Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Focus.

Focus closer...nearer the nose on your face
Robert — (archived)

I must confess to having, yet again, the feeling that I've fallen through the looking glass. The concept of authoritarian conservatism is so blindingly obvious that I'm amazed you can come up with even these nitpicking arguments.

Consider the fact that Hitler exploited something in the German people to rise to power, before scientists studied it and labelled it "authoritarian conservatism". I recognized the phenomenon long ago, and Dean only gave me a convenient label. This is nothing new, and perhaps the problem is that it is in fact incredibly old, and we're like fish being told about the ocean.

Humanity's oldest social structure is the authoritarian tribe. It's the baseline wired into our brains. Civilization has tried to build better structures, but when the going gets tough, we always feel the pull of our species roots. We look for the strong leader to protect us, the alpha to show us the way and show us our place in the world. To restore order and security.

Always. Adolph Hitler wasn't the first dictator, and he stood on many shoulders to get where he got. There have always been people who saw the pattern and figured out how to pull the levers, and they became the chieftains and kings and emperors and Glorious Leaders. Fearmongering is the oldest trick in the book, and it's there because it works, because there really does exist a lever on the human psyche that an unscrupulous politician can pull and reliably get results.

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