this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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US Authoritarianism
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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.
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.