The Pete Quiñones Show - *Throwback* An Overview of 'The Authoritarian Personality' w/ Joe Atwill

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

71 MinutesPG-13Joseph Atwill is an author and co-host of the weekly "Powers and Principalities" episode of the Our Interesting Times podcast with Tim Kelly.Joe joined Pete to do an overview of Theodore Adorno's book, "The Authoritarian Personality." Adorno was one of the leaders of the Frankfurt School of thought.Our Interesting Times podcastFrom Cybernetics to Littleton: Techniques of Mind Control by Jeffrey SteinbergPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's Substack Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekignano show. Returning to the show today, Joe Atwill. How are you doing, Joe? I'm just fine. Pete. How are you? Thank you for having me. Oh, no problem at all.

I've wanted to talk about this book on the show for a while and share some passages. And I notice when you and Tim Kelly on our interesting time, the Powers and Principalities episodes, when you guys do those episodes, you refer to the book, The Authoritarian Personality by Adorno and his crew often. So when did this book first come on your radar? I think I started being aware of it in probably 2000. I read an article by Jeffrey Steinberg, one of the LaRouche scholars. It was called from cybernetics to Littleton, I believe, techniques and mind control.

And he shows the overall context of the group that produced it and how it relates to other elements within culture. And so that was kind of how I first became aware of it and started setting. It was just through Steinberg's, articles and descriptions of it. Well, I'm going to, let's just start getting into this book.

Those books from 1950. I'll just share the title page here. It's called Studies and Prejudice, the authoritarian personality by Adorno, Frankl, Bruce Brunswick, Levinson, Sanford, Dynamics of Prejudice, anti-Semitism and economic old disorder, rehearsal for destruction, profits of deceit.

And it's sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, Social Studies series publication number three. And it immediately in the foreword just starts talking about the fact that this is being written in 1950. The world history of anti-Semitism is not manifesting itself with the full and violent destructiveness of which we know it's capable of, you know, and then he says people, you know, people aren't even remembering what just happened a few short years ago. Yeah, hardly believable, but that's the context that they want, you know, the article be read within. Right. So this book was basically written for, there were studies done. There were people who were, it's male, white, it was like mostly white males, and they asked them a series of questions, they gave them scenarios, and basically how they responded to it was supposed to tell you their potential for becoming fascists. Is that what you understand?

Yes, that's correct. They set up what they claimed were empirically driven scales. So, whereas, the subject would give responses and depending on the score of the scale, they could, you know, attribute the potential to become what they defined as a fascist. Oddly enough, the term fascist is not really well defined within the document. I mean, they have several attempts at it, but it's a broad concept. So the document on the second page sort of has a better description of the methodology. I mean, personally, I think the scales are ludicrous and because of the methodology that is, you know, developed to create them. And they explain that, I think on page two. I think you had it up on the screen. It's up on the screen right now. The key sentence is their statement that the

authors in common with most social scientists hold the view that anti-Semitism is based more largely upon factors in the subject, and in this total situation, then upon actual characteristics of Jews. And that one place to look for determinants of anti-Semitic opinion and attitudes within the persons who express them, so the language is like a little obtuse, but basically it's just saying that Jews are never responsible for individuals who have negative opinions of them. And with this methodology, which is, this is, the reason why they put this here is so you understand that they are to give an explanation as to why there are no categories of reality of negative opinions of Jews that are appropriate. This as a category of reality is not

contained inside their methodology. It doesn't exist. So the problem of the problem therefore is that since that's a real thing and there are many times I'm sure even you know the most philosemitic individual would admit that Jews are behaving inappropriately or undemocratically or their ethnicity is being maneuvered to an advantageous position you know different things that one could reasonably state would be it would be appropriate to resist or be opposed to but that can never be measured or be a phenomenon with the methodology that they're presenting to us here. It just is not possible because they're only measuring the determinants are the attitudes and opinions within the person who express them and not in actual characteristics of Jews.

So you wonder, therefore, why would they even bother with this since they start out with something that is clearly a fantasy, right? It's just, and incidentally, because of this, you have this statement concerning, you know, they just accept as a premise that Jews are not responsible for any kind of negative reaction to them. And then you go on in the asymmetric situation, having like 700 pages of kind of ways of figuring out

where Christians or Gentiles are neurotic. because they have negative reactions to Jews in certain circumstances. So it is just on its face, and from the very beginning, it seems really more sophist than it is, you know, an attempt at developing, you know, train of thoughts and reasons. So I would say the, then the question is, well, why would you do this? I mean, it's not even on its face an attempt at really finding anything that's real in terms of either anti-Semitism or phylo-Semitism. So what is the purpose of it?

