I know that authoritarian is a lib-brained anti-communist term that one shouldn't use unironically. But what other term would you use to describe those who seems to have a love for the exercise of state violence and coercion for its own sake? The howling hogs who cheer when police beat up protesters, the psychos calling for refugees to be gunned down at the border, the monsters who revel in the misery of the poor and love to step on those who cannot defend themselves.

You could call them rightists or conservatives or something like that but that doesn't carry the appropriate stigma or convey the wickedness of their proclivities. You could also call them fascists which would be correct most of the time but it is too broad a term to center in on their specifically sadistic relationship with state power. It also plays into the liberal idea of fascism being defined by "fascist methods" instead of by fascist ideology and belies the existence of the well-mannered and polite fascists who are the most dangerous kind.

  • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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    3 years ago

    This is a good post but I still don't think "authoritarianism" is a meaningful concept. Every system relies on authority to establish and maintain itself, and no ideology is universally supportive of every form of authority (fascists are opposed to democratic sources of authority, for example, so clearly they aren't concerned with authority itself but with specific kinds and applications of authority). Not a useful lens for analysis.

    I'd rather be specific when describing reactionaries and just call them fascists. Also, I think using the term "authoritarian" to describe reactionaries legitimizes its use against socialists (and anyone else the empire doesn't like) because in practice it's a horseshoe thing.

      • EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]
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        3 years ago

        Yeah, I don't bother trying to correct people unless it's the subject of discussion, or if it's being used for imperialist/anticommunist rhetoric.

        I do sometimes notice people saying "actually, authoritarianism is good", which I find annoying. Like, they don't even actually believe that and it makes them look like cranks. Wrong conclusion from On Authority.