how they should be less exclusive in all that, this is very poor attempt.
Let's start with that Very Definitive dictionary definition upon which the "logic" of all this rests. Here is the actual American Heritage dictionary entry The American Heritage Dictionary entry: authoritarianism
Turns out Levine only used definition #1. Wait wut? You mean in a piece where the sophistry relies on conflating different kinds of authoritarianism, the dictionary was here to tell us about those distinctions THE WHOLE ENTIRE TIME? But we had to actually read the source to know that, something Levine fully knows most people won't do? All in order to make a profoundly stupid argument about how more leftists should join their radical cause because dictionary seem slightly more coherent? Shocking, I know. Things are this dismal.
Levine goes on to cite only decided radical leftists in the history of anarchism, as opposed to the broader reality of that history. Including for example Robert Nozick, the Harvard anarchist who published the inluential Anarchy, State and Utopia in the 1960's would risk disturbing the thin layer of propaganda that is so lazily applied here -- revealing uncomfortably what leftist thought was actually like before it was taken over almost completely by neo-liberals/neo-Marxists. I am going to move on here, but suffice to say that the examples here are shamelessly cherry picked and the author clearly assumes the audience won't care.
Now here is a quick look at CounterPunch!
It's editors describe it as "muckraking with a radical attitude and nothing makes us happier than when CounterPunch readers write in to say how useful they've found our newsletter in their battles against the war machine, big business and the rapers of nature."
Welcome to CounterPunch
Gosh, I am not a particular fan of any of those things... maybe I am a radical Marxist too?
But, oh, look, here is another leftist... someone equally comfortable throwing around terms like "war party". And they have a few little qualms aout CounterPoint.
Antifa or Antiwar: Leftist Exclusionism Against the Quest for Peace
Um wuttt? Look this is too much to go into here, but CounterPoint -- the radical LEFTist publication -- was apparently infiltrated by one of those spies. You know the kind the Democrats have been frothing at the mouth about for a months until they finally stopped because there just wasn't much there? But one of the actual examples was -- stop me from crying here, folks -- this journalist who published frothy anti-Russia pieces on CounterPunch.
CounterPunch - Wikipedia
Here another leftist journalist exposes how CounterPunch uses nasty smear tactics against other activists that don't quite agree with them. Because they are for a big tent, y'all. All that stuff before was real, because a guy, like said it.
How to Maliciously Smear Your Critics (and Not Get Away with It)
Look I am sorry for the sarcasm, really, it's out of control at this point. @anniejohnson it seems to me you are trying out -- or perhaps deep into -- an ideology that resolves uncomfortable issues by pseudo-intellectual pretension.
I have said this is all largely irrelevant, but I also said I'd treat your post seriously. So seriously there IS a dissonance between the way authoritarian is discussed here and how it would be discussed by such a prestigious leftist publication as CounterPunch.
Here is a question: is it anti-authoritarian of Trump do things that limit the size of government or the growth of government? It seems obvious to me that the answer would be yes. I am not saying everything he has done is in that category. Is it a bit ironic that Trump is rumored to want a lot of loyalty from those around him? Yes, although I think it's worth pointing out here that in general, in most boss/underling type situations the underlying who don't follow orders generally get fired, so this is a bit of a nonsense criticism. However, it is self-evident that both of these things could hold at the same time.
Better discussions of such matters have certainly pointed out the seeming distinctions within capitalism, which is so much about economic freedom at one level, to support the sort of companies which, by and large, use hierarchical and authoritarian models within them. Is this an internal tension that will one day inherently lead to the demise of capitalism? Nope. It is in fact the freedom at one level that allows people to get together into smaller units that are often based on more of a loyalty or authority dynamic. But in a free society you can move in and out of those groups at will. It's a bit of a yin yang thing, when you think about it, and also sort of explain why when socialist bureaucrats get control in real life, they often do things that seem anti-family and/or reorganize corporations. They literally need to turn things inside out to fulfill the radical vision. Which you know, anyone is welcome to join up with. It's a big tent, guys.