Well, you know, we'll go through it, I'm sure. But at the end, they actually explain, you know, what they have in mind for this approach to, you know, understanding personalities, right? because that's really what this is. And really what you're dealing with here is propaganda. At the end, I mean, if you don't mind, I'll just jump to the conclusion. We'll sure you can go through the process as well. But I just, at the end of the thing, they talk about, well, you know, we are totally justified because of the potential for an individual to become more fascistic,

you know, without direct kind of intervention, to come up with a, you know, basically an approach, which they call democratic propaganda. And again, not well defined, but clearly what they're talking about is overcoming resistance to the understanding, to the Christian or the Gentile understanding, that all negative responses to Jews are neurotic. I mean, that I would say is an honest and reasonable characterization of what they're trying to get across here. And they're completely justified in this. In fact, they're kind of very smug and happy about being able to do it. And they talk about organizing all of the psychological sciences and kind of an effort to achieve this.

Now, here is where it kind of, you know, to now you could go through the authoritarian personality in to say, well, this is following, you know, the Holocaust. This is perhaps just a feel-good moment for the American Jewish committee. They hired a bunch of guys, and it's kind of crackpot. But, you know, if they want to feel that way, so what, you know, let them, you know, go forward? What's the problem? Well, the problem then is that during the development of this, Horkenheimer and Adorno were consulting with what's called the cybernetics,

conference that was held within the Macy conferences. It was one of the sub-conferences of the Macy, and this is really where Elm K. Ultra comes from. And so you end up with them stating that they're going to use instead of kind of this fascistic propaganda, they're going to use the propaganda of arrows. So now this then becomes one of the justifications of, you know, what is MK Ultra, and this, of course, then leads directly into the counterculture. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open,

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They're saying that it's, that these things are, you know, can lead to fascism. And you gave me, before he's already recording, you gave an example of just how extreme these kinds of, you know, like methods that they, they're able to discern, which can lead so-called to fascism, you know, how kind of bizarre they are. But in the case of the broad cultural thing, they are attacking basically family, monogamy, and even sort of delayed gratification. Now, these things are all part of cultural power without these things, without family, without delayed gratification, and without sexual restraint. You're not going to have really very much of a culture, are you? It won't really go forward very far.

So then the question arises when you look at this stuff in the authoritarian personality and then how it goes forward in time into the counterculture, the question has to come up is like, is this basically a kind of ethnic attack? I mean, are these scales and are the attitudes that are being developed really deliberately being done so for the purpose of shattering Christian? and European culture. You know, it's a brutal question, but it is one that just comes right out of the information that's, you know, available in the authoritarian personality.

Now, you know, as you go forward from the authoritarian personality, you can see, you know, the Macy, MK Ultra, the counterculture, but you also have to have it in the context going backwards because, well, again, to digress, the real manifestation of the authoritarian personality would be eros and civilization by Herbert Marcuse. He was a Frankfurt school member and was an associate of all of these individuals. A lot of the people who developed the authoritarian personality were brought to the U.S. by the American Jewish Committee who had been Frankfurt school members, particularly Horkenheimer and Adorno. Markuza did not participate in the authoring of the authority and personality, but he picks up on the conclusions and then produces his book,

Aeros and Civilization, which will give away my age. But I read in, gee, it was like in the late 60s right at the height of the counterculture. And it was sort of the intellectual mainspring of a lot of counterculture ideas. It has, in the, in the, in Arrowson civilization, it talks about unbridled sexuality. In other words, you know, there's no real reason for monogamy that, you know, he basically blends together Freud and Marx. And with the idea that they would be less neurosis if, you know, instead of having sexual restraint, you had not just, you know,

He had polysexualism and every imaginable kind of sexuality. He even negates hygiene as being neurotic. So, you know, think about the commune and the youth culture, you know, in the late 60s and early 70s. So he really was, you know, justification for it. And, you know, okay, so this is what we got with the authoritarian personality. was not just some, you know, kind of library book that people could look at if they, you know, couldn't fall asleep and were looking something to help them, because it's massively boring, incidentally. But it becomes really animated. It gets into, you know, the culture of Europeans.

And that's why, you know, Pete, you really have to look at this in context, you know, and whenever I talk about the third-term personality, I point out that the Frankfurt School, was really, you know, generated by primarily through Gregor Luchos, and he was the one who organized it intellectually, and it reflects his ideas. Great to see you back at Spegg Savers. Okay. Could you read out the letters on the wall for me? Yep.

