Abstract
At this moment in time, the very future of democracy in America has become a serious question. Many journalists and commentators have raised questions of crisis of White, Christian, male authority that impel an ‘illiberal democracy’, one-party rule, and/or a new civil War. The wave of progressive movements in the 1960s, resurgent in the 21st century, and challenging traditional, essentialist, identities and values were experienced by many as threats and dangers, fostering fears, anxieties, and grievances that elicited backlashes engendering various reactionary movements that are now a powerful force. These ‘authoritarian populisms’, racialized nationalisms, gendered ethnoreligious nationalisms, neo-fascisms, and indeed some clearly fascist movements extolling racial, gender, or Christian supremacy are mobilizing to preserve the culture and country of the ‘real people’ who feel victimized, challenged, and face demise. A basic fault of modern political economies has been the fundamental conflict between political democracy, majority rule, and/or rules of law and the economic anarchy, which privileges a few while many face duress; these conditions lead to the irrationality and scapegoating, especially racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism flourish to foster a variety of authoritarian, reactionary mobilizations across the globe.
Introduction
On 6 January 2021, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the nation’s capitol attempting to overturn an election lost at the ballot box, lost in recounts, and lost in court cases. Older, Whiter, mostly male insurrectionists did not just seek to halt and overturn an election but reject democracy and reverse the social and cultural changes that had long sustained heretofore power and ‘privileged’, essentialist, hierarchical identities and narratives of the ‘superiority’ of the White Christian America and heteronormativity. Many described the attempted coup as an expression of ‘white rage’ insofar as many of the participants were members of angry, extremist, White nationalist, quasi-militia groups such as Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and 3 Percenters seeking to sustain White privilege and White nationalism through violence. Others emphasized the misogyny and deep resentment that many males had for the growing economic, political, and cultural power of women that not only threatened their privileged male status and the power of patriarchy, but many men saw women displacing men from hitherto well-paid jobs/economic security (Mason, 2018). Their fear, anger, and indeed ressentiment, articulated in military attire, weaponry, vitriol, bravado, and ‘kick ass’ macho demeanor including death threats to political leaders, were not so much an indication of (male) strength and power, but a compensatory denial of underlying fears of the waning, if not demise, of their values, identities, and lifestyles based on essentialist notions of White male ‘superiority’.
The authoritarian populisms of today can be seen as a symptom of several decades of both economic adversities and progressive social changes. The root causes of these movements begin with political-economic factors: (1) Capitalism has shaped ideologies and identities. Neoliberalism and its resulting crises, especially after 2008, led to greater inequality, precarity, and stagnating, if not declining incomes for many, leading to anxiety anger, depression, and ‘deaths of despair’. Even well-paid, educated workers fear potential replacement by immigrants, minorities, and/or technologies. Many less educated White working classes moved from progressive politics of redistribution to reactionary politics of grievance and ressentiment. The hardships and/or economic anxiety disposed authoritarian populisms led by a ‘strongman’ promising prosperity for many of those ‘left behind’ by neoliberal globalization. (2) The declining demographic advantage of the White population of the United States is shrinking; non-Hispanic Whites will soon be a minority. (3) Meanwhile, progressive multicultural, multiracial, feminist, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual) movements, and secularism have challenged, if not undermined, notions of racial ‘superiority’, patriarchy/male domination, heteronormativity, and ‘Christian’ America. After the election of Obama, racism increased in the United States as many thought an African American was really not ‘one of us’ but a Kenyan, Moslem. Meanwhile, the ascent and acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/transsexual, and queer or questioning (LGBTQ) have undermined essentialist notions of gender, gender identity, and fixed categories of heteronormativity. (4) Growing secularism has challenged institutional religion, especially fundamentalist, evangelical Christianity insofar as the largest religious category today is the ‘nones’. Most evangelical Christians support(ed) Trump, hardly an exemplar of Christian virtues, not only for his support of their agendas, Islamophobia, homophobia, backing for Israel and/or pro-life, but to sustain their power and numbers. Authoritarian populisms, reactionary nativisms, have a deep affinity for fundamentalist religions (Brittain 2018). (5) Reactionary ethno-nationalisms have systematically disdained myriad Others, namely, indigenous minorities that often include African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, and immigrants from abroad, especially those with darker skins and different religions. The storming of the capitol was foretold at the Unite the Right rally in Charleston, where torch bearing marchers repeatedly chanted ‘Jews will not replace us’. This ethno-nationalist nativist sentiment reflected long-standing racism, nativism, and anti-Semitism and fear that [undeserving, un-American] godless multicultural minorities will have greater rights and more power, thanks to treasonous global elites that support the influx of dangerous minorities and immigrants, ‘enemies’ who do not represent the ‘real people’, but pose an existential threat to the existing culture. (6) Finally, the emergence of a ‘neoliberal personality’, a current instantiation of authoritarianism, is likely to embrace various reactionary mobilizations (Gandesha, 2017, 2018).
Meanwhile, a multicultural coalition of progressive youth engineered a massive voter registration and turnout campaign that enabled Democrats to win the House in 2018 to eke out a narrow election of an African American and a Jewish senator in conservative Georgia and Biden’s presidency in 2020 (Wolpe, 2011). They prefer a democratic, egalitarian inclusive, tolerant society. Many youths prefer socialism to capitalism. These struggles between progressive and conservative/reactionary identities, prompting antagonistic mobilizations, reflect different identities, underlying character structures, and different motives, values, and visions of justice—ego-fostered opposed mobilizations. The very future of liberal democracy and rule of law is at stake.
The failure of late capitalist modernity to provide many people with social, cultural, or economic security meant that many people have been facing or fear a loss of heretofore gratifying status, especially rural, White males without a college education, but these anxieties can be found in other segments of society as well. The right-wing reactions have been emotion-driven attempts to preserve the status quo if not return to an earlier Golden Age. ‘Despite the many reasons offered for such support, what they [Trump supporters] share in common is a fear over the potential loss of their current social status, and anger against anyone perceived as a threat to their cultural security’ (Brittain, 2018: 384). Growing resentment over progressive role of racial, ethnic, and/or gender changes fostered a politics of victimization, grievance, and authoritarian populisms as backlash (Norris and Inglehart, 2019).
