Demagogues exploit authoritarian insecurity by externalizing blame onto outgroups

Evidence

Allport suggested that demagogues, and their racist, ethnocentric, nationalist, and fascist rhetoric, would arouse and direct the insecurity and fears of authoritarian personalities towards particular targets, and into particular channels. Demagogues would arise and be particularly successful in social conditions characterized by insecurity, change, innovation, diversity, unconventionality, and instability. “Authoritarian personalities,” Allport argued, “cannot face all this indefiniteness, unconventionality, and loss of familiar anchorage” (1954/1979, p. 413). In these conditions the rhetoric of the demagogue would activate the authoritarians’ yearnings for stability, security, cohesion, and order, and direct it towards the “familiar anchorage” of ethnocentric nationalism and traditionalism. Their dissatisfaction, frustration, and fearfulness would be channeled into blame and hate directed at minorities, immigrants, outgroups, liberals, intellectuals, and radicals. Thus, “demagogy invites the externalization of hatred and anxiety: it is an institutionalized aid to projection … By declaring that every social issue is the result of out-group misconduct, the demagogue consistently avoids focusing his followers’ attention on their own painful inner conflicts” (1954/ 1979, p. 419). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2434

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the demagogue and authoritarian personality literature, and to Allport’s own earlier work; also resonates with theories of moral panic and elite-driven scapegoating found in my other reading. — connects to: Groups invoke external enemies to justify the suppression of internal disunity — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 649; High authoritarians readily support persecution of groups including their own. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology: Key Readings, 917
• DEFINE: Defines the mechanism by which demagogy works: institutionalized projection that externalizes hatred onto outgroups.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2434