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Offer ends on 7th of December 2025. Conditions apply, ask in store for details. It's just critical then to look at, you know, what his ideas were and how they were manifested in the real world because he ran the cultural and educational department of the Hungarian Soviet in the 1919 revolution. And there, he basically set up a kind of the conclusion of the authoritarian personality as overall pedagogy of the Hungarian public school system.

So what would happen is the kids would come in in the morning and they would have, you know, the first three or four hours would be kind of a degenerate sex education, the sort of sex education that public schools are now providing. In the afternoon, they would read them fairy tales in which they would have non-human actors taking, you know, kind of taking part in these stories. And there's an actual exchange between these individuals where they talk about how wonderful it is that the children who go to these fairy tales, you know, stories are disassociated. from the kind of bourgeois idea of humanness,

how they are so, you know, they call it communist that they don't even have that as one of their problems, the idea of like some sort of specialness because of their being humans. And now, Luchas was a murderous individual. It was recorded as killing a number of people just because they wouldn't obey orders. And then basically the Hungarian population

where he was overthrow the Soviet, Hungarian, Soviet, and then that's when Luchos, you know, hightailed it to Germany, where he set up the Frankfurt School. But again, you know, the context, you go forward and you look at things like the mouse geteers or the Playboy bunnies, the idea of, you know, an animal,

basically avatar, which becomes a, you know, part of your personality. You can see that the ideas are, I don't know how else to describe it, but are very longstanding. And then bear in mind that in the authoritarian personality, you know, you can sort of excuse, we get to the final thing. You'll see how imperial, you know, the attitude is of the people who are writing it. You know, it's very much they have the moral right to be able to arrange the minds of all

of the people that they feel are inferior or neurotic. But, you know, they had the justification. or at least they would say they did. Dornow mentioned this of the Holocaust. However, if you look at this context, you can see that Luchos had the exact same approach to dealing with European culture, and this was 30 years before the World War II broke out.

So you're looking, it seems to me, at just a kind of a long-standing relationship between this group of Jewish intellectuals and European culture. That part at the ending there is very important to know that people can make the excuses, oh, never again, never again, but they were talking about this long before World War II ever happened, long before anyone knew the name of Adolf Hitler. Yeah, that's right. And just to not to put a plug in, but I would mention that I have another understanding of kind of the development of the Nazi party. I have a paper out called the Freemason invention of the Nazi party. It's not hidden behind a paywall. If you just type in that, and I think actually you might have typed in post-flaviana, which is the website that's that. But anyway, post-flaviana in my name, and it should pop right up. It doesn't cost any money. And it just, I think it's an article that helps. to kind of understand a lot of the assertions about the origin of the Nazi party,

particularly that it was something that came organically out of the German people, are absolutely false. You know, you get into this terrible world of Holocaust denial, which is not something I'm trying to enter into, but I do think that I can inform that historical event, at least I'm not informing, but there are these facts. I mean, if you read the article, you'll see that none of the, the assertions I made are things which are, you know, conjectural.

I mean, everything is kind of, you know, it's all been recorded. It just hasn't been assembled so that people can actually see how the Nazi party came about. And so, you know, when you get to the authoritarian personality, they can claim. I mean, if you had Adorno and Horkenheimer here, I'm sure they Ready for huge savings We'll mark your calendars

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and to against their will overcome their self and to use propaganda to control them, you know, they would say, well, we have justification because of the Holocaust. But I just think that's really far-fetched. And that would be something that, that would be a discussion that we really need to be had in public. You know, there's be something we should take care of in public so everyone can participate in that particular discussion. So I just wanted to go over some of the things in the body before we get to the conclusion.

Just some highlights things that they see as leading to authoritarianism or someone becoming more fascistic. The first thing they say, talk about is conventionalism, which they define as rigid adherence to conventional middle class values. Second one. Yeah. Oh, man. The second one is authoritarian submission, submissive uncritical attitude towards idealized moral authorities of the in-group.

Then there's authoritarian aggression, which they describe as a tendency to be on the lookout for and to condemn, reject, and punish people who violate conventional values. This one is rather interesting. It's called anti-interception. It is an opposition to the subjective, the imaginative, the tender-minded. What does that mean, Joe?