The polarization between progressive and conservative, if not reactionary identities and agendas, is approaching a point of no return—crippling the ability for any kind of collective solutions when everything from COVID vaccination to global warming or the cost of healthcare become so politicized that the most minimal possible compromises become impossible. For Walter (2021), the United States is now an ‘illiberal democracy’ where the outcome of legitimate elections is questioned and rules of law easily discarded. She suggests we are now in the state of pre-insurgency as various reactionary movements. Republican attempts to change voter eligibility and control elections are indeed preparation for a coup (Gellman,2021). Feldman (2021) has warmed that large numbers of Republicans are well-armed and prepared to use violence to defend ‘their freedom’ from the ‘tyranny’ of Democrats who claim victories in extremely ‘fraudulent’ elections. Civil War is indeed a possibility. Three recently retired generals have written, the military is concerned not only about the possibility of a well-armed civilian insurrection, but also within the ranks of the military there are a great many who would support such an insurrection. Much of this research and opinion noted by Edsall (2021) raises the possibility of polarization ending any semblance of the genuine democracy
Understanding Social Movements
Marx pointed out how alienation, immiseration, and discontents rooted in the contradictions and crises of capitalist political economy fostered the reactionary coup of Louis Bonaparte as well as the progressive Paris Commune. American perspectives on social movements offer very little help in understanding contemporary movements, especially spontaneous, progressive, ‘bottom-up’, youth movements concerned with values, identities, and lifestyles. Thus, while many of the contestations take place in cultural terrains, the issues, whether racism, sexism, or global warming, are based on capitalism even though the movements may not be explicitly socialist.
The Marxist critique capitalism and inevitable crises informed the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory who updated Marx’s critique by including Weber’s analyses of rationality and the ‘demystification of society’ and Freud’s theories of the psychodynamics of character, motivation, repression, and the internalization of dominant values. Fromm and Marcuse, among the first to read the 1844 Manuscripts, would suggest that alienation, informed by Freud, meant the frustration/repression of basic human desires and estrangement from genuine human fulfillment. For alienated populations, authoritarian movements provided attachments to communities, gratifying meanings and a sense of agency and empowerment. The alienated subjectivity of the authoritarian character structure, estranged from his or her human nature, bereft of community without freedom/agency, was an obedient conformist, harboring a great deal of anger/hostility, typical of the German lower middle classes who had an ‘elective affinity’ to embrace Nazism in the face of crises (Adorno et al., 1950; Fromm, 1941).
Moreover, they further considered the impact of the then new mass media, radio, and film as instruments of Nazi propaganda. Following the war, the ‘culture industries’ became ever more important in shaping political identities while eroding critical consciousness via ‘one-dimensional thought’ (Marcuse, 1964). Amusement has displaced critical thought (Postman, 1985). Capitalism had become a ‘society of spectacles’, and unending images became the new ‘reality’ without critique of the emptiness and alienation of capitalist consumerism (De Bord, 1967). Television and, more recently, the Internet/social media have become the primary sites of entertainment, information, and, most of all, misinformation. ‘It is simply not possible to understand the success of figures like Trump, and before him, Ronald Reagan or Silvio Berlusconi, without understanding the power of the culture industry’ (Gandesha, 2017). The political impact of Facebook, Twitter, and ‘dark sites’ such as Parler, 8Chan, or Gab has been essential for spreading conspiracies of election fraud, Satanic kidnappers, COVID misinformation, and so on. Nevertheless, contemporary social movements have been able to use Internet in general and the proliferation of a vast number of ‘virtual public spheres’ to inform, or misinform, to organize, and to mobilize social movements (Langman, 2005). Habermas’ (1975) theory of legitimation crises saw how economic, political, and/or cultural crises, migrating to life worlds of subjectivity, motivations, and emotions, might dispose social movements. These newer social movements were primarily concerned with issues of identity, values, and motivation, especially the progressive post-materialist values of youth as incentives for movements and goals for the future (Habermas, 1981).
Touraine (1981) attempted to understand the eruption of various newer antiwar, civil rights, feminist, gay rights, and ecology movements and especially the massive, student-initiated Paris 1968 mobilizations acting in the public spheres, in the here and now, overcoming alienation/domination by emphasizing freedom and creative self-realization in everyday life to challenge and change the general consciousness and become models for progressive transformations of the society. Marxist concerns with the underlying political economy, alienation, and exploitation fell by the wayside—but not for long. Hetland and Goodwin (2013) remind us, ‘respectable’ academic perspectives avoid dealing with the underlying nature of capitalist political economy. But neoliberalism, fostering political-economic crises, precarity, and inequality, has increased both economic insecurity and cultural anxiety and, in turn, threats to identity and dignity. Arab Spring, anti-austerity movements, and Occupy have brought political economy back to social movement theory (Castells, 2015; Della Porta, 2015). The anxiety wrought by neoliberal globalization created a rich and fertile ground for populist politics of both right and left along the lines suggested by Fromm (Gandesha, 2018: 63).
The symbolic challenges of social movements have systemic effects, primarily in bringing a critical perspective to wider audiences, opening spaces for discussions, critiques, and presenting alternatives; the identities and values of the activists impact the larger society, even when movements do not bring immediate change; they often impact the way people think about issues and slowly foster change. The civil rights, feminist, or gay rights of the 1960s articulated democratic, tolerant, and inclusive values that took years and even decades to be accepted—and are not accepted by everyone. Thus, the progressive social movements engendered counter-movements. The widely seen violence of Selma changed attitudes toward civil rights, leading to the Civil Rights and Voting Acts. Similarly, the murder of George Floyd, going viral, on the Internet led to the most massive protests and marches in American history. The progressive and reactionary movements of today are both responses to larger political-economic, cultural, and demographic changes and crises. The responses of different groups reflect collective identities based on race, class location, generation, education, and indeed character structure underpinning collective identity, resulting in opposing values, visions of society, and just who should be included within that society.
Identities
Identity and underlying social character are fundamental for understanding political life, group loyalty, and political identity, often more salient than economic self-interest. Given the political polarization of today, people often support policies and/or leaders that adversely impact their own economic status and well-being. Thus, political clashes between groups typically reflect different political identities, group loyalties, lifestyles, and, in turn, reactions to change or crisis. Challenges and clashes of identity, and values evoke strong emotional responses. Progressives typically embrace cosmopolitan values and identities, and join or support various social justice movements that promote greater toleration, inclusion and equality, and expansions of group-based rights, economic as well as cultural, to secure equality, dignity, and recognition for subordinated racial minorities, women, or LGBTQ. Progressives are also likely to oppose war and the vast amounts of money that go for military spending and strongly support environmental causes.
