Where it was, shall we be: lessons from the authoritarian personality for Trump’s America

Abstract

This article revisits The authoritarian personality (Adorno et al, 1950) in the context of the weakness of the contemporary American left. After a review of the uniquely American locus of the work, the author argues that The authoritarian personality still has much to offer those interested in sociopolitical critique and resistance along psychodynamic lines. Specifically, where Adorno and his fellow researchers focused on the high scorers along the famous F-scale and their overt authoritarian potential, the author analyses what the study reveals about the low scorers. The author contests that these low-scoring individuals, although often vehemently oriented against prejudice, were revealed to be wildly inconsistent in their ability to resist dangerous and potentially authoritarian currents in the public sphere, which she then connects to the inconsistency of the contemporary left’s ability to effectively confront and critique the toxic Trump movement and regime. The author concludes by reframing these low scorers in the context of D.W. Winnicott’s theory of the True and False Self, with the aim of supporting more effective work towards the vivification of the left.