Well, it doesn't mean anything at all. I mean, you have to remember that I really don't think they took this seriously. I mean, what you're really dealing with the authoritarian personality is it is propaganda. So at its core, the idea that it is presenting science is a carefully crafted veneer that is meant to fool people. But when you ask direct questions like that about the category of reality that they're claiming to be analyzing, this stuff just disappears.

I'll just, you know, to explain it, I will show that, you know, I'll give out that what I think is the best kind of the joke of the authoritarian personality. At the end, they talk about how they're justified in using propaganda in order to, to be able to change the mind of the Christian. Well, the first example of the propaganda, Pete, is the authoritarian personality itself.

I mean, what it's doing is trying to set up a kind of, you know, it's sort of a scientific veneer for intimidation. The average person couldn't spend, what, like two minutes reading this stuff before they would either fall asleep or, you know, give up and trying to understand it. But because it's a huge book and it, you know, has the veneer of science, I think it creates, you know,

certainly within the social science. a kind of power. And so this is really the purpose of the authoritarian personality, and all of these strange categories that they have imagined into existence, is that in toto, it's intimidating to some people. They would not have the sense of it being ludicrous, and therefore they would take it seriously. Remember, this is coming out post-World War II,

the, it's coming out in the world in which German atrocities are being, you know, presented to the American public almost daily. And so in that context, it has, it has power, has power of intimidation. But you, you just are, you know, you're going into a place where there is just literally ether because, you know, when you, when you try to analyze these things and, you know, like, well, is there anything to this category or can it be expressed slightly differently or how would it be determined, you know, in terms of empirical, you know, observation from other close-like phenomena? I mean, it's all disappears. It's all just hocus, focus, focus. So it's, it is, it has the function of intimidation. It has the veneer of science. And it has the declarations

of, frankly, of fascism. I mean, that's really, really. in my opinion how I'd characterize it. That's how I'd characterize the ending of it. They talk about we're entitled to use the propaganda of Eros and this is a better kind of propaganda than the propaganda of fascism, but I'm afraid that the moral sort of perspective that you are entitled

to control the minds of people against their will and to find ways to, you know, destroy their culture against their will without disclosing it to them that you're doing this. Well, you know, just pick your term, but certainly evil would come to mind. So the next thing they talk about is superstition and stereotypy. Basically, they're the belief in magical determinants of anything having to do with God. Yeah. If you believe in, if you believe in God. Next one is power and toughness, preoccupation with dominant submission, strong, weak, lead or follower dimensions, identifying with powerful figures, over emphasis upon the conventionalized attributes of the ego, exaggerated assertion of strength and toughness. So basically, you know, become dom, you know, become docile and accept whatever we're going to do to you.

they have destructiveness and cynicism, generalized hostility, vilification of the human, projectivity, the disposition to believe that wild and dangerous things go on in the world, the projection outwards of unconscious emotional impulses. Do you think that this is referring to like early take, pre-popper take on conspiracy theories? Sure, of course it is. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, they were aware of that there would be contestation, and so they're going to try to push all of the critics into some category to keep that analysis from going forward. I mean, you know, it's really these are just, if you look at the authoritarian personality strictly as propaganda for control, then it makes up just so much more sense.

It's so much easier to read, and you can really understand. the point of the authors. The point of the authors is not to develop some kind of understanding of reality. The point is that we are describing a process of propaganda that we are justified in executing upon you against your will, overcoming your resistance, and we are in that process right now. Our categories are not things in reality, or we don't have to show them that they are. But by using them in this way, you know, as elements of something that's neurotic, you know,

like you were talking about adherence to convention, this is somehow, you know, neurotic or leading to fascism, they're just setting up their future of control. You see what I mean? It's just these are just little steps toward the kind of control. that you now see. I was reading last week about this English

politician, a woman, she was black, I believe. And she made a statement like to the effect that Jews shouldn't feel that, you know, they've been discriminated in a worse way than like Irish people. She had

a few, you know, groups that she had in mind. And she was just condemned and I think they tried to kick her out of their political party, even though a statement was, you know, just seemingly objectively correct and certainly could come from a place in the heart other than anti-Semitism and could just be an attempt to, you know, categorize what the individual saw is real. But the reaction was incredibly vicious. And to get to that point where just to bring up the idea that Jewish suffering is not and has not been greater and has no moral basis in and of itself than the

suffering and persecution of other ethnicities, to get to the point where you can have the response that they did in the media, you've had to have gone through a very long process. And this is, the authoritarian personality is part of that. It's just little by little, it has come to pass that, you know, know, to, to criticize sort of Jewish misbehavior, undemocratic behavior, is, comes from a bad place in the heart. It is anti-Semitic. And they've been, they have just, you know, very systematically gone through,

you know, the use of the media over time and have gotten to the point now where they can actually have that. And there isn't a strong reaction against the media, you know, because I think if that reaction had occurred like in 1950, there would have just been an enormous response against the media that tried to shut someone down who was talking about Irish suffering as being, you know, having this moral equivalency of the suffering of Jews. but today, you know, we are in a different kind of, you know, social construct, and so they can get away with it.