For conservatives, growth of minorities, often immigrants, is perceived as threatening jobs and identities. Subaltern others are seen as a danger, as dragging the society down by seeking a godless, multicultural, multiracial society demanding expensive social benefits. Multiculturalism, derided as ‘woke’, rests upon more a highly mistaken perception that minorities have prospered while hard-working, ‘real American’ White men have been left behind (cf. Gandesha, 2018). This has triggered protective ethno-racial nationalisms, policies hostile to minorities, immigrant outgroups, and opposition to globalization and the globalist elites (Jews) seen as responsible for the erosion of traditional identities, as well as the economic decline of the nation and wasteful taxation supporting the ‘undeserving’. Reactionaries seek to restrain, if not reverse, progressive social/political changes and mobilize to retain their hierarchical identities based on imputed status, valorizing the strong and powerful, while believing the weak and powerless people, Others, need subordination to the strong.
What is identity? Human beings with capacities for language, symbols, and consciousness, and, in turn, reflexivity, namely, self-consciousness, can see themselves as distinct human beings as well as members of a larger groupings/communities that differ from thier own. The emergence of self-consciousness is first evident at about age 2 when a child’s early cognitive development enables differentiation between self and environment; she or he responds to their name. With speech/language and symbolic capacities, she or he can name parents ‘mama’ or ‘dada’. The person can then see himself or herself as others do, what Mead called ‘taking the role of the other’, which first establishes the ‘social self’. Identity is a reflexive narrative of who one is, individually and/or collectively as an emplotment, that joins moments and events of the past and present together into a coherent, trans-situational locus of self-consciousness to which one assumes causality and imagines a future based on who one is and what one could be through relationships and accomplishments (Ricoeur, 1988). One’s identity, self-images, and narratives provide an enduring coherence to the many moments of experience across time and space. Modern selfhood is typically a collage of various subject positions, sometimes contradictory, often more likely a bricolage of sometimes contradictory identities than a singular coherent locus.
Identities are initially shaped within particular social locations beginning with the family that establishes the initial foundations of subjectivity (and character discussed below). As development proceeds, people become aware of themselves as members of groups with collective identities that differentiate and mark boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Our collective identities tell us who ‘we are’ and how we are fundamentally different from ‘Others’. The self-conceptions of a group, its collective identity, are typically based on a variety of social factors, social locations, and social contexts, and for the present purposes, group memberships signify differences from outgroup ‘Others’; differences often valorized may mean denigration of, if not hostility toward, the outgroup. Typical status-granting identities might include race, religion, ethnicity, and for the present purposes, political orientations. These socially constructed, collective identities often begin with shared narratives of a common origin, often historical mythologies of ‘ancestry’ that are sometimes based on birth and/or gained through membership in identity granting and recognizing communities of meaning, typically with a ‘unique history and ‘valorized’ differences from other groups.
Socialization continues in a variety of social locations, contexts of group memberships, and/or subject positions (schools, churches, clubs, fandoms, and especially political parties) that foster emotional attachments to the group members, loyalty to that group, and embrace its shared meanings, social constructions, and values that both define the self within the group and clearly demark the valorized differences from outgroup ‘Others’. The acquisition of identities includes internalization of a variety of attitudes, values, and, perhaps most of all, cultural, political, and religious worldviews and understandings. Identities can be articulated in a variety of ways, as distinct customs, beliefs, and values and practices as language (dialects), or more overt indications such as attire and adornments. Finally, the establishment of an identity is not fixed in early childhood, but often impacted by the historical context of one’s cohort; adolescence and early adulthood are times when significant transformations of identity occur Mannheim (1925, 1972).
For most of human history, collective identities were generally based on face-to-face interactions among kinship groups, typically within closely knit local communities as family, tribe, or clan which provided lineage and identity. But a distinguishing feature of modern societies is the salience of membership in nations, ‘imagined political communities’ in which the ties and attachments to most other members of are indirect, mediated initially through print, since in large communities most members will never know most of the other members; the development of print vernacular enabled common language and common nations of identity and belonging (Anderson, 1991). Nevertheless, the power of these mediated ties and collective identities is so great that ‘citizens are willing to die for the sake of strangers’ to advance political interests and causes (Langman, 2006).
Our identities tell us who ‘we are’, our common goals, our visions of the social, the means we have to attain them and our fundamental difference from ‘Others’. In an advanced society with a high division of labor and differentiated patterns of lifestyle and leisure, people may assume a variety of identities some more central and salient than others. Political identities become quite central, insofar as they clearly tell us who we are in terms of group membership and personal attachments, social/political agendas, a basis of meaning, our goals and visions for our group, and means to attain them and what we stand for—and against. And most importantly, just who constitutes ‘us’, ‘them’, and how we regard outsiders. Political identities often act much like tribal identities with a positive valorization of one’s ingroup and denigration of the outgroup. As Durkheim reminded us, shared beliefs and distinctive practices are the social cement that holds the group, and we note, beliefs include its differences from other groups, differences that are often valorized, and outgroups may become disdained, denigrated, deemed enemies and, in turn, targets of violence.
In the political realm, differences in identities associated with wealth, power, and/or status are likely to be valorized, especially when tied to race, gender ethnicity, or religion. Politically defined groups, with their definitions of reality, often see the world in terms of their valorized ingroup versus a denigrated outgroup, and consequentially, the denial of their recognition as members of a common humanity. A ‘dangerous’ common enemy is a powerful trope that joins people together. Indeed, many contemporary social movements are between groups wishing to maintain a privileged identity versus others seeking egalitarianism.
Castells (2010) suggested there are three dominant patterns of identity: (1) ‘Legitimating identities’, the most typical in which most people accept dominant norms and values and act in ways such that the everyday life typically reproduces the dominant structure and its values over time. (2) ‘Resistance identities’ emerge among ‘actors who are in devalued positions/conditions and/or stigmatized by the logic of domination’, thus building trenches of resistance and survival based on principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society. These ‘resistance’ identities dispose authoritarian populisms, ethnoreligious nationalisms, and/or neo-fascisms that claim to represent the will of the ‘people’ as they narrowly define themselves and create strict boundaries of us–them, ‘friend–foe’. They see themselves in fundamental opposition to the policies and agendas of the political elites, as well as opposed to inclusive, liberal, policies, and identities. These movements would actively resist, if not reverse, recent social, economic, political, demographic, and cultural changes that challenge their heretofore privileged identities of race, gender, heteronormativity, or religion that had been typical and little questioned and have been under fierce challenge, assault, and fame demise. Finally, (3) ‘project identities’, typically progressive, seek new forms of collective identity that redefine one’s position in society and might require major transformations of the social structure. Considering feminism, such women seek more than equal job opportunities and compensation, namely, radical transformation of patriarchy, dismantling male privilege, and ending toxic masculinity within a social order without hierarchies of gender or gender orientation. Similarly, civil rights struggles seek more than dismantling structures of inequality, namely, an inclusive multicultural/multiracial society where traditional ‘differences’ no longer play significant roles.
