I must disagree that "authoritarian" or "authoritarianism" is sufficient to explain the phenomenon. Not at all, because "authoritarian" describes the style of the top--a tyrannical dictator or state--without saying anything about the followers who enable authoritarianism. The study of AC began after WWII to examine the particular question of what happened to the people of Germany that made them abandon their nascent democracy and support Hitler. I should think that that's a vital question for any democracy that intends to hang on to democracy.

AC is a mass phenomenon, involving a shift in attitude across an entire population. The actions of a dictator can't be modelled statistically. It's well understood that the shift is driven by fear, usually, or by its flipside anger. The vital part of the study of AC is to identify when the state is deliberately induced; or, from the perspective of a wannabe authoritarian, how the state may be deliberately induced.

The use of the term "conservative" in the phrase "AC" might be reframing as you assert. I've already noted that some of the contributors to the study had a political position that colored the way they presented the results (but does not invalidate the results themselves). But the phrase requires a modifier that describes the psychological state of mind of the followers, otherwise it's just the study of authoritarianism, which is not the point. While the word may serve a dual purpose, I think it has a legitimate side in denoting a state of mind that is hostile to change and gravitates strongly to security and predictability and comformity, and looks to Authority for the answers.

I'm more than willing to consider another word as a modifier for "authoritarian", especially if it'll get us past the semantic roadblock. But it doesn't work to simply delete "conservatism" leaving behind just "authoritarian". What other word describes that way of thinking? Perhaps the archetypical family model associated with AC contains something--"Strong Father" and obedient kids, wife, and other hangers-on....

...ellipses denote the onset of a notion: "authoritarian submissive"? Close, but still insufficient because it describes only the part about submitting to authority. Submission is an action and may be unwilling, but for explanatory power we need something to describe the state of mind that reinforces the submission and transforms it into something considered good and right and proper. "Dogmatist", perhaps? "Authoritarian submissive dogmatist"? It's getting a bit unwieldy, if a bit more comprehensive.

Of course the phenomenon has its roots in primatology. Remember, you're talking to somebody who sees primate behavior in everything human. At this point I see a divergence based on ideology. You consider the primate instinct to be part of a happy hierarchy as a negative: "resisting this has been one of the most difficult issues in human society"--while I tend to be neutral on what might be called "human nature". It's undeniable that we owe everything to our ability to cooperate, and I wouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. The challenge I see is to harness our natures and channel our instincts in the service of good.

The Soviet Union was a collectivist society. But the Apollo program was the result of the collective work of 400,000 people, too. Warfare requires a high level of collective action. A modern corporation is a collective (most HR programs stop just short of singing the company song and morning calisthenics). Open source efforts like Mozilla are collective efforts. Collective undertakings are not inherently bad, and in fact they're our strength. Whether they turn out good or bad depends entirely on what you do with that collective energy.

I'd observe that the American system doesn't fight primate tribalism, but redirects it through the use of symbols. A primate group needs a recognizable alpha, and if one doesn't exist, the group won't take long to produce one. The course of the Soviet Revolution was stereotypical: A committee of equals had the lifespan of a mayfly before Stalin emerged as strong man. The Founders didn't go the committee route, and finessed the suggestion of a king with the tightly-circumscribed office of the President, held in check by balancing powers elsewhere in government. They knew there had to be an alpha, and did what they could to neuter him.

You're describing another sort of redirection involving religion, but I'm not entirely clear on what you envision that religion to be. You hinted at collective versus personal relationships with God, which seems to imply something like the Protestant versus Catholic dichotomy...or maybe not. I also thought of discussions elsewhere about religion and science, and a possible "religion of science". Could you elaborate?