But it's, it has, you know, when we look at the authoritarian personality, you're just looking at something that was part of all of that. The last thing they mention is a person who may be exact, have an exaggerated concern with sexual goings-ons. I assume that's with other people. So if you come forward a little bit next page, talk about conventionalism. The modern church with its many rules and hypocrisies

does not appeal to the deeply religious person. It appeals mainly to the childish, the insecure, and the uncritical. That's basically what they're going upon. one should avoid doing things in public which appear wrong to others, even though one knows that these things are really all right. There is too much emphasis in colleges on intellectual and theoretical topics, not enough emphasis on practical matters and on homely virtues of living.

Apparently, that's an opinion that's a problem. Although leisure is a fine thing, it's good, hard work that makes life interesting and worthwhile. what a man does is not so important so long as he does it well. There is a problem. Then if you come forward a little bit more, authoritarian submission, one of the main values of progressive education is that it gives the child great freedom in expressing those natural impulses and desire is so often frowned upon

by conventional middle class society. They're clearly talking about how the child needs to be. if the parent has any kind of conservative, conservative ideas and is bringing their child up that way, progressive education should be pushed upon them. I mean, there's no other way to interpret things like statements like this. Of course. I mean, it's actually clarifying because it points out that sexual

restraint is, in their opinion, neurotic and leads to fascism. Okay, so, you know, if you ask them to explain it, I'm sure they would have some, you know, some kind of train of thought they could present. But if you said, well, what are the benefits of sexual restraint? I mean, because, see, so what you're looking at there is this is critical theory. This, you know, going back to the statement that they make at the beginning about how there are no negative sort of attributes in Jews, you know, we're not studying that. That's not a category of reality. We're just looking at the neurosis in Gentiles that makes them dislike or distructs Jews.

So that's the category. Well, that enables them to go forward and you come to this point. And you don't need to in any way, you know, put this into any kind of perspective. You can just look at it and say, we know that this can lead to fascism. We have our little train of thought to share that it does. And therefore, we can categorize it as neurotic and put it in our scales. And this would be something that you could actually start adding them up and seeing if the person was, you know, a potential fascist.

Well, you know, that's, that obviously is sophistry. It's just the opposite of science. But moreover, it is, it is, it's the application of critical theory, where all they're doing is just finding a way to criticize, and it doesn't matter. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th, because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Lidl items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast.

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Trump. what is the positive aspect of it? That is never going to be discussed, never going to be analyzed. You're never going to put that into the process by which you're determining if the attribute is beneficial or negative. I mean, that is a really good example. I'm glad you brought that up because people can really see what the authoritarian personality is clearly with that. You can see that. Obviously, sexual restraint has an upside. There is benefits to, it. Like, for example, monogamy works well with secular restraint. But that is not on the table for discussion. That's all part of the things which, you know, are irrelevant. We are just trying to find a way of all of the different ways that fascism can be produced. And so it can fit into this process that we have determined exist. Okay. What? can you say? It is, it's irrelevant in that it has, because you've, you're not weighing, you know, all of the benefits of sexual restraint in your scale, in your equation. But moreover, as they

present it, it goes back to the point I was making earlier that what you're dealing with there is just propaganda. It isn't, it isn't really designed to, to function as science or be stuff that other, that tests can be done. I mean, you know, with scientists, supposed to be able to replicate. That's all these little attributes of it. That has nothing to do with this. This is just propaganda. This is just an example, as is Marcus's book, Eros and Civilization, of the application of the pseudoscience to give a veneer of science to propaganda. So that's what you got here. Yeah. Just mentioned a couple of the last ones. They mentioned here. obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.

That's a problem. I know some people personally who believe that. What this country needs is fewer laws and agencies and more courageous, tireless, devoted leaders whom the people can put their faith in. That's a problem. No sane, normal, decent person could ever think of hurting a close friend or relative. That's a problem. being tribalistic, which is, you know, great coming from this crowd.

