Identity,Social Character,and the Clash of Social Movements

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.

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?