Social Character
To understand the salience of subjectivity, underlying ‘social character’ is reflected in fundamental, irreconcilable clashes of identities. Following Erich Fromm, ‘social character’ is the essential nucleus of the character structure of most members of a group [or culture] which has developed as the result of the basic experiences and mode of life common to that group (Fromm, 1941). It is the constellation of the most common, typical emotional desires, motives, and defenses, conceptions of self and modes of relating to other people; it is reflected in the typical modes of thinking, feeling, and acting of a particular group, loyalties to that group, and, most importantly, social character, a product of particular social locations that dispose the internalization of attitudes and values, especially cultural, political, and religious worldviews and understandings. Social character, shaped in large part by the demands required to best adapt to the political economy, mediates between the material practices [required work] of the society, or class within society, and the larger ideology. The underlying psychological foundation of identity, social character, that may or may not be a conscious, shapes and motivates individual/group identity, self-consciousness, beliefs, values, and modes of relationship.
Social character includes the typical affective/emotional responses that foster understandings of self, Others, and the world and impels motivated reasoning, while the more conscious and experiential aspects of identity are impacted by social locations, historical contexts, and so on. Thus, we need to look at social character structure as the basis of sharing and enabling the embrace of conspiracy theories, such as the results of an election, the ‘danger’ of coronavirus vaccines, or the impending dangers of climate change. How can people believe these ‘alternative realities?’ The subjective aspects of social character become essential for understanding political sentiments and mobilizations.
The Socialization of Character
Socialization takes place in several social locations, and at several levels, the socialization of underlying ‘social character’ and more conscious identities takes place in the same context beginning with the structure and dynamics of the family that establishes the basic foundations of personality and identity. Different socialization styles result in different constellations of ‘social character’ that underpin very different identities, values, understandings, and thus different reactions to events and political response. Following Wilhelm Reich (1946 [1933]), the Frankfurt School pointed out the impact of early, sexually repressive socialization practices, often using physical punishment instilling an authoritarian character who tends to submit to strong ‘superiors’, seeks domination over weak subordinates, and likely embraces fascism as a palliative response to fears and anxieties of rapid social changes and economic crises. Such movements provide community, meaning, and a valorized identity.
Lakoff (2014) has argued that the family structure and its dynamic are a microcosm of the State, and one’s early role models and socialization styles shape later political orientations. ‘Empathic parenting’ tends to be warm, nurturant, and empathic and support encouraging creativity, self-realization, empathy, generosity, and caring for others, a more progressive orientation. The more authoritarian ‘strict father’ orientation emphasizes strength and toughness to face competition and secure self-reliance and independence, and see the world in terms of social hierarchies, themselves as superior, tough, and strong, while subordinated Others are seen as weak, lazy, and parasitical.
Some Character Types Met Critical Theoretical Work
Identity and underlying social character play a major role in understanding political life and group loyalty, often more salient than economic self-interest. ‘It’s not [just] the economy stupid’. Clashes between groups reflect different identities, lifestyles, and reactions to change or crisis as seen in the fundamental polarity between authoritarian and democratic social characters. Authoritarian reactionaries value and seek hierarchical orderings of status and power, strength, and toughness while yearning for subordination; they see rigid boundaries between their in-group and despicable, impure often evil Others. The democratic character is ‘open’, warm, and empathic; she or he transcends most boundaries of exclusion, with a belief in the benevolent possibilities of humanity (Lasswell, 1948); this has recently been seen as an aspect of cosmopolitanism (Langman, 2020). Progressive youth, embodying this democratic character, seek expansions of group-based rights, economic as well as cultural equality, dignity and recognition for subordinated minorities and women, often joining various social justice movements for inclusion and equality.
Authoritarianism
The early Frankfurt School suggested that authoritarian socialization resulted in an apprehensive, obedient, conformist with highly repressed aggression, who will readily submit to superior authority and an authoritarian society notwithstanding humiliation, degradation, and/or supporting policies contrary to one’s own self-interests. Fromm (1941) saw authoritarianism as a psychological reaction, a compensation to the anxiety of social change that weakened social bonds and rendered people powerless. People felt anxious, powerless, and angry. Authoritarianism became a ‘mechanism of escape’; submission to superior leaders provided compensations of empowerment, group membership, and meanings that alleviated the intense, unpleasant emotions of fear, anxiety, powerlessness, unacknowledged shame, and anger evoked by social changes and/or crises that assuaged fear toward those ‘responsible, witches, Satanists, communists, or Jews’—all blameworthy targets.
For the Frankfurt School, the authoritarian character structure became essential for understanding the ‘elective affinity’ of characterological domination-subordination and hostility toward outgroups for the support of Hitler. Freud had pointed out the role of ‘aim-inhibited’ cathexes to leaders forging solidarity between followers; reactionary leaders grant their love in exchange for obedience, forging libidinal ties joining diverse, alienated people into a movement, based less on ideology or policy but more on promises to alleviate grievance and ressentiment in a world where hierarchies of race, gender, religion or nation are challenged and thus view the world in terms of in a Schmittean world of friend and foe (cf. Brittain, 2018). More recent research has corroborated how authoritarianism became associated with reactionary movements from the John Birch society to the Tea party to Brexit or Trump. Authoritarianism had more predictive power for supporting Trump than did any of the demographic variables (cf. Altermeye, 2021; Smith and Hanley, 2018).
A key element of authoritarianism is its proclivities toward sadomasochistic aggression and destructiveness, expressed as rage and ressentiment targeting real or imagined enemies; ‘corrupt elites’ and ‘inferior’ outsiders must be punished or destroyed. Authoritarian leaders and agitators typically avoid political niceties and publicly denigrate various ‘enemies’, be they the corrupt elites, traitors from within, or vile, despicable, disgusting, and dangerous groups below. They often provide conspiracy theories that offer clear, simple explanations of ‘reality’ devoid of facts or logic that often personify complex social issues as the actions of a loathsome individual or group These leaders cleverly mobilize and manipulate populist anger and sadomasochistic aggression toward ‘blameworthy’ enemies, and then suggest that they alone can alleviate the causes of adversity, redress grievances, and punish hated enemies. Followers become totally enthralled with ‘heroic’ leaders who represent them, embody their ego ideals, give them voice, articulate their anger and discontent, and promise revenge against ‘enemies’. The libidinal attachment to those leaders who articulate the ego ideals of the victimized, who promise revenge against ‘enemies’, and restore a better time becomes so powerful; followers will give their very lives to such leaders and causes.
