Demagogues succeed by channeling authoritarian insecurity toward outgroup targets during social instability

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. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2434

Categorization

• XREF: Connects directly to the reader’s existing vault claims on the F-scale/authoritarian personality and Allport’s demagogue rhetoric — the externalization-of-hatred mechanism echoes earlier Frankfurt School passages on Fascism channeling objectless anger.