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.
This is some historical context that I didn't realize I was lacking. Could you point me anywhere to have a better understanding of the SR counterrevolutionaries at the infancy of the USSR?
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.
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.
Oppressors
It’s pretty simple and straight to the point. Bootlickers is a little less useful but more satisfying if you’re looking to blow off steam.
girls just wanna hit other girls consensually, why we gotta associate sadistic dommes with fascists?
I like to use the term authoritarian exclusively in reference to the endless number of things anglo-american right wingers like that also just happen to be authoritarian.
Just like to drop this in whenever people are discussing the word “authoritarian”:
In human psychological development, the formation of the authoritarian personality occurs within the first years of a child's life, strongly influenced and shaped by the parents' personalities and the organizational structure of the child's family; thus, parent-child relations that are "hierarchical, authoritarian, [and] exploitative" can result in a child developing an authoritarian personality. Authoritarian-personality characteristics are fostered by parents who have a psychological need for domination, and who harshly threaten their child to compel obedience to conventional behaviors. Moreover, such domineering parents also are preoccupied with social status, a concern they communicate by having the child follow rigid, external rules. In consequence of such domination, the child suffers emotionally from the suppression of his or her feelings of aggression and resentment towards the domineering parents, whom the child reverently idealizes, but does not criticize.
There has been work done attempting to (poorly) conflate support for the USSR with this personality, but it is fundamentally an antifascist work
Baumrind is a developmental psychologist who is still taught in education programs and coined three types of parenting styles: authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive. A fourth one was later added (neglectful) to differentiate between permissive parents who are emotionally available to their kids and those who aren’t. Children thrive within environments where they have the structure of rules but are still able to have their emotional needs met instead of repressing them. This is one of the main reasons why parenting is a justified hierarchy imo. I would love to see more parenting collectives to help provide parents with the resources and techniques by connecting them with social workers, educators, and each other. Of course, under capitalism these would be largely dominated by middle class white women. But I think they would still do some good
authoritarian isn't quite right for them either though as they would want the cruelty to continue even if the authorities they supposedly respect went against it.
If in the not going to happen situation occured where the police forces cracked down on the cruel violence from the police they would side with the police who are breaking the law by being cruel not the authority they supposedly support. It's a missrepresentation they don't support cruelty because of authority they support the authority because of it's cruelty
"Barbarcratic" - rule by barbarism
The more I think about this the more I like it... Or some variation. It doesn't quite roll off the tongue, but it alludes to the "socialism or barbarism" line which makes it harder to reappropriate without being glaringly contradictory
Also I've used that line to libs and they have literally stopped in their tracks to think about it. It's an amazing line
How about "barbercratic" and it's rule by my barber who is a chill dude
Abusers, psychopaths, butchers, demons, bloodthirsty rot-souled hogs
Among other socialists/leftists, some variation of reactionary or oppressor is fine. Most people would find common ground with it. The problem with using "Authoritarian" is that these people don't necessarily have a love for authority, just the kind that targets the "bad guys" while working for them (The Capitol "Insurrection" is just one out of many examples of hypocrisy on display).
With Libs, I consider "Authoritarian", just like Regime or the myriad other loaded words, perfectly fine to try to turn around and use against them, or Cons/Rightoids. On some level, appropriating lib terminology might be necessary to "speak their language" and maybe get a tiny few of them to introspect.
Autocratic, maybe? Tyrannical feels too old-timey and related to the kings of old or whatever, it's something you'd read in a book 200 years ago, and we don't really have tyrants anymore. We don't really have autocrats either as the bourgeoisie as a class really run the show but it's a little better. Totalitarian is also a lib-brained term for when the state does a whole lotta things regardless of whether they're good or bad, like authoritarian.
To be honest, a class of collective tyrants/autocrats isn't really too far-fetched of a concept, even to lib-brained people. You can get across that an unaccountable minority of people ruling over the masses is hardly different than just a single schmuck. Even if they're resistant, you can point out that, yes, even during the heights of Absolutism, the reigning monarch still had to defer power to others.
I find myself less and less concerned with whether measures are "authoritarian", and more concerned with this practical question: does it concentrate power, or distribute it?
"Authoritarian" acts that are enforced by a distributed power are quite defensible, and there are plenty of "anti-authoritarians" who keep themselves at the top of informal hierarchies.