Reactionaries see the world in terms of hierarchies of status and power; the strong and powerful are valorized. The power, privilege, and status of authoritarian identities depend upon the positive valorization and myriad gratifications of their status-affirming, hierarchical identities and the legitimate subordination, if not exclusion, of dangerous, ‘impure’ subalterns based on race, nation, religion, gender, or gender orientation. At times of growing economic uncertainties and anxieties, progressive changes and agendas are seen as challenges to status-affirming, solidarity granting identities in which White, heteronormative, and often Evangelical, fundamentalist Christians had unquestioned power and status which depended on the subordination of African Americans, women, gays, and/or unbelievers. Many believe that minorities, and/or immigrants, will replace White Christian society and its culture. The waning cultural and political power of more traditional, often more rural less educated White, Christian, phallic aggressive authoritarian males who had been economically secure and culturally hegemonic joins reactionary movements to preserve his or her identities. Brittain (2018) reviewing Adorno (1960) on radio preachers like Martin Luther Thomas, as well as Lowenthal and Guterman (1946) on right-wing agitators, notes the appeal of authoritarianism as growing secularism challenges conservative religion. Moreover, rifts within churches over politics have been taking tolls on membership. For Brittain (2018), Trump, like other religious demagogues, articulates a ‘rhetoric and persona [that] call upon his followers to jettison their individual subjectivity and merge into his ‘religious racket’ which gives followers a sense of community.’ Effective propaganda, whether from the pulpit or the culture industries, now often indistinguishable, resonates with both the larger political-economic contexts and the authoritarian identities of the audiences. Capitalism fragments social life and evangelical religions as well as authoritarian populisms, and sustains the beliefs of their collective identity (racism, patriarchy, nativism, heteronormativity) and practices, and political mobilizations that unite believers. ‘There are clear indications of a pattern of political forces encouraging individuals to attach themselves to a collective racket, rather than work to bolster the liberal welfare state and its related concept of individual subjectivity’ (Brittain, 2018). The demagogue’s rhetoric offered emotional release, a ‘pragmatic irrationality’, which enabled people to dissolve themselves into a collectivity (Brittain, 2018: P2 74).
Patriarchy was the unquestioned norm generations ago when a working male could support a housewife, buy a house, a car, and even take vacations—the world many experienced in childhood no longer exists. But this has been challenged by feminism with demands for equality in the workforce, at home [including the bedroom], and political representation. For authoritarian thinking, valorizing strength, toughness, and power conjoined with dogmatic, rigid, either-or, black-and-white thinking, the basic default for understanding the world, relationships and even themselves, the very notion that gender might be fluid, socially constructed, rather than an essentialist, if not God-given and blessed, provokes a great deal of anxiety over the very ‘solidity’ of one’s gender, which evokes a cultural expression of ‘castration anxiety’ synonymous with weakness and powerlessness. The result is, of course, intense anger that affirms a particular version of masculinity that often fosters violence seen as justified and authoritarian populisms. Thus, a very significant aspect of authoritarian identity, with clear-cut notions of masculinity, indeed a hypermasculinity, is exemplified by gun ownership and quasi-military attire from camo to flak jackets. Moreover, the ‘macho man’ needs a passive, compliant female partner, and we still find large numbers of authoritarian women who desire subordination.
Similarly, heteronormativity and essentialist notions of gender were unquestioned; moreover, there seems to be a widespread consensus over the norms of religion and patriotism. This decline in privileged status fostered feelings of anxiety, powerlessness, shame, and anger that lead to ressentiment, a reaction to the loss of an era when whiteness was unchallenged, masculine domination unquestioned, African Americans ‘knew their place’, and the LGBTQ were closeted. When heretofore status-granting and privileged identities become challenged, if not undermined, some people can feel victimized and become angry, fearful, and direct their anger toward ‘illegitimate elites’ and responsible and/or ‘undeserving’ subordinates. Anger, hatred, and violent aggression can often be ways of avoiding the negative feelings of shame at a declining and now precarious status; expressing anger at those responsible provides one with a compensatory feeling of agency and empowerment in face of a sense of victimization, overcoming any sense of inferiority or shame of eroding status, and at the same time is repressed envy of the rich and powerful. As Scheff (1994) argued, violence becomes a defense against the denial of overt shame or humiliation.
Insofar as social character is shaped by the historical context, authoritarianism, under neoliberalism extolling the freedom of the individual and superiority of unregulated markets, fosters what Gandesha (2018) calls the ‘neoliberal personality’ in which the intertwining of authoritarianism, narcissism, and the universal marketization of society has extolled the long-standing individualism of Western capitalist societies. Neoliberalism extols individual effort and personal responsibility for ‘success’ or failure, but at the same time, between unregulated markets, financialization, automation, privatization, retrenchments of public services, ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey, 2007), and the demise of unions have made it ever harder for individuals to gain the education, training, and cultural capital needed to find ‘success’. Instead, we have seen the transformation of previously united citizens connected to the nation into homo economicus devoted to maximizing self-interest, while corrupt, indifferent elites and denigrated Others, foes, threaten that self-interest, hence the increasing difficulty of attaining success, and for the neo-liberal personality, authoritarian populisms promising to make the world great again becomes appealing (Gandesha, 2017).
Ressentiment
Authoritarians, feeling or fearing economic anxiety and/or a loss of status, tend to be seething with ressentiment, incorporated within a value system that provides the ‘good and decent people’, themselves as the ‘real people’ with meaning, explanation for their existence, and normative standards of conduct, providing them with moral justifications for their anger toward the ‘treacherous’ elites whose policies challenge their identities and pocketbooks. This dynamic was first articulated by Nietzsche. Ressentiment had a specific meaning, an intense loathing based on the need for punishment and revenge toward the elites. When the once powerful warrior-conquerors of Israel were themselves conquered by the Romans who embodied power, wealth, and free sexuality, then subjugated Jewish priestly class embraced a ‘herd mentality’ of subjugation that valued obedience, conformity, humility, poverty, kindness, mercy, and asceticism. The rich and powerful Romans, with their wealth, power, and unfettered sexual indulgence, might enjoy this life, but they were loathed as ‘morally inferior’; hence, the Jewish priestly classes and their followers deemed themselves as ‘morally superior’ which provided a compensatory status based on ressentiment to the Roman elites rooted in revenge and envy. The humble, obedient, ascetic slaves created ‘virtues’ out of necessity, compensation for lives of supplication, conformity, poverty, and sexual frustration. Nietzsche’s . . . account of the conflict between the Roman warrior class and the Palestinian priestly class is reminiscent of Hegel’s master/slave dialectic and prefigures Freud’s use of mythological models of conflict. Scheler’s phenomenological approach to ressentiment aims at an understanding of the condition as a whole and in its constitutive elements. . . . An account of the heart would not be complete without an investigation of the corrosive condition of ressentiment . . . the Jewish priests did not simply resign themselves in humility to their inferior social position. They had a deep sense of self-esteem and pride,
Ressentiment is intertwined with envy a desire for that which is disdained; repressed feelings and desires generate certain values (envy of the very nature of others was the basis of ressentiment which was most powerful in a society with formal rights of equality but with a great deal of actual inequality Scheler (1994 [1912]) Similarly, for Melanie Klein (1984), envy is an innate expression of destructive impulses, the ‘angry feeling that another person possesses and enjoys something desirable—the envious impulse being to take it away or to spoil it’, projective identification (p. 176). Groups in decline, losing the status of heretofore privileged identities, at a time of growing inequality and economic uncertainty, especially more conservative and/or economically insecure lower middle classes, and even many upwardly mobile arrivistes to higher classes, are especially likely to feel intense humiliation, anxiety, and rage as long-established status hierarchies, especially of race, religion, or gender, erode under assault. They see themselves as victims of the machinations by corrupt, evil, indifferent elites above, while sheepish subalterns, snowflakes, and libtards indoctrinated by liberal schoolteachers teach sex education, atheism, Critical Race Theory, communism, and hatred of America.
