The Authoritarian Personality vs. the historian of religion

[carolinayellowdog]

Having had some very strange and disturbing reactions from fanatics to things I've written about religion, I have found more insight in Erich Fromm's article The Authoritarian Personality than anywhere else about why cyberstalking occurs from certain "True Believer" types. The kiss up/kick down motif, masochistic submission to higher authority, or sadistic abuse of those who fail to do so, is explained in these two paragraphs:

The passive-authoritarian, or in other words, the masochistic and submissive character aims — at least subconsciously — to become a part of a larger unit, a pendant, a particle, at least a small one, of this “great” person, this “great” institution, or this “great” idea. The person, institution, or idea may actually be significant, powerful, or just incredibly inflated by the individual believing in them. What is necessary, is that — in a subjective manner — the individual is convinced that “his” leader, party, state, or idea is all-powerful and supreme, that he himself is strong and great, that he is a part of something “greater.” The paradox of this passive form of the authoritarian character is: the individual belittles himself so that he can — as part of something greater — become great himself. The individual wants to receive commands, so that he does not have the necessity to make decisions and carry responsibility. This masochistic individual looking for dependency is in his depth frightened -often only subconsciously — a feeling of inferiority, powerlessness, aloneness. Because of this, he is looking for the “leader,” the great power, to feel safe and protected through participation and to overcome his own inferiority. Subconsciously, he feels his own powerlessness and needs the leader to control this feeling. This masochistic and submissive individual, who fears freedom and escapes into idolatry, is the person on which the authoritarian systems — Nazism and Stalinism — rest.

More difficult than understanding the passive-authoritarian, masochistic character is understanding the active-authoritarian, the sadistic character. To his followers he seems self-confident and powerful but yet he is as frightened and alone as the masochistic character. While the masochist feels strong because he is a small part of something greater, the sadist feels strong because he has incorporated others — if possible many others; he has devoured them, so to speak. The sadistic-authoritarian character is as dependent on the ruled as the masochistic -authoritarian character on the ruler. However the image is misleading. As long as he holds power, the leader appears — to himself and to others — strong and powerful. His powerlessness becomes only apparent when he has lost his power, when he can no longer devour others, when he is on his own.

While some religious groups and leaders are very heavily authoritarian, with sado-masochistic features, others are less so and some not at all (UUs in my experience.) And some other contexts show the same authoritarian behavior, e.g. politics, to just as great extremes. Only once was I confronted by aggression from someone whose crusade was anti-religious rather than for some particular religious authority, but he was just as intellectually dishonest and careless about facts as the "cultist" types. Which was a shock in light of the great encouragement I'd gotten as a "skeptical debunker" from various venues.

The bottom line, I think, is that the exploration of religious history is endangered by anyone who either 1) thinks there is only one true religion or sect so any true history will exalt the true one and condemn all the others or 2) all religion is equally harmful and wrong so any true history will condemn them all. (And pseudonymous online trollery, for example in Amazon reviews, can be found from both sides.)

[rug]

1. Fifty years ago he wrote a humanist Credo.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Erich_Fromm#Credo_.281965.29

The very opposite of authoritarianism.

[carolinayellowdog]

2. Every one of those quotes strikes me as insightful and profound

Writing as he did during the rise of totalitarian states and dealing professionally with individuals in distress gave him a deep understanding of the relationship between individual and social pathologies. The kinds of certainties people cling to now to escape from freedom, and the kind of human destructiveness we see in 21st century online pathological behavior, may be different from those he described, but seem illustrative of the themes he addressed 50-75 years ago. Propaganda and groupthink are in some ways subtler and more sophisticated now, but no less powerful.