OpEdNews - Page 2 of Article: The Fast Lane To Fascism: A Review of John Dean's "Conservatives

Fundamentalism, you see, seems to provide a safe harbor, a simple "quiet" way in the midst of all the world's ambiguity and "noise," that helps in dealing with the frightening and contradictory cacaphony outside the religion. There is good and there is evil, a right way and a wrong way, Revealed Truth and dangerous falsehood, you're with us or with our enemies, that sort of simplistic understanding of the world. Gott Mit Uns -- God is on our side, so why should we compromise with or pay attention to those who do not believe in The Truth?

But, says Dean, in addition to the doctrinal underpinnings, something in the personality of many fundamentalist religious leaders, and their followers, may be working even more strongly: a built-in tendency toward authoritarianism.

He quotes from voluminous studies by social psychologist/researcher Bob Altemeyer, who -- after examining the attitude of tens of thousands of subjects in interviews and questionnaires -- concluded that "acceptance of traditional religious beliefs appear to have more to do with having a personality rich in authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, and conventionalism, than with the beliefs per se."

LYING AS STANDARD MODUS OPERANDI

Dean says he writes as "a conservative who is deeply troubled by what has become of a treasured philosophy. Conservatism has been co-opted by authoritarians, a most dangerous type of political animal."

"[A]t heart," he writes, those in charge of the Republican party "are tough, cold-blooded, ruthless ... tolerate no dissent, use dissembling as their standard modus operandi, and have pushed their governing authority beyond the law and Constitution ... [O]ur nation's founders relied on reason, which is anathema for many of today's conservatives. ... [They] cannot be trusted to exercise the powers of government responsibly."

Conservatives, Altemeyer found, often engaged in right-wing aggression not only out of political belief but also "for the pure pleasure of it ... [They are] malicious, mean-spirited, and disrespectful of even the basic codes of civility ... [A]uthoritarians have little if any conscience when pursuing their causes, and reason gives way to expediency."

THE NEED FOR DOMINATION

Altemeyer and other social scientists who have done the ground-breaking research on authoritarianism have also found that many political conservatives, both leaders and followers, possess "a need to dominate others."

Dean reminds us of the famous '60s experiment by Dr. Stanley Milgram where college students readily inflicted electrical shocks (or what they thought were such shocks) on supposed prisoners in their care because the supervising scientist in a white coat told them to do so, despite the prisoners' seeming writhing in pain. The experiment revealed in most of the subjects a clear readiness to bow to the orders of authority figures. Decades later, we saw photos and videotape of normal young U.S. soldiers tormenting, humiliating and torturing prisoners in their care at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. The hard-wiring is there and switches on in optimal social situations.

According to Altemeyer's research, "authoritarian aggression is fueled by fear and encouraged by remarkable self-righteousness, which frees aggressive impulses. ... [Lying is] easy for right-wing authoritarians to do because of their remarkable self-righteousness."

Not only do political conservatives tend to follow authority figures' orders more often, Altemeyer's research revealed, but they are "intolerant of criticism of their authorities, because they believe the authority is unassailably correct." In short, their leaders do not lie; but when they are found to have lied, they did so for good, godly reasons. After all, the righteous end justifies all means.

Outbreaks of dangerous authoritarianism have occurred throughout our nation's history, notes Dean, but the CheneyBush Administration has taken social authoritarianism to the extreme -- with Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay as dominator poster-boys for the movement.

They may think of what they are doing as akin to playing political chess, but, if so, it's a political game with extremely lethal consequences. Unlike most other examples of previous authoritarianism in earlier U.S. administrations, now when the leaders lie, a large number of people die. Another such example would be what happened in Europe in the 1930s; see ##"The Easy Slide Into Fascism: Germany in 1933." ( www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-1933.htm )

Most everything in the Bush Administration is done for political reasons, often to feed its rock-solid fundamentalist/evangelical base. Rove's tested election strategy is built upon that base. By hook or by crook or by fraud -- dropping hundreds of thousands of Dem voters off a state's rolls, tying up oppositional phone lines, perhaps altering ballot tallies, and so on -- he's able to claim one more vote than the opposition and feels free then to assert that the GOP now has a "mandate" to rule.

And, of course, the run-up to the election is orchestrated to the drumbeat of constant fear and fright, against real or imagined enemies; these days, the buzzworded scapegoats are "gays," "illegal immigrants," "atheists," and that oldie-but-goodie "terrorists." (When the Bush Administration "continues to raise the threat of terrorism but refuses to implement even the minimum measures recommended by the [9/11] commission," writes Dean, "it is clear they are playing the politics of fear.")

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