Ressentiment is closely intertwined with sadomasochistic, authoritarian aggression that seeks to punish, if not destroy, the enemies of their cultures, values, and identities, which ultimately begin to shade into what Fromm (1967) called necrophilia, the love of death, and destruction among those unable to find self-realization. This has been evident in schoolyard bullying, the rise in murders, and of course the rage and violence of 6 January. The vehemence, vitriol, and intensity of their rage and ressentiment require us to consider its characterological basis, namely, how cultural declines and fear of replacement evoke ‘extinction anxiety’ rooted in the fear of death—one of the most powerful human motives (Becker, 1973; Freud, 1961). TMT, terror management theory, is defined by the American Psychological Association as a theory proposing that control of death anxiety is the primary function of society and the main motivation in human behavior. Accordingly, awareness of the inevitability of death (mortality salience) motivates people to maintain faith in the absolute validity of the cultural worldviews (i.e., beliefs and values) that give their lives meaning and to believe that they are living up to those standards, thus attaining a sense of personal value or self-esteem that buffers them against the frightening recognition of their own mortality. (https://dictionary.apa.org/terror-management-theory)
Humans share with all life-forms a biological predisposition toward self-preservation in the service of reproduction, and we are unique in our capacity for symbolic thought, which not only fosters self-awareness and the ability to reflect on the past and ponder the future with the inevitability of death that engenders potentially debilitating terror that is ‘managed’ by the development and maintenance of cultural worldviews, socially constructed beliefs about reality that minimize existential dread by conferring meaning, and value often tied to seemingly ‘eternal’ cultural institutions such as religion or nationalism, and in the current case, religious nationalisms.
In face of the many social changes and crises of today, especially the challenges to their identities and values, authoritarians embrace a variety of antidemocratic, reactionary movements and strategies to resist change. Like caged animals facing existential threats to their very lives, authoritarians violently lash out seeking to defend their very selves, their hierarchical identities, their traditional value systems, and cultures through right-wing populist social and/or political mobilizations that would stop if not/reverse social change fostering displacement and decline. Their resistance identities seek to restore a time when their identities, lifestyles, and values were stable, secure, and unquestioned. This ‘toxic nostalgia’ feeds reactionary agendas from patriarchy to the denial of climate change (Klein, 2022).
A coterie of conservatives, reactionary extremists, militia members, evangelical Christians, and/or many ‘ordinary’ loyal Republicans, insecure about their very futures, facing assaults upon their identities and values, may not be able to halt social trends, but between ‘extinction anxiety’, anger, and ressentiment, they can organize, mobilize, and exert political power to resist and forestall such changes especially since given the anger and sadomasochistic violence at the core of their character, they are willing to employ violence to defend their identities, repressive values, and lifestyles challenged by liberal social values and multicultural pluralism. Many, perhaps one-third of Republicans, believe violent force may be necessary to preserve their identities and ways of life (Pape, 2022).
Democratic Character
In the late 1940s, Lasswell described the ‘democratic character’ with the capacity for empathy and caring about the Other; progressives see all fellow human beings unconditionally entitled to equality, dignity, and recognition. Progressive movements are also likely to feel anger, especially at the adverse structural consequences of elite decisions/policies indifferent to the consequences on human welfare or the treatment of subaltern populations, especially those that have been victimized, typically racial/ethnic minorities, religious minorities, LGBTQ exploited workers, and so on.
By the 1960s, there have been major changes in psychoanalytic theory that moved away from libido theory to ‘object relations’ perspectives—anticipated in Fromm’s work and the writings of Marcuse (1953). The classical Freudian model of the punitive superego, guilt, sustained ‘surplus’ sexual repression to motivate the alienated labor of capital requiring obedience on the part of workers over and above what was necessary for social life. Following the 1960s, his perspective shifted as the sexual revolution became incorporated within the mass mediated insinuation of ‘artificial needs’ for consumption. ‘Repressive desublimation’, seeming to be sexual freedom, served to mask alienation, elide social critique, and reproduce the capitalist system (Marcuse, 1964).
Meanwhile, several mainstream psychologists and psychiatrists began to see the emergence of a more tolerant, flexible, more democratic form of selfhood better adapted to social change and egalitarian social relationships. For Lifton (1993), people were becoming fluid and many-sided; an evolving sense of the ‘Protean self’ that is more appropriate to the current world describes the emergent social character open to change, flexibility, discontinuity, inconsistency, and multiplicity radically different from fixed, rigid authoritarian singularity (Langman, 2017). Proteas was the Greek God who could change his appearance. Proteanism can awaken our species belonging, our species self. We can better assert our organic relationship to each other and to nature where we can experience common humanity. The diversity is integral to the commonality we all share as a species and the life experiences we share. As Oglivy (1979) suggested, the ‘many dimensional self’ is better adapted to the more flexible kinds of organizational life within flattened, more democratic hierarchies, structurally as well as interpersonally, more likely to involve teamwork in such teams that is highly likely to be multicultural. For Bauman (2000), we are now at the end of the stable, solid, heavy, industrial world of late modernity and its Keynesian moment. ‘All that is solid [has now] melted into thin air’. We have entered the current era of ‘liquid modernity’, a more flexible, postindustrial, globalized world of rapid flows, of what is light and flexible. It is increasingly evident how ‘liquid selfhood’ might be so flexible; changing self-constructions of selfhood and identities and the variability of performances to fit changing contexts has replaced notions of a seamless, unitary cohesive self, once established in early life, along with a clear-cut, fixed identity throughout a linear, coherent lifespan with a consistent narrative that endures little change. His notion of liquid selfhood is clearly emancipatory, which means to experience no hindrance, obstacle, resistance, or any other impediment to the moves intended or desired.