There are only a handful socialist type thinkers I find very insightful, and Ray Peat is one of them. They seem to end up as "outsiders" to the "big tent" because they recognize coercion and authoritarianism for what it is. What Levine runs big circles around. Authoritarianism in Western society is so much bigger than Trump. The fact is that all kinds of government in modern times just have a lot of influence, and while some of the rules might be justified, the fundamental situation of a gang of people who are "in charge" and hurt you in various ways if you don't comply with their (perhaps liberal) view of society is a stressor. It's part of a modern milieu of stressors that people have to deal with. That is a relevant point here, and loving particular kinds of radical government doesn't change it.
@anniejohnson if you want to understand authoritarianism (and it seems like that, rather than anti-authoritarianism is where you are exploring), I suggest breaking a small local ordinance -- the tiniest thing you can imagine -- in such a way that you know you will be caught. Jaywalk in front of a traffic cop, for example... walking towards, her for example, in order to minimize effort. You will probably be asked to pay a fine. Don't pay it. Continue to disobey in this tiniest of matters for a while, until they eventually come to enforce a summons. Don't comply with the people who come to take you away, and see for yourself how safe your body and life are as you continue disobeying in this smallest of matters. Eventually you will come to understand that there is no law so small that they won't eventually physically harm you for it, or at least put you in prison where you will very likely be harmed by others.
This is why one can't just happily invoke a concept of "good authority" with waving of the hands. There is a real sense in which there is not any "spectrum" of authority. Either it is is exercised or not, and resisters will be punished with increasing severity until they comply. Neoliberals of course, love the latter, because how else can you have a mainstream cult of all that is right and good, you know, enforce it's right and good will upon the masses? But they aren't so happy about what I pointed out just prior, that there is in fact a bright line that the willingness to use force crosses, and that that governments have to cross it if they want to enforce the slightest rule. What I seen in Levine's piece is the kind of convoluted circles that someone will try to avoid hitting on these points.
It is actually neoliberalism has a convoluted relationship with anti-authoritarism. To wit, proper progressivism requires power and yet, "fight the man" is always promoted to naive radicals as a genuine alternative to all the bad, old uses of power that came before. The underlying dissonance is the real genesis of kind of piece linked by the OP and the reason that the liberal in crowd are obsessed with endless nuances of inclusivity vs exclusivity.
@anniejohnson, you got a bone to pick grrrrl.
I am assuming that you do have a real bone to pick about the use of "authoritarianism" on this forum, despite the fact that you have linked to a piece that is really about those on the left should be more inclusive in their concept of "anti-authoritarianism", which as far as I can tell is not very relevant to the discussion of authoritarianism around Peat. Except to warn people from being too hard line about it, which ironically seems to be what you are doing here, in your suggestion that people are using that term wrong here.
Despite this I think there are a few things we can pick apart here. So I am going to treat this like something that more closely resembles a valid point making some assumptions about where you are coming from. If I err here, please do point it out.
To summarize the starting point, @anniejohnson, you are worried about what people here construe as authoritarianism, and you have linked an article that is primarily a plea to leftist intellectuals about *weakening* the definition of "anti-authoritarianism" to make it more inclusive. While, this seems prima facie to be pure nonsense, as though you just didn't get the point of the piece, I noticed that the author makes the same self-contradiction within the piece.
Gosh, a supposed think piece is content with a cartoon/straw man version of the Trump situation. I am not a fan of Trump and did not vote for him, but no real attempt is made to suggest why in a piece that is explicitly about expanding the anti-authoritarian tent, we are supposed to shrink the tent it in this particular case.
I say "no real" attempt. The conceit of the piece is that Trump is entirely authoritarian - like a fascist dictator lol. The first sentence of the piece establishes that it is for those who have already drunk this kind of crazy Kool aid.
Not liking Trump isn't enough... he is Mussolini! That a comparison between Mussolini's Italy and the present situation in the US strains credulity or anyone who has made a study of historical fascism. Similarly, it is a factual joke to compare Mussolini, the politician and Trump and reach the conclusion that they are quite similar. I say this despite the fact that Trump, has in fact said some things that remind me a bit of things Mussolini said. Clearly they are both extreme pragmatists. And yet to say that Trump is like a 20th Century fascist dictator is absurd. Absurd and an insult to the millions of victims who lost their lives, freedom of movement, etc. to actual fascist governments. Asserting otherwise immediately reveals someone as either an ignoramus or a zealot.