But the authoritarian aggression, before we move on to the last chapter and start looking at some points in there, the one that is, the one that really stuck out to me when I was reading through this was point number 75 here. It says, if you believe that sex crimes such as rape and attacks on children, deserve more than mere imprisonment that such criminals ought to be publicly whipped. That's a problem, Joe. Yeah, terrible, isn't it? Just imagine that as a, you know, as like an element in an algorithm that was, you know, trying to, like, determine, you know, personality.

I mean, this is just preposterous. how they would be able to link these. The idea of even coming up with such a concept and then trying to come some methodology to be able to test it to see if it links into fascism, what are you even doing here? So I think, don't you think it's useful to look at these things as basically,

they're taking what are really kind of cultural guidelines and they are then defining them as neuroses, neurotic, and thereby they are just tearing apart a culture, right? I mean, imagine if you took this, these scales, and then took it to Israel today, and then tried to see how if there was an anti-Palestinian bias, and all of the categories related to the relationship between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and all negative aspects of determining, you know, like, will the Palestinians are to, you know, to, if you define fascism as having some kind of negative incarceration aspect toward the Palestinian, if that was how the scales were all being designed.

Again, you would have like, it would work absolutely perfectly. And you would see that, well, the Israelis have a negative aspect or perspective of the Palestinians. And what would you, what would you have demonstrated? I mean, it's just, there is no, you know, there's no process. And I just wanted to digress. I mean, the reason why these things are evil is because they take away from the one thing that we really need to promote, which is the Socratic method. I mean, we have to work out our differences, ethnic differences, sexual differences.

We need to work them out using facts and reasoning. And we need to work them out publicly. We can't create secret agendas like the one that the authoritarian personality describes. So when you have something like the authoritarian personality scale, all it's doing is, is finding a way to prevent the process that really needs to happen, to have the best possible world, which is that the individuals would not see like a psychological perspective, you know, as being necessarily neurotic or beneficial.

They would simply say, okay, we're different. There's different issues, you know, different perspectives. We've got to like try to work out using, facts and reasoning. And when you lead away from that, when you get into the idea of neurosis, right, and they talk about overcoming resistance, right, using propaganda, well, this is evil. I mean, the only path that humans can walk that can lead anywhere to either that's real or good is the one that uses facts and reasoning as a way of communicating with one another. And if you move to justify propaganda for the purpose of control

and overcoming the resistance on the individuals who are being subjected to the propaganda, and you're doing this in secret and without telling them, Well, I mean, this is just nihilism. You know, it's just it's, it has to be resisted. It has to be, it has to be overcome and it has to be exposed, which is why I'm glad we're having our discussion here, because the authoritarian personality is actually not a bad place to start, you know, the process of trying to engage with, you know,

you know, kind of people who are using terms like anti-Semitism, Holocaust denier, conspiracy theorists, you know, all of the restraints for communication and the Socratic method that we have in place today. And so when you expose this, when you expose the authoritarian personality, it's really just ludicrous, thinly veiled propaganda and using science as one of its, you know, bamboozlements. And this is all clear cut. Where does this leave us?

You know, well, hopefully it will leave us into an exchange with the people who've been using these intimidating approaches to reconnect so that we can start talking to another, you know, in a real way about legitimate self-interest or however you want to characterize it, but just that we'd have a process. that would actually be something that would be involved with our natural human intelligence and the connection to reality of facts and reasoning. Well, I jumped ahead. I have this separated.

It's the conclusions. This chapter 23. Where did you want to start? You had mentioned not having to read the whole thing, but. I always just go to the end of it, you know, because I think that's kind of the last couple pages. It talks about, let's see. Let me, let me start with this because he gets, he starts getting into ethnocentrism here. And he says, confronted with the rigidity of the adult ethnocentrist, one turns naturally to the question of whether the prospects for healthy personality structure

would not be greater if the proper influences were brought to bear. earlier in the individual's life. And since the earlier the influence, the more profound it will be, attention becomes focused upon child training. It would not, and this section right here is highlighted, it would not be difficult on the basis of the clinical and genetic studies reported in this volume to propose a program which, even in the present cultural pattern, could produce non-ethnocentric personalities. all that is really essential is that the children be genuinely loved and treated as individual humans.

