Let’s Get Clear: Authoritarianism Is the Real Problem Beneath the Political Divide
By: Jonathan Riley
Tags: Politics, Republicans, Philosophy, Democrats, Power

Various boogeymen are used to scare people of different political persuasions. For the left, the big bad capitalist tycoons are the devil of choice; for the right, big bad “communist” dictators are. The problem isn’t that dictators or tycoons aren’t actually bad, they both are; the problem is people’s inability to see that they’re two versions of the same thing, resulting in the tendency to think one is more preferable than the other.

What people fail to see is that these are merely two manifestations of a singular problem: aristocracy, tyranny, or authoritarianism. It is a political pattern of the many being controlled by the few, which always inevitably results in exploitation and abuse of the many by the few, without fail.

In an even more condensed nutshell, it is accumulation of control or power by an elite minority.

Bipartison Blindness to the Essence of Power

Of course, there are some problems that are simply built into being human, problems like death or disease, old-age, and physical pain. However, most of the problems we have today that relate in any way to politics or human systems of power have to do with the fundamental problem of authoritarianism.

The basic epiphany that everyone needs to have, I think, is that we all actually hate the same thing, we just selectively only hate it in certain manifestations, depending on our political persuasions.

Left Blindness to Authoritarianism in Government

For people with a leftward inclination, for instance, they easily see it in the inherently authoritarian structure of capitalism, where every private company literally has a oligarchical or dictatorship structure by definition, and collectively, the capital-owning elite control and twist capitalist society in their own interests.

This is completely valid, yet left-ish people like this are also prone to totally overlook the authoritarianism that develops in government. Often, they hate authoritarianism serving corporate interests, but welcome it when it’s aligned with their values, such as forced lockdowns during the pandemic, or the expansion of the surveillance-state.

Right Blindness to Authoritarianism in Capitalism

On the other side of the aisle, people with a rightward inclination tend to see the authoritarianism in government bureaucracy, and the attempts of government to control their lives. Even though we still have some semblance of democracy, this is very much a real phenomenon that occurs, as we can clearly see in “communist” dictatorships (they’re not really communist, but that’s another story).

This is also completely valid, yet right-ish people like this are also prone to totally overlook the authoritarian nature of capitalism, and also the fact that much of the problem with Western governments is actually because of authoritarian capitalists hijacking democracy.

Mutual Embrace of Aligned Authoritarianism

Both sides of the aisle are guilty of welcoming authoritarianism when it serves their interests, or ideals. This is true even when it’s the kind of authoritarianism they’re inclined to be against.

For instance, the right’s complicity in government authoritarianism was clear in their silent consent to federal troops being used to suppress the BLM protests. Of course, if troops had been deployed to suppress anti-abortion protests or something else they’re aligned with, their reaction would have been totally different.

The left’s complicity in corporate authoritarianism is clear in their support for corporate-ally politicians, as long as they appear to support left-friendly values, such as gay rights, racial diversity, or pro-choice sentiment, a phenomenon of left hypocrisy that has come to be colloquially referred to as “intersectional Reaganism” or “intersectional imperialism.”

These are the ways in which both sides can be highly hypocritical, when it comes to the ideals they espouse. The left may say they hate capitalist authoritarianism, and the right may say they hate government authoritarianism, but the reality is they both hypocritically welcome what they say they hate, when it seems to be aligned with their values.

Know Thy Enemy

Its high time we all came to a basic realization:

If you are part of the vast majority of people that will likely be subjugated in either case, whether by a capitalist oligarchy or a communist dictatorship, then you should know that your true enemy is the basic power structure of authoritarianism, and therefore, you should reject authoritarianism even when it’s aligned with your values.

The way that government authoritarianism comes to power is by people accepting it, when it appears to be aligned with their values. The way that capitalist authoritarianism comes to power is by people accepting it, when it appears to be aligned with their values.

The way that authoritarianism manifests is by authoritarians convincing people that they are aligned with their values, and therefore can be trusted with power. That strategy is called propaganda, or as Noam Chomsky puts it, manufacturing consent.

We need to reach a point of civil maturity at which we can recognize that authoritarianism is inherently problematic, even when propaganda makes it appear to be aligned with our values. We need to see through propaganda, and reject authoritarianism on principle.

Why is Authoritarianism the Perpetual Dilemma?

It seems that, for whatever reason, we have a minority of humans that are inclined to seek excessive control over other people, and the world around them. There also seems to be a mechanism by which, once they gain a lot of control, their desire for control expands into a kind of mental illness or addiction, essentially making them “mad kings (or queens)”.

In a nutshell, for various reasons, some people develop an insane obsession with controlling the universe, and everyone else has to deal with them.

Discernment and Democracy are the Antidote

Democracy is the opposite of authoritarianism, it is bottom-up People Power. Rather than subjugating the will of the majority to the rule of the powerful minority, which is pretty much the definition of aristocracy or authoritarianism, in democracy, decisions and/or leadership are chosen by aggregating the collective wills of all people, through some system of voting, with checks and balances.

The war on democracy began at it’s inception. Powerful people were always skeptical of the idea of democracy from the very beginning, calling it things like “the tyranny of the majority,” or proposing that power actually should be in the hands of the “competent” or ordained few, because the unwashed masses can’t properly rule themselves. Surprisingly, they have always been able to convince a great many poor people to agree with them.

This has basically always been the argument for authoritarianism, since the time of the “Divine Right of Kings” and the most ancient empires. Of course, by keeping the masses poor and uneducated in an authoritarian system, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, since uneducated, uninformed, distracted, and desperate people actually do make worse voters, and can’t govern themselves as well.

There’s also a tremendous amount of disinformation about democracy; for instance, it’s extremely common to hear people lament that “The U.S. isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic!” in spite of the fact that a brief perusal of the encyclopedia reveals that a republic is a type of democracy; democracy is a broad category of political systems that encompasses many types of democratic government.

Likewise, people associate socialism with Stalinist Russia, which was a failed socialist state that turned into a dictatorship. I would bet that fewer than 5% of the population of Western countries even understand the basic concept that socialism is fundamentally just democracy applied to economics, which like democracy in the state, can be manifested in a wide variety of ways.

Essentially, the success of authoritarianism over democracy is dependent upon not just propaganda, but also people’s susceptibility to that propaganda. The more uneducated and lacking in critical thinking skills people are, the more easily managed they will be. This is why authoritarians always try to replace true education with indoctrination, and keep the lower classes distracted, overworked, overstressed, and uninformed.

So, I hope this little article will help a few readers to see through the propaganda, and recognize that their true enemy is something deeper than corporatist tycoons or communist dictators, but is the very structure of authoritarianism, however it appears. I write this because I still have hope for democracy, which is the only thing that has ever come between us and outright tyranny.

As a side-note, what do you get when you remove authoritarianism in both the private and public sectors? A libertarian/socialist hybrid, which I like to call State Libertarian Socialism, could actually be a way to have a less authoritarian world, in my humble opinion. Thanks for reading!