this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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US Authoritarianism
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People in here acting like authoritarianism is somehow inherent to conservatives but not to progressives. Authoritarianism is a problem. Conservativism is a relative political position, meaning there will always be conservatives on one side of the Overton window, wherever it currently resides.
Well I think it's because we do have a concept of leftwing authoritarianism already, but it's not called progressivism, it's called being a Tankie. I see the similarities in that if fascist is the extreme of conservatism then Tankie is the extreme of progressivism but that isn't really the case seeing that extreme progressivism is most of the time Anarchism.
Tankies are right-wing, though. They are nothing more than right-wingers who have co-opted leftist terminology. Wolves in (very poorly made) sheep's clothing, if you will.
Well yeah you aren't exactly wrong, but if we are talking about the very basic ideas of "progressive" and "conservative", Tankies are basically authoritarians with the vineer of being left wing. They in the end go against basically everything they think they stand for, but those are basically the people who are pointing to when people go "well the communist are just as bad!"
It's honestly rather stupid
The same thing happens on the conservative side, with libertarians being less authoritarian. But now we are headed towards a political compass type of political perspective, which is good for discussion but doesn't necessarily give an accurate depiction of where the power currently resides or how it fits into the Overton window.
I do agree that it ends up looking like a political compass, which for your average person makes it easier to understand. However this kind of discounts that to be authoritarian is also to give up many of the things that make left ideology left. Meanwhile libertarian ideology tends to naturally devolve back into feudalism.
So how do you instill progressive values without compromising them? It seems like the only tool of the true left, at least how you've defined it, is gradual cultural change, because any exertion of pressure is authoritarianism. This would apply to things like social pressure as well. If someone gets yelled at in public for not wearing a mask, that's authoritarianism and antithetical to leftist values. Or if a teacher loses their job for not using a student's preferred pronouns, that's authoritarianism. You can argue about if its justified or not, but that's a separate issue.
This is literally the question that liberal democracy seeks to answer. "What is the nature of just government?" The answer so far, is more or less to give people individual liberty and mechanisms for political self determination. Then, ostensibly, laws reflect consensus rather than rogue authority.
I like the way you put that. So maybe "Authoritarianism" as a noun should be defined as the point at which individual liberty is over ridden and/or where laws do not reflect consensus. As opposed to authoritarianism as an adjective...
I'm not an expert on the application of political philosophy for societal change. I'd say that is something you should look into from anarchist literature as many scholars have done deep into the application of left wing ideology without authoritarianism.
Though I'm also a bit confused on what you mean by "authoritarianism". From your examples the first is an interaction between two people about public health and the other is someone not following a rule about respecting protected characteristics and being punished by it. I don't think those would be classified as "authoritarian" unless the definition of authoritarian is "receiving backlash for my actions which can harm others"
I'm looking at authoritarianism as a spectrum, where someone can force their ideals unto someone else to some varying degree of force, and that is a concept that is politically agnostic, at least in the sense of right and left, conservative and progressive. Some conservatives hold conservative values but do not believe that they have a right to force those values on others, and some progressives believe so strongly in their values that they are willing to force them on others. My point is that ANY force used on others so that they conform to your ideals is a form of and some degree of authoritarianism. The point I disagreed with was that authoritarianism is strictly characteristic of right wing, conservative politics. It's a weird world view that doesn't align with reality in any practical way, and persisting in that world view is ignorant at best and extremely dangerous at worst because extreme authoritarianism of any flavor leads to immeasurable suffering as we've seen many times over the years. Ie, Chinese cultural revolution versus nazi Germany, both disastrous authoritarian movements, but coming from very different political ideals.
That said, laws are meaningless without authority to back them, so some level of authoritarianism is also NECESSARY in any government or social contract. This is a critical point to my entire rant here. You can't eliminate authoritarianism if you want to have a functioning society, but it needs to be very very limited.