Yeah, and subjected to, you know, basically a kind of mind control that would take them away from, you know, not just the sense of ethnicity as it is a negative thing, but to think of all of the positive aspects that it has, right? And remember, you know, you're also going to. have to be wearing away against family because, you know, they talk about in the surgery and prison, how family can also be an issue and problem. And so, and so you have, you know, this is, you're back to Gregor Luchas's, you know, Hungarian Soviet at that point, you know, where they've got the kids, they're not going to let them have any sense of ethnic pride. Now, now, just bear in mind that he's not talking about Jewish ethnic pride, because

remember, going back to page two, what is negative is not something that is, as is defined, possible to occur inside Jewish people. I just read the sentence which describes our methodology. They just, it's not there. So they're not talking about the problem of ethnicity, or that ethnicity is a problem for Jews. This, is simply a problem for Christians and Europeans. And so, then they would like to have access to the kids to get rid of their ethnicities. Because nowhere in this document can there be, as they set up their methodology, any criticism of Jewish behavior, Jewish ethnic power, inappropriate Jewish ethnic power. You know, it's just the problem or

are all residing as they see it inside of European and Christians. And therefore, when you give your children over to this group, you know, yeah, I can easily, in fact, Pete, when you think about like the woke consciousness that we have in the United States now, I mean, isn't that really what they're talking about? Yeah. Isn't that really, wasn't that really the goal of this, this, this, this, you know, the philosophy that's being presented here? Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

So there it is, you know. So, so this is, this is where part of what it, you know, it comes from. And then, you know, they, they talk about, you know, that, that they say that, it is safe to assume, ever that fascism is imposed on the people. Well, I don't know, you know, why it is safe to assume that with the definitions being so bizarre that they set up. But any case, that it actually goes against their basic interests according to their definitions. And so, you know, they say that, I'm trying to think how they, right, so they go that resistance to self-insight and resistance to social, are contrived, most essentially of the same stuff. It is here that psychology may play its most important rule. Techniques for overcoming resistance develop mainly in the field of individual psychotherapy

can be improved and adapted for use with groups and even for use on a mass scale. Now, Pete, I just want to read that again because I think, I mean, this may seem like it is absolutely crazy. But what you're seeing here is really the revelation of the world that we are experiencing now. I mean, this is like kind of the mechanical principle that we're all being subject to. It says resistance to self-insight, they define that, of course, and resistance to social fact are contrived, most essentially of the same stuff. It is here that, psychology may play its most important role. Techniques for overcoming resistance develop mainly in the field of individual psychotherapy

can be improved and adapted for use with groups and even for use on a mass scale. Now, remember, Adorno and Horkenheimer, who are really the intellectual heads of these group, as I can best I can tell. They are contributing into the cybernetics conference that were part of the Macy's, right? this was where the ideas of how to control humans through different psychological and sociological techniques were being worked out. Norbert Wiener, you know, who was, you know, he was talking about the human mind as a computer. We can program it. We can code it. Now, the Macy conference then blurs because it really, the two kinds of,

kind of organizations don't really have an ending or beginning. But the Macy's starts funding what becomes the MK Ultra experiments for just absolute, you know, kind of mechanical control over human beings. Many of the experiments, you know, you can kind of make sense out of them. They don't have really good descriptions, but you can kind of make sense. In any case, that they're clearly trying to just find a way to mechanically control human beings. So the idea that they are altruistic is negated completely by what Horkenheimer and Adorno are doing with the Macy Conference and then into MK. Ultra. you know, this is a small group who has no power, no power given to them by democracy.

They are doing it for their narrow and ethnic purposes, whatever they are, because they are a secret society. their motivations are not on the table. We don't get to analyze them. We don't get to interrogate them. They talk about overcoming resistance, right? That all has to do with the idea that none of this could be disclosed because if you are with propaganda, if you know it's propaganda, it loses its power, right?

So this is all design. What they're talking about is the secret manipulation through techniques that they will develop, basically MK Ultra, that stuff, that they will use to control the minds of the people inside the society they want to affect. So that's really what you've got there, and that's one of the reasons why, you know,

like when I discuss kind of social problems with Tim Kelly on little podcasts we do, we use like the authoritarian personality, almost like an adjective. You know what I mean? I mean, we just, we just, you know, feel people should know about what it is and how it's designed to bring about

the woke consciousness, right? Of no ethnicity, no sexual restraint, no hygiene. I mean, that's maybe. But anyway, all of these things are negative. They're all neurotic as they define them. And so you get to this point where we are now, the people who are the victims of these things, because they've been implemented

with cleverness and are incrementally implemented, people don't even know. They think that, gee, I'm, you know, I am liberal. I am modern. I have thrown off the yoke of ethnicity and sexual restraint, and I'm considering, you know, changing my sexuality. I'm free. I'm liberty. Well, I mean, this individual is just profoundly diluted and profoundly, basically controlled. What they think is freedom, they don't understand, is actually very, very powerful control that has been created by individuals, some of whom were in the development of the authoritarian personality. And then, you know, others have, you know, obviously been in this project for, well, for hundreds of years. But you, you, when you,

you get to the point where you think, well, I have now overcome biology and I can change my sex, sexuality. I don't, the idea of family is, you know, passe, whatever we want to characterize. But, you know, you, they don't, one, they don't recognize that they're actually as controlled as basically a robot. And two, they don't understand that they have gone to such a destructive cul-de-sat that they're literally living inside a culture that cannot have more than one generation, right? These groups, the woke consciousness, the transsexual, you know,

