American New Deal evidence undermined the Frankfurt assumption that authoritarianism was decaying

Evidence

In the second half of the 1930s, there could be no more doubt about the ability of Nazism to survive, and the undermining of the family and the increasing reduction in unemployment seemed to match perfectly well the requirement that the individual’s character should conform to authoritarian social conditions. Under these conditions, the Institute’s original point of view could not be maintained. At the same time, the Roosevelt period in the USA showed that, even in non-fascist states, authoritarian (or subservient) thinking and behaviour was not decaying, even in the long term, but rather increasing. … Roosevelt himself had spoken of an `authoritarian experiment’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1030

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the earlier chapter on the authoritarian personality: the shift here prefigures the later ‘authoritarian character’ research program that replaced the family-authority project. — connects to: The New Deal convinced Neumann that militant democracy could succeed; The Roosevelt New Deal convinced Neumann that militant democracy could solve Germany’s failures — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 939