Authoritarian loyalty tracks whichever government one grew up under

Evidence

Similarly, the mirror-image studies of American-Soviet perceptions show that the High RWAs on both sides of the Cold War were most likely to believe their government’s portrayal of the conflict. Right-wing authoritarians tended to be the Cold War warriors, distrusting and threatening each other, bitterly opposed to the other’s system. Yet High RWAs on both sides could easily have been in the front ranks on the other side, had they grown up to be the same kind of person in the other country. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1917

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mirror-image finding shows authoritarian submission is structurally interchangeable — same personality type, opposite content — a genuinely unsettling claim about the plasticity of authoritarian allegiance.