A more useful way to think about authoritarianism

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When I found myself as the Director of the First Year Composition program, I also found myself in the same odd conversation more than once. A student would come to me outraged that they were being held to the same standards as the other students. At first I thought I was misunderstanding, but they meant it. They sincerely believed that, for reasons, it was “unfair” (that was the term they used) for them held to the same standards as other students. They weren’t claiming any kind of disability, but just … well…privilege.

I came across a similar argument when reading arguments for slavery, on the part of people who claimed to be Christian. They openly rejected “Do unto others as you have done unto you”—a way of behaving that would have made slavery impossible–in favor of some really vexed readings of Scripture. They rejected a law Jesus very clearly said in favor of problematic translations and comparisons. (In other words, they were antinomian when it came to Jesus’ laws.) For them, hierarchy was important, and the ideal hierarchy was rigid, with one’s place on the hierarchy determined by various criteria that were often regional (race, gender, wealth, source of wealth, religion, family standing, occupation, place of origin, political affiliation, and so on).

That’s how authoritarianism works. It’s a way of thinking about politics, organizations, families, and/or communities that says the ideal system is a rigid hierarchy of power (people have the “right” to dominate the people or groups below them) and privilege (people on a hierarchy should submit to those above them,). That hierarchy of domination and submission means that people should not do unto others, and should not be held to the same standards. The paradox is that people who claim to be higher on the hierarchy because they are better people hold themselves and others like them to lower standards than people below them.

There are a few other interesting points about that hierarchy. People believed that the categories that justified the hierarchy were Real, created by some kind of higher power (Nature, Biology, God), and therefore Eternal.

That belief that the categories were Eternal meant that they took what were actually very recent practices and projected them back through history. For instance, pro-slavery rhetors could thereby ignore that the kind of slavery practiced in the US in the 19th century was relatively recent in almost every way, and not how slavery operated in Jesus’ time or before (the closest would be the Helots).

Another confusing paradox is that people who believe in a stable and Real hierarchy are saying, quite clearly, that they are born with certain privileges by virtue of family and so on—they will insist that they are entitled to getting better treatment and being held to lower standards—but they get very, very mad if you point out that they have privilege, so they are asserting and denying they have privilege.

At the end of this, I’ll explain my crank theory as to what’s going on with that asserting and denying of privilege, but I want to make a few other points about that hierarchy of submission and domination first. It’s very common, across various cultures, religions, organizations, businesses, but it isn’t universal. Many years ago, Arthur Lovejoy pointed out that what he called “The Great Chain of Being” has a long tradition in Western theology and philosophy. Although the term is medieval, the concept of all creation consisting of a hierarchy goes at least as far back as Plato’s Timaeus. Eighteenth century natural philosophy began the long and tragic tendency to insist on a “natural” hierarchy of ethnicities. Although Darwin was explicit that evolution was not necessarily progressive, and rejected the hierarchy of species, it was so ingrained after Linnaeus that he was largely ignored. “Darwinism” was weaponized to support a stable hierarchy of beings that was not at all what he meant.

The narrative that the hierarchy was ontologically grounded (that is Real) meant that any disruption in the hierarchy was “unnatural”—that is, a violation of nature. That claim has/had two odd consequences. It meant asserting that hierarchical systems are more stable, and less prone to conflict, which led to another backward projection: that there used to be a time of stable hierarchy, and it didn’t have social disruption.

The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages is sometimes cited as an example of such a stable hierarchy that was associated with a lack of rebellion—people will sometimes claim was stable and peaceable (Chesterton, for instance). In actuality, it was neither. While peasant revolts were fairly unusual until the 14th century, there was constant conflict in Europe, with various political and religious leaders disagreeing (quite violently) about just what the hierarchy was, all the time asserting that there was a Real and natural hierarchy, and claiming that they were enacting that Real one. And, keep in mind, these were Catholics killing other Catholics, or Christians killing other Christians. Sometimes they were major wars over religious issues (e.g., the 13th century Albigensian Crusade), sometimes executions and persecutions of heretical sects (e.g., various forms of Gnosticism), and sometimes they were political in nature. Christian troops sacked both Constantinople and Rome, after all.

Neither the political nor religious hierarchies were actually all that stable or peaceful. There were constantly heretical sects, internal conflicts—if the Catholic hierarchy created peace and order, why did the Pope have an army that was used against other Catholics?

The fantasy that there is no conflict in a rigid hierarchical structure is just that—a fantasy.

So, why do people simultaneously claim and deny that they have privilege? I think for similar reasons that people claim that there were long periods in history with no conflict. They need to believe (and claim) that hierarchy provides stability in order to feel better about their status and authoritarian politics. It’s about feelings.

The notion of a hierarchy of privilege makes people really comfortable (“I’m owed this”) and uncomfortable (because it isn’t something they did other than be born). They want to believe that they have privilege because they have earned it. But, oddly enough, they earned it by being born to their family. When they’re arguing for things to which they feel entitled because of privilege, then privilege is a useful concept, and they invoke it. But, when others point out that they might have privilege because of to whom they were born, they feel that they’re being accused of never having to work at all, and so they get mad.

But notice that I’m not saying that authoritarianism is far left, far right, or both. In fact, it’s the whole problem of authoritarianism that should make people stop trying to make politics a binary or continuum. At the very least, there are two axes—one about degree of governmental support for a social safety net (if we’re talking about domestic policy), and another one for commitment to authoritarianism. To what extent do we think people who disagree with us should be treated as we want to be treated. And it’s that second axis that is predictor of democracy ending.

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