#any analysis I’ve read of fascism that doesn’t start from that premise feels fundamentally incomplete

[communistkenobi]

I’ve been reflecting a lot on the authoritarian personality recently and the further away I get from that book the more I realise it’s just like fundamentally incorrect. The scope of the research being primarily psychological in nature I think prevents it from reaching any coherent definition of fascism because fascism isn’t a primarily psychological problem lol. I think the book is strongest when Adorno is talking about antisemitism as a foundational part of fascism, and how antisemitism is like a comprehensive structuring force for people’s ideological outlooks, but the moment he or any of the researchers move away from that or try to psychologically profile their research participants it gets really messy. Their psychological discussion about family and its relationship to fascism is fairly interesting, and it was what convinced me that the nuclear family just needs to be fucking abolished completely, but I think that has more to do with the fact that the nuclear family as a social unit naturally fits with fascism because that is the social unit they want to structure society around.

idk I really like that book but it’s deeply flawed. It’s one of those things that you should read alongside people like Fanon and Cesaire, who offer a critique of, respectively, the colonial character of psychology and the colonial nature of fascism, two perspectives that are not present in the authoritarian personality at all. Like I think the best way to approach that book is to fundamentally disagree with its premise (searching for the existence of a fascist “personality” type), and then see what is left salvaging afterwards

#the authoritarian personality #book club #came across ​some old posts I made about the book and realised I just like don’t agree with them at all anymore #it’s a book from the 1940s so like that’s not super surprising #idk I’m conflicted. it’s like a stepping stone. the moment I took myself outside of their methodology #I stopped being so mystified about what fascism is #again. literally. I have never seen a better definition than cesaire’s - fascism as the logical endpoint of European civilisation #any analysis I’ve read of fascism that doesn’t start from that premise feels fundamentally incomplete