POLS 125 Chapter Notes - Chapter NA: The Rise of American Authoritarianism (Mar. 2016) : Authoritarianism
26 Feb 2020
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Why is the republican electorate supporting a far-right populist with no political experience with extreme and bizarre views: support crosses demographic lines. Even after controlling for education and gender: under the right conditions, these people will desire certain extreme policies and will seek strongman leaders to implement them. By positioning itself as the party of traditional values and law/order, the gop has unknowingly attracted a vast and previously bipartisan population of americans: these have authoritarian tendencies. Tendencies accelerated recently by demographic and economic changes. Sorting of authoritarians into the gop will become more and more pronounced until they have enough power within it to make themselves heard: trump, therefore, is not the symptom. Increasing diversity has made white americans confront race in new ways: changes have become more visible and harder to ignore. Coincide with economic trends disadvantaging working-class whites. If social change and physical threats coincided at the same time, an enormous population of american authoritarians could be.