We can then see how the "argument" for all this in the linked piece is laughably bad. You see, Trump fits the dictionary definition of an authoritarian dictator! That puts him safely outside this anti-authoritarian tent we are otherwise trying to just, you know, EXPAND in this very woke think piece.
Sweet logical consistency! We can all be a bit shy of, you know, total communist anarchy, except for Trump and the ilk. And we have the f*c*i*g dictionary to prove it, lest anyone need the proof.
This amounts to a really weak bit of sophistry, which can be formalized like this
(1) Trump wants his employees to follow orders and is by some standard picky about it.
(2) Trump is a ******* fascist!
(3) He and those like him are the only one who can't claim some of the good ole anti-authoritarianism in all it's glory.
Yes, the argument here is that dumb... conflating one's attitudes about authoritarianism in different spheres so that he can call people fascists. It is, of course, not meant to be picked apart. Like many liberal "think pieces" it exists to help readers STOP thinking about things that might otherwise cause cognitive dissonance.
Those sparing references aside, what has this piece got to do with Trump, though? Nothing really. This piece exists to challenge the notion that
This has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion of authoritarianism on this site. It's completely irrelevant, leading to the suggestion that, @anniejohnson, you (a)experienced cognitive dissonance about the way authoritarianism has been discussed here, while (b)somehow thinking this article was relevant... and possibly also good, when it actually is largely irrelevant, and smacks of Levine facing an encroaching deadline without having any good ideas ready.
Even taken at face value, as a "pop scholarly" explanation of the lefty version of anarchism and anti-authoritarianism and how they should be less exclusive in all that, this is very poor attempt.
Let's start with that Very Definitive dictionary definition upon which the "logic" of all this rests. Here is the actual American Heritage dictionary entry The American Heritage Dictionary entry: authoritarianism
Turns out Levine only used definition #1. Wait wut? You mean in a piece where the sophistry relies on conflating different kinds of authoritarianism, the dictionary was here to tell us about those distinctions THE WHOLE ENTIRE TIME? But we had to actually read the source to know that, something Levine fully knows most people won't do? All in order to make a profoundly stupid argument about how more leftists should join their radical cause because dictionary seem slightly more coherent? Shocking, I know. Things are this dismal.
Levine goes on to cite only decided radical leftists in the history of anarchism, as opposed to the broader reality of that history. Including for example Robert Nozick, the Harvard anarchist who published the inluential Anarchy, State and Utopia in the 1960's would risk disturbing the thin layer of propaganda that is so lazily applied here -- revealing uncomfortably what leftist thought was actually like before it was taken over almost completely by neo-liberals/neo-Marxists. I am going to move on here, but suffice to say that the examples here are shamelessly cherry picked and the author clearly assumes the audience won't care.
Now here is a quick look at CounterPunch!
It's editors describe it as "muckraking with a radical attitude and nothing makes us happier than when CounterPunch readers write in to say how useful they've found our newsletter in their battles against the war machine, big business and the rapers of nature."
Welcome to CounterPunch
Gosh, I am not a particular fan of any of those things... maybe I am a radical Marxist too?
But, oh, look, here is another leftist... someone equally comfortable throwing around terms like "war party". And they have a few little qualms aout CounterPoint.
Antifa or Antiwar: Leftist Exclusionism Against the Quest for Peace
Um wuttt? Look this is too much to go into here, but CounterPoint -- the radical LEFTist publication -- was apparently infiltrated by one of those spies. You know the kind the Democrats have been frothing at the mouth about for a months until they finally stopped because there just wasn't much there? But one of the actual examples was -- stop me from crying here, folks -- this journalist who published frothy anti-Russia pieces on CounterPunch.
CounterPunch - Wikipedia
Here another leftist journalist exposes how CounterPunch uses nasty smear tactics against other activists that don't quite agree with them. Because they are for a big tent, y'all. All that stuff before was real, because a guy, like said it.
How to Maliciously Smear Your Critics (and Not Get Away with It)
Look I am sorry for the sarcasm, really, it's out of control at this point. @anniejohnson it seems to me you are trying out -- or perhaps deep into -- an ideology that resolves uncomfortable issues by pseudo-intellectual pretension.
