Followers

Egberto Willies of the Daily Kos community shares a few insights from Dr. Roy Eidelson, a psychologist and author of Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible. Eidelson also wrote an article “Authoritarians, Plutocrats, and the Fight for Racial Justice.”

Willies also interviewed Eidelson. Some thoughts from the interview.

An authoritarian leader gets nowhere without followers. Psychologist Bob Altemeyer identified three markers of an authoritarian follower.

The first is authoritarian submission, which involves strict obedience toward the designated leaders of a group. The second is authoritarian aggression, which takes the form of deep hostility toward those who appear to fall short of the group’s rigid standards. The third marker is conventionalism, which revolves around dutifully honoring and observing the group’s traditions and norms.

I’ll translate this into my usual system of ranking. These followers are obsessed with ranking and their place in the hierarchy. They don’t aspire to the top of the system and are submissive to those who are at the top. They dutifully honor the traditions of the hierarchy. However, they are hostile to those who don’t uphold the hierarchy or try to disrupt it.

Altemeyer reminds us the wealthy have built their privilege on the status quo – on the hierarchy as it exists – and are doing all they can to maintain that status quo. Those that try to upset the hierarchy, such as professional athletes taking a knee, are seen as threatening. These plutocrats share common ground with authoritarians. Neither group likes democracy.

Dr. Eidelson says most of us have five core concerns:

Vulnerability: Are we safe?
Injustice: Are we being treated fairly?
Trust: Who can we trust?
Superioritry: Are we good enough?
Helplessness: Can we control what happens to us?

The Plutocracy manipulate the authoritarian followers by manipulating perceptions of those core concerns.

Progressives can focus our message around these same core concerns. Addressing safety, fairness, trust, confidence, and control is a good message even if it doesn’t attract the authoritarian followers.