The 1960s upheavals polarized Americans and drove many toward Nixon’s authoritarianism

Evidence

As an example, the items on the first version of the RWA Scale could only become relatively unglued over time because they had been strongly bonded in the first place—probably by the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, and Watergate. These social upheavals had split American society down to its family roots, polarizing opinions and creating a New Left that challenged the wisdom and integrity of the Establishment and its authorities. Their open talk of revolution accompanied by the battles in the street caused many others to recoil away from them, toward the real winner of the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago, Richard Nixon. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1145

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete historical instance of threat and social chaos increasing authoritarian attraction, echoing the vault’s causal mechanism linking perceived disorder to authoritarian leadership. — connects to: White suburban antibusing parents weaponized the Silent Majority trope against Nixon — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 72
• SHARE: For a political historian friend: the claim that anti-New-Left recoil, not just Nixon’s own appeal, raised authoritarian sympathies in the late 1960s.