Bob Altemeyer and Right Wing Authoritarians

Bob Altemeyer is a Dr of psychology who wrote the book, The Authoritarians, which you can get it for free as a PDF from his site given below.

Although Bob Altimeter studied right wing authoritarian people most of his academic life he never really ever got to like them much.

 

From his research he found that right wing authoritarians tend to be hypocrites who can hold all sorts of conflicting views without given it a moment’s thought, and in this way they are like filing cabinets which can store totally incompatible data and never lose a night’s sleep over it.

He prefers to call authoritarian people right wing authoritarians (RWA) because he says authoritarian people are seldom found on the left in the West because they tend to be anti establishment.  

 

Authoritarian people are often ethnocentric and prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities and homosexuals.

 

In a study by Altemeyer authoritarians played a three-hour simulation of the Earth's future entitled the Global change game.

 

Unlike a comparison game played by individuals with low Right Wing Authoritarian scores, which resulted in world peace, the simulation by authoritarians became highly militarized and eventually entered the stage of nuclear war.

 

By the end of the high authoritarian game, the entire population of the earth was declared dead

Authoritarians will always blindly follow the ruling establishment in their societies, and so in communist countries they will be fiercely communist, in theocratic countries they will be religious zealots, in fascist countries they are right wing hard nuts with boots on the ground, and in capitalist countries they are very Conservative ultra pure free market zealots.

 

RWA’s will usually believe that those in charge are always right – like fathers, school teachers,  the police, or the ruling establishment - and so if a person doesn’t tow the line and does what he is told they believe he should be severely reprimanded, or punished.

 

RWA’s are usual true patriots who can be relied upon to blindly go to war for their leaders. RWA’s have a high morality along with a black and white sense of right and wrong with no grey areas or ambiguity in-between, so they see the world as either good and evil, or us and them. Kill all enemies!

 

RWA’s tend not to like being leaders and prefer to have bosses instead. There’re the loyal foot soldiers.

The leaders of RW authoritarians are of two types.

 

1) One type is often psychopathic, or will have strong narcissistic personality traits, and can be found as religious leaders, or cult leaders, or leaders of any type of organisations where they will exploit their followers and make lots of money. These people have no morality, or ethics, whatsoever and they will fool gullible followers into giving up everything they own handing it over to them. Many evangelical Christian faith healers are also in this group too. (A Good documentary about this coming soon).  

 

2) The other type of leader is much rarer and is considered a mixed type, i.e., they will have very strong authoritarian traits with a high morality when judging other people, but when it comes to judging themselves they behave like selfish narcissists, or psychopaths.

These people are the most dangerous of them all, say’s Dr Altemeyer, because they strive to become our political leaders while driven by very strong convictions - and also by greed and lust for power - while having very little empathy for the suffering they cause to others even when it is on a grand scale and millions might die.

 

Bob Altemer’s book is very readable and entertaining where his take on authoritarians is often amusing. It’s one of the most interesting books I have read.   

Bob Altemeyer's - The Authoritarians blog, with a free book.

https://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Free Calibre software to convert PDF's files to other readable forms, like Kindle.

 

It is quite safe to download and has no third party software.

http://calibre-ebook.com/download