I have said this is all largely irrelevant, but I also said I'd treat your post seriously. So seriously there IS a dissonance between the way authoritarian is discussed here and how it would be discussed by such a prestigious leftist publication as CounterPunch.
Here is a question: is it anti-authoritarian of Trump do things that limit the size of government or the growth of government? It seems obvious to me that the answer would be yes. I am not saying everything he has done is in that category. Is it a bit ironic that Trump is rumored to want a lot of loyalty from those around him? Yes, although I think it's worth pointing out here that in general, in most boss/underling type situations the underlying who don't follow orders generally get fired, so this is a bit of a nonsense criticism. However, it is self-evident that both of these things could hold at the same time.
Better discussions of such matters have certainly pointed out the seeming distinctions within capitalism, which is so much about economic freedom at one level, to support the sort of companies which, by and large, use hierarchical and authoritarian models within them. Is this an internal tension that will one day inherently lead to the demise of capitalism? Nope. It is in fact the freedom at one level that allows people to get together into smaller units that are often based on more of a loyalty or authority dynamic. But in a free society you can move in and out of those groups at will. It's a bit of a yin yang thing, when you think about it, and also sort of explain why when socialist bureaucrats get control in real life, they often do things that seem anti-family and/or reorganize corporations. They literally need to turn things inside out to fulfill the radical vision. Which you know, anyone is welcome to join up with. It's a big tent, guys.
There are only a handful socialist type thinkers I find very insightful, and Ray Peat is one of them. They seem to end up as "outsiders" to the "big tent" because they recognize coercion and authoritarianism for what it is. What Levine runs big circles around. Authoritarianism in Western society is so much bigger than Trump. The fact is that all kinds of government in modern times just have a lot of influence, and while some of the rules might be justified, the fundamental situation of a gang of people who are "in charge" and hurt you in various ways if you don't comply with their (perhaps liberal) view of society is a stressor. It's part of a modern milieu of stressors that people have to deal with. That is a relevant point here, and loving particular kinds of radical government doesn't change it.
@anniejohnson if you want to understand authoritarianism (and it seems like that, rather than anti-authoritarianism is where you are exploring), I suggest breaking a small local ordinance -- the tiniest thing you can imagine -- in such a way that you know you will be caught. Jaywalk in front of a traffic cop, for example... walking towards, her for example, in order to minimize effort. You will probably be asked to pay a fine. Don't pay it. Continue to disobey in this tiniest of matters for a while, until they eventually come to enforce a summons. Don't comply with the people who come to take you away, and see for yourself how safe your body and life are as you continue disobeying in this smallest of matters. Eventually you will come to understand that there is no law so small that they won't eventually physically harm you for it, or at least put you in prison where you will very likely be harmed by others.
This is why one can't just happily invoke a concept of "good authority" with waving of the hands. There is a real sense in which there is not any "spectrum" of authority. Either it is is exercised or not, and resisters will be punished with increasing severity until they comply. Neoliberals of course, love the latter, because how else can you have a mainstream cult of all that is right and good, you know, enforce it's right and good will upon the masses? But they aren't so happy about what I pointed out just prior, that there is in fact a bright line that the willingness to use force crosses, and that that governments have to cross it if they want to enforce the slightest rule. What I seen in Levine's piece is the kind of convoluted circles that someone will try to avoid hitting on these points.
It is actually neoliberalism has a convoluted relationship with anti-authoritarism. To wit, proper progressivism requires power and yet, "fight the man" is always promoted to naive radicals as a genuine alternative to all the bad, old uses of power that came before. The underlying dissonance is the real genesis of kind of piece linked by the OP and the reason that the liberal in crowd are obsessed with endless nuances of inclusivity vs exclusivity.
Last edited:
Amazoniac
Member
I thought that the tone of the thread was meant to be funny, akin to stating that reading the following material on authoritarianism should be mandatory:
- Academic authoritarians, language, metaphor, animals, and science
- Academic authoritarians, language, metaphor, animals, and science
"Bob Altemeyer spent his career studying the authoritarian personality, and has identified its defining traits as conventionalism, submission to authority, and aggression, as sanctioned by the authorities. His last book, The Authoritarians (2006) is available on the internet."
Last edited:
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