Authoritarianism of the left was ignored until climate change made it palatable

Evidence

Unquestionably there was some gratification for American social psychology during this period in the theory of the authoritarian personality which exposed the fear, the stupidity, and the sadism in nationalistic and reactionary politics. Was there perhaps also some distortion of truth in the service of values? If so, it was not so blatant as Jaensch’s, not so obviously unsupported by evidence, not in the service of the state, perhaps not there at all. Still the authors of the 1950 study were not much interested in what has come to be called authoritarianism of the left. Interest in authoritarianism of the left apparently had to wait upon a change of the political climate, a time when disillusionment with communism was general among American intellectuals. It is not easy to do sound social psychological research on contemporary issues because any finding is, in these circumstances, a social force. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 434

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the mirror-image critique often leveled at liberal bias in social psychology; also echoes Milgram/Adorno debates about whether the F-scale measures right-wing authoritarianism only.
• SEED: An essay angle: how the political climate constrains which authoritarianisms get studied, and the ‘final sentence’ point that findings themselves act as social forces — research as intervention.