Sunday, December 12, 2010

The Authoritarian Personality



Today the world scarcely remembers the mechanized persecution and extermination of millions of human beings [during WWII] ... in what was regarded as the citadel of Western civilization. Yet the conscience of many men was aroused.

How could it be, they asked each other, that a culture of law, order, and reason, there should have survived the irrational remnants of ancient racial and religious hatreds?

How could they explain the willingness of the masses of people to tolerate the mass extinction of their fellow citizens?

What tissues in the life of our modern society remain cancerous, and despite our assumed enlightenment show the incongruous atavism of ancient peoples?

And what within the individual organism responds to certain stimuli in our culture with attitudes and acts of destructive aggression?

AJC-Archives

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