These various commentators had, however, written before about the various current social movements that erupted; they represented mainstream ‘value neutrality’ and, with the exception of Bauman, did not tie their work to the critique of capitalism in general nor the emerging changes in neoliberalism and its crises, especially impacting those born at about the same time they were writing when generation Z, the zoomers, were born who now represent a major social political force (Wolpe, 2011). That said, this work closely parallels the perspectives of Marcuse and Fromm. Marcuse began to rethink the historical nature of character and charted the ‘obsolescence’ of Freudian man, as the emerging ‘new sensibility’, and provided a libidinal basis for the ‘Great Refusals’ (Langman, 2017; Marcuse, 1970). The emancipatory mobilizations, great refusals, sought radical transformation of late capitalist society rooted in a ‘biological need’ for freedom, valuing Eros as the life instincts so that people might find the kinds of creative self-fulfillment that was thwarted and repressed by the demands and ideologies of capital (Marcuse, 1969). The ‘great refusals’ of the 1960s were thought to prelude to a new form of society, a postcapitalist society with a new iteration of subjectivity, what he called a ‘new sensibility’ realized under the conditions of economic, political, social, and indeed libidinal freedom, where domination and alienation will be overcome, people could creatively realize themselves, and live in harmony with each other and with Nature moving from domination to harmony (Marcuse, 1970). These various ‘great refusals’ sought meaningful, creative, post-materialist lifestyles within democratic supportive, egalitarian, inclusive communities (cf. Inglehart, 1971).
Similarly, Erich Fromm saw postwar America and other consumer societies as well, typified by the ‘marketing character’ who typified the ‘pathology of normality’ by turning himself or herself into a reified commodity, selling one’s personality to sell goods or services to other people and then compete for status by accumulating material things—all the while supporting the insanity of war. But he saw a historical progression of social character, and the next iteration, the ‘productive character’, articulated a life force that was creative and artistic and encourages the full potential of people for creative self-realization that is now systematically denied by the capitalist mode of production and the dominant values of capitalist societies such as alienation, domination, ruthless competition, valuing having things rather than being fulfilled, finding gratification in one’s being, and harmonious relationships with other people and with Nature.
Conclusion
The social conditions and changes that began after World War II led to changes in socialization, social character, and, in turn, identity, given long accumulated grievances and discontents of the subordinated roles and identities of African Americans, cloistered women, and closeted LGBT culminated in the grassroots, ‘bottom-up’ progressive social movements of the 1960s when youth mobilized and dare challenged the ‘typical’ hierarchical values and identities of the times. Other youth engaged in massive protests, sit-ins, and marches against the war in Vietnam. But these progressive movements to transform identities and values of an entrenched status quo triggered a reactionary backlash with the election of Nixon promising ‘law and order’. For the next two decades, most progressive movements waned, but in the 21st century, given the adversities of neoliberal globalization, there was a resurgence of social justice movements and reactionary backlash culminating in a polarization unseen since the Civil War. This extreme polarization makes any kind of national unity problematic and, indeed, threatens to undermine the very foundations of liberal democracy such as elections, rule of law, and a free press . Indeed, a large cross-national study has suggested that the United States is no longer liberal democracy (Walter, 2021).
These mobilizations were often understood in terms of structural factors such as competing class interests or locations, hegemonic discourses, political socialization, geography, the impacts of neoliberalism, and its inequality, precatory, and so on. And surely these antecedent, structural factors are important. But such approaches little explain the emotional intensity of various right-wing authoritarian mobilizations that quite publicly extol the embrace of violence, indeed murder of ‘enemies’. Thus, we need to bring in a critical social-psychological perspective that see identities and values, undergirded by radically different constellations of social character structure which mediate between structural factors, especially the political economy that evokes powerful emotions. The Frankfurt School tradition provides a starting point for understanding contemporary social movements; many of the insights of almost a century ago remain not just salient but amazingly prescient insofar as, identities, the more conscious self-conceptions and narratives of an individual and/or group, and its values and goals are underpinned by its ‘social character’. If we fail to understand the characterological roots of these identities, we do so at our own peril.
At the same time, the psychocultural approach exists within a larger context, the political economy, and just as the relative prosperity of the postwar era became the condition fostering a character structure that disposed the progressive movements of the 1960s, by the late 1970s, a new set of economic conditions had emerged. Globalized neoliberalism led to growing inequality, precarity, environmental despoliation, and so on and propensities for crises that neoliberal governments cannot ameliorate. But the progressive genie had been let out of the bottle and by the beginnings of the 21st century, it was already evident how economic factors not only impacted the progressive global justice movements but became a source of anxiety and uncertainty for many conservative groups that, intertwined with the social changes and progressive movements, led to many grievances among the conservatives, especially for the lower middle classes, who are also facing a variety of cultural challenges to identities. Then came the subprime mortgage crisis in which heightened anxieties over economic security became intertwined with anxieties over challenges to traditional norms and identities. For many of these groups, much of the ‘blame’ for adversity was attributed to racial/ethnic minorities who had been ‘irresponsible’ purchasing these mortgages and/or expecting government largess that would increase taxes. At the same time, many blamed liberated women for seeking jobs and displacing men from the workforce.
These competing movements reflect fundamentally different identities and social characters that are existential challenges to each other. Reactionary groups embrace violence and destructiveness toward ‘enemies’. Thus, as has been argued, these characterological differences, articulated in political identities, foster mobilizations, contested in the cultural terrains of identity and values that have led to the radical polarization of contemporary society. The progressive movements would seek egalitarian society embracing cosmopolitan values of universal tolerance, inclusion, creative self-fulfillment, and harmonious relationships between people and between people and Nature with dignity for all (Langman, 2015). The reactionary, authoritarian populists defend hierarchical, essentialist identities, reject democratic process as well as facts and evidence, and embrace unrestricted capitalism, notwithstanding its many adversities including their own economic security. Whatever the electoral short-term ‘successes’ of reactionary populisms, we need to be reminded that they are a rearguard action against social changes in identity lifestyles and values spearheaded by the progressive movements. (This is not to ignore the serious short-term threats to collective purposes and unified social action, and we are now at that point where global warming threatens the very existence of human civilization.)
Whither the Future?
