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Comment by scottlocklin

5 years ago

I agree that "burn the heretic" has been normal human behavior for a long time: you can see it at work now, mostly among left wing authoritarians. You might have noticed them: they've been hard at work forming mobs firing people for expressing opinions, and lately tearing down statues (literal iconoclasm: a la Calvinism in the 16th century, or Taliban now) and burning down American cities. They'd all be extremely low in RWA score, which is why I assert that this "measurement" is simply a republican (aka classical liberal) detector.

Classical liberals are not meaningfully authoritarian in any sense of the word; though of course there have been historical aberrations (pre-Salazar Portugal could have been considered both Authoritarian and classical liberal, as I suppose were some post-war governments).

I agree that the book doesn't use a meaningful definition of "authoritarian." That's all I'm trying to say here. The author is some kind of nut attempting to demonize the half of America that doesn't vote his way as being "authoritarians." He also wants to "cure" them. That seems .... kind of authoritarian.

On those details: Evola ... I mean, the man is about as influential as Miguel Serrano or any other fascist crank who persisted too long into the 20th century. Who cares what he says? It's burbling nonsense. Toole's character was a farce designed to make fun of Evolan types (pretty sure anyway; maybe it had an element of self mockery). And Dreher is a hipster ding dong whose hipsterness consists in having read "Confederacy of Dunces."

I know actually right wing and actually religious people who would score high on this "RWA" scale. They're not authoritarian at all! Much more accepting of divergences from their beliefs than even modern American centrists.

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scottlocklin

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082349872349872  5 years ago

I agree that online virtual bullying mobs[1] are only a few steps[2] away from offline physical lynching mobs. Compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24798617 for my thoughts on how to filter for authoritarian followers of whatever political persuasion.

How can "would score high" and "accepting of divergences from their beliefs" not be disjoint?

As far as I can tell, the author is not advocating to "cure" people for not voting his way, he's advocating to "cure" people who are tempted to use the bullet box instead of the ballot box[3] to make him live their way. I'm pretty sure classical liberals, being live and let live, would score very low on this test.

Thanks for reassuring me about Dreher and Evola[4], I was introduced to them via HN, so I have no idea how widespread their thought may be offline. Agree that Toole was writing a parody version of the question of political or theoretic lives which was treated in a serious manner by Boethius in Consolation of Philosophy and Hesse in The Glass Bead Game. I wouldn't be surprised if Dr. Talc (a substance useful when changing diapers?) didn't also have elements of self mockery.

[1] did I forget to mention that apparently former CPSU members scored highly on RWA? Examples of questions I think left wing authoritarian followers might score highly on in the current context: 1, 5, 7, 17, 19, 22. Maybe for the current times the author, who notes in the first chapter that in the early twenty-first century the times of quoting Chairman Mao were long over, ought to ask about the appropriate use of Madame Guillotine?

[2] In the context of online cancellation mobs, moving from "harassment" through "punish", "maim", and "torture", on to "liquidate". To me it seems the easiest way to address mob cancellation is to only allow termination for cause, but even that wouldn't have saved the NYT editor (who had published Cotton's OpEd sight unseen).

[3] bullet box metaphor lifted from an FBI indictment. For my sanity, I should stop reading those things. (but they're horribly fascinating: over here people bring rifles to the range, not to demos.)

[4] I get Ubuntu from Evola because he's always rabbiting on about the atomisation of modernity. I'm not sure quite what he's for, as he seems to take it for granted his readers already do, but given the expressed love of hierarchy, I think he's big on social relations:

    Left wing ubuntu: symmetric, transitive, and reflexive 
    Right wing ubuntu: antisymmetric, transitive, and reflexive

not to mention keeping relations up not only with those alive today but also with those of our Tradition.

  • scottlocklin  5 years ago

    >How can "would score high" and "accepting of divergences from their beliefs" not be disjoint?

    Simple: the scale, as I keep saying, is total bullshit. Someone's opinion on nudism or sexual dimorphism doesn't influence their day to day behavior or tendency to throw people out of helicopters in the way the author of the scale thinks they do. Hell; the Nazis were pro-nudist and an awful lot of them were screechingly gay (and all of them accepting of their screechingly gay comrades) ... in the 1920s and 30s, when that sort of thing was a lot less popular.