Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West

by R.R. Reno

The Authoritarian Personality is a long, sprawling report, full of charts, correlations, and interview transcripts. A great deal of the analysis depends upon a now-discredited Freudian theory of psychological development. The survey questions are tendentious and today would not pass muster in an undergraduate class in social psychology. But seventy years later, these shortcomings are of no importance to us. What’s striking is how familiar the analysis sounds. When the authors synthesize their results, they hit the notes of the emerging postwar consensus. The potential fascist is an American who was raised in a hierarchical family with black-and-white rules. His outlook on life is characterized by “conventionality” and “rigidity.” He engages in right-versus-wrong thinking that supports “the dichotomous conception of sex roles and of moral values.”20 This potential fascist has a “prejudiced outlook,” which conforms to the “ethnocentrist” mentality of the closed society. But the fascist mentality need not predominate. We have a different personality type in our midst, the authors observe. “There is a pattern characterized chiefly by affectionate, basically egalitarian, and permissive interpersonal relationships.”21 This personality type exhibits “greater flexibility” and adopts a more accepting disposition toward others. It embodies the virtues of an open society.