The near future is uncertain; the rise of authoritarian populisms has seriously challenged the very foundations of bourgeois democracy, however imperfect it may be. But certain strands of Frankfurt School Theory envision a telos moving toward freedom and self-knowledge, impelled as much by political-economic contradictions as by dreams as ‘wish fulfillments’. In the move toward a ‘sane society’ of ‘productive characters’ envisioned by Fromm (1955) and/or the goals of the ‘great refusals’ that Marcuse saw as the prelude to a new form of society, a postcapitalist society free of domination, alienation, and reification with a new form of subjectivity, what he called a ‘new sensibility’, realized under the conditions of economic, political, social, and indeed libidinal freedom, people could creatively realize themselves and live in harmony with each other and with Nature (Marcuse, 1969, 1970).
The most important contribution of the Frankfurt School for the current analysis is not simply the revealing sadomasochistic authoritarianism of the various right populisms, ethnoreligious nationalisms, and/or neofascist mobilizations of today, which has been done quite often, but its particular strand of utopianism, the secular vision of ‘messianic Judaism’ that believes ‘another world is possible’, for example, the motto of the World Social Forum. While for Adorno and Horkheimer, the fears of resurgent authoritarianism, indeed fascism, were ever present leading to their pessimism, recall that Marcuse and Fromm were among the first scholars to read the then newly discovered 1844 Manuscripts and the subsequent concern with alienation that informed both of their careers. But in both cases, the Marxist critique of alienated labor had morphed into a general alienation of rationally administered societies. Nevertheless, the critique of alienation that thwarted human fulfillment in genuine community, within a dialectical theory of history, held within it the promise of its overcoming. The same advanced technologies already evident in the 1960s that will serve the interests of capitalist prophets could free humanity from poverty, toil, and starvation. Fromm saw a historical progression of social character, the receptive character of feudalism, the hoarding character, the exploitative character, the necrophiliac character, and in late consumer capitalism the ‘marketing character’ who typified the ‘pathology of normality’ by turning himself or herself into a commodity, selling one’s personality to sell goods or services to other people and then compete for status by accumulating material things—all the while supporting the insanity of war. But he claimed that the next iteration would be the productive character who articulated a life force that was creative and artistic and encouraged the full potential of people for thier creative self-realization that was now systematically denied by the capitalist mode of production and the dominant values of capitalist societies such as alienation, domination, ruthless competition, valuing having things rather than being fulfilled, finding gratification in one’s being, and harmonious relationships with other people and with Nature.
While truly these are the times that try men’s souls, as democracy is evermore threatened by various reactionary populisms, as inequality increases, as climate change threatens the very existence of humanity, the progressive movements that began in the 1960s, and now rekindled, can be seen as harbingers of a progressive future. But that movement of history is not linear but cyclical; the regressive counter-movements we see today, the reactionary nationalisms, and authoritarian populisms eventually fail to govern very well and typically lose support and exit the stage of world history. Although speculations are always problematic, certain tentative trends are evident. Notwithstanding violence, the media attention, and some popular support, the reactionary attempts to arrest, if not reverse historical trends, while achieving some short-term victories face decline and demise. But the social mobilizations of today, led by new cohorts with ever more progressive identities/democratic social characters, spearheaded social transformation. As Gramsci observed, we are in a transitional period, and while the old may be dying, the new has not yet arrived, but the various progressive forces we have discussed are growing and struggling for that realization. What is the basis for that optimism?
Demography is Destiny
Between immigration and fertility rates, the United States will soon become a Majority-Minority country and more than 50% will be people of color that typically have higher birth rates than do native-born Caucasians. While minorities are not a homogeneous block, the majority typically vote Democratic and, in many elections, especially today when margins of victory are small, minority voters are ever more likely to sway elections. The anticipated growth of minority groups is perceived as threatening to Whites’ status as the dominant racial group in the United States, which, in turn, has triggered protective ethnic nationalisms and policies that are hostile to outgroups. But small-town rural life and its associated values have generally been in decline for decades save for vacation homes, picturesque Bread and Breakfest hotes and cheap retirement communities. Increasingly, young people are more liberal and many move to large cities for better jobs and more interesting cultural amenities.
Cultural Changes
Conservative groups face long-term declining popular support for their identities and values. Historical and demographic factors foretell demise; their fears of demise, anger at those deemed responsible, and the embrace aggression and even violence become the only means by which they can try to survive and maintain the privileges of race, gender, and conservative religious moralism, while this ‘toughness’ and bravado may be psychologically gratifying, especially for men; they cannot win in democracies with fair elections and thus embrace a variety of antidemocratic strategies. Meanwhile, growing cohorts of progressive youth who typically support the Sanders progressives undermine traditional politics, culture, and values.
Cohort Flow
For Karl Mannheim (1925, 1972), cohort ‘flow’ suggested that every generation is shaped by different economic social and political contexts that impact and shape their attitudes, values, and identities at those crucial years in the lifecycle, 18–25, when the intelligence reaches its maximum, while identities and values remain fluid and changeable but often contradictory, but a period of openness to new experiences and values—some of which may be quite discrepant from their families and/or the peers of childhood. Identities so shaped more or less endure as cohorts move through the lifespan. In contemporary society, given social conditions, especially the state of the economy, and mass media, especially social media, younger cohorts are far more socially liberal, more accepting of racial/ethnic differences; they support civil rights, feminism, and gay rights, embrace gender fluidity and environmentalism, and perhaps most importantly, a slight majority prefer socialism to capitalism. They are moving away fundamentalist religion. Perhaps the descriptions by one of the millennials himself can better describe how the historical context of today so adversely impacts the young, and if our analysis is correct, humanly possible adaptation is the embrace of a humanistic socialist alternative. As Remer (2021) states, . . . a unique constellation of events has shaped millennial identity and consciousness, giving rise to an undeniably age-based sensibility. By and large, we—and the ‘Zoomers’ (the generation born in the late 1990s and early 2000s)—tend to be politically radical, socially liberal, economically disadvantaged, culturally anti-establishment, and attitudinally ironic and self-aware. A majority of us identify as socialists or anti-capitalists. We want a world freed of the sadness of environmental devastation, the heartache of doing work you hate, the injustice of having a handful of rich, powerful old men controlling the fate of billions of people. And we feel deeply betrayed, disappointed by a nearly unbroken string of broken promises, wearied by countless exhibitions of malice, cowardice, and incompetence.
Given the inequality and precarity of so many youths, and growing disenchantment with the neoliberal political economy as well as disdain for conservative, indeed reactionary values and identities, we are now in that transitional period desperately awaiting the new, a postcapitalist, ‘sane society’—but that will only come as a result of social mobilizations. Despite the many horrors of the current moment, the lessons of history complemented by understanding the nature of changing identity and character, especially of the Zoomers, give us hope (Wolpe, 2011).
