Shils attacked Authoritarian Personality for blindness to left-wing authoritarianism

Evidence

Edward A. Shils went one step further in his essay Authoritarianism, "Right" and "Left"', published in 1954 in Studies in the Scope and Methods of The Authoritarian Personality’, edited by Richard Christie and Marie Jahoda. Shils had worked with Bettelheim for a time on the Chicago veterans project, and was one of those intellectuals, not uncommon at the time, who had previously been liberal but had become anti-communist conservatives in the atmosphere of the Cold War and McCarthyism. He accused the authors of The Authoritarian Personality of a naïvety towards communism that represented an important variety of prejudice. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1825

Categorization

• XREF: The left-right symmetry critique anticipates later debates on left-wing authoritarianism and the authoritarian personality’s political asymmetries. — connects to: Authoritarianism can manifest on the political left as well as right — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 446

Broader Connections

• Authoritarianism can manifest on the political left as well as right #expands (0.90) — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 446