Hostile censorship advocates on campus are likely wild-card authoritarians
Evidence
I do not know if these results would apply to any debate on political correctness on your campus. After all, these data came from first-year students in the second month of their university experience, whereas the advocates for political correctness tend to be older undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members. But the testable hypothesis looms that, when you find hostile and dogmatic “political correctors” at a university advocating censorship, you might be dealing not so much with leftists as with Wild-Card Authoritarians. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3040 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
It would probably surprise the editors of Maclean’s that summed support for political correctness did ot correlate with either mock LWA (.08) or RWA (.07) scores. Some students, to be sure, supported political correctness; however, they were not leftists as a rule but Wild-Card Authoritarians. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3017 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
The real value of free speech, in other words, is not to those who possess power, but to those who want to challenge them. And the real value of censorship is to those who do not wish their authority to be challenged. Once we give up on the right to offend in the name of ‘tolerance’ or ‘respect’, we constrain our ability to challenge those in power, and therefore to challenge injustice. — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 656 (
#complicates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Support for censorship tracks authoritarianism, not political ideology; Campus political correctors advocating censorship are likely Wild-Card Authoritarians, not leftists. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3040; Free speech serves the powerless while censorship protects the powerful — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia: Still a Challenge for Us…, 656 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Campus political correctors advocating censorship are likely Wild-Card Authoritarians, not leftists.
#corroborates(0.98) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3040 - Campus support for political correctness reflects authoritarian personality, not leftist ideology.
#corroborates(0.95) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3017 - Free speech serves the powerless while censorship protects the powerful
#complicates(0.72) — Runnymede Trust (ed. Farah Elahi & Omar Khan), Islamophobia, 656