I mean, they don't have any power of procreation. I mean, you know, you might have like one in 10,000 or something, but it is not, so they are not even inside a, you know, a culture that has another generation. And so that's why I try to tell people, I go, look, you know, you think you're free, but you're not only are you not free and are you, and you are being controlled, but you're being genocided. You see, this is all just, in fact, a very kind of clever birth control where you're inside now a culture that cannot replicate. It can't even have another generation. One of the points that they make here, try and finish on this, is psychology, you know, changing one child at a time isn't going to work. They say, it seems obvious, therefore, that the modification of the potentially fascist structure cannot be achieved by psychological means alone. own. The task is comparable to that of eliminating neurosis or delinquency or nationalism from the

world. Those are products of the total organization of society and are to be changed only as that society has changed. It is not for the psychologist to be, uh, to say how such changes are to be brought about. The problem is one, which requires the effort of all social scientists. All that, all that we would insist upon is that in the councils or round tables where the problem is considered, an actions plan, the psychologist should have a voice. We believe that the scientific understanding of society must be an understanding of what it does to people and that it is possible to have social reforms, even brought in sweeping ones, which though desirable in their own right would not necessarily change the structure of

the prejudice personality. For the fascist potential to change or even to be held in check, there must be an increase in people's capacity to see themselves and to be themselves. This cannot be achieved by the manipulation of people, however well-grounded in modern psychology, the devices of manipulation might be. And it is a judgment which finds support in the present study that the man who is first to seize power will be the last to give it up. It is safe to assume, however, that fascism is imposed on the people, that it actually

goes against their basic interests, and that when they can be made fully aware of themselves in their situation, they are capable of behaving. realistically. That people too often cannot see the workings of society or their own role within it is due not only to our social control that does not tell the truth but to a blindness that is rooted in their own psychology. Although it cannot be claimed, the psychological insight is any guarantee of insight into society. There is ample evidence that the people who have the greatest difficulty in facing themselves are the least able to see the world the way the world is made. Resistance to self-insight and resistance to social facts are contrived, most essentially of the

same stuff. It is here that psychology may play its most important part. Techniques for overcoming resistance develop mainly in the field of individual psychotherapy can be improved and adapted for use with groups and even for use on a mass scale. but let it be admitted that such techniques could hardly be effective with the extreme ethnocentrist, but it may be remembered that the majority of the population are not extreme, but in our terminology, middle. It is the fact that the potentially fascist pattern is to so large an extent imposed upon people that carries with it some hope for the future. people are continuously molded from above because they must be molded if the overall economic pattern is to be maintained and the amount of energy that goes into this process bears a direct

relation to the amount of potential residing within the people for moving in a different direction. It would be foolish to underestimate the fascist potential with which this volume has been mainly concerned, but it would be equally unwise to overlook the fact that the majority of our subjects do not exhibit the extreme ethnocentric pattern and the fact that there are various ways in which it may be avoided altogether. Although there is reason to believe that the prejudiced are the better rewarded in our society as far as external values are concerned, it is when they take shortcuts to their rewards that they land in prison. We need not suppose that the tolerant have to wait and receive their rewards in heaven as it were. Actually, there is good reason to believe that the

tolerant receive more gratification of basic needs. They are likely to pay for this satisfaction and conscious guilt feeling since they frequently have to go against prevailing social standards, but the evidence is that they are basically happier than the prejudice. Thus, we need not suppose that appeal to emotion belongs to those who strive in the direction of fascism, while democratic propaganda must limit itself to reason and restraint. if fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, Eros belongs mainly to democracy.

Wow. Well, first of all, they're lying their heads off. You know, back at the beginning, they were talking about, you know, we just want a seat at the table. You know, we just want to have a psychologist there, you know, clear-minded psychologist at the table. So, Pete, how many clear-minded, like Christian critics were at the table during the development of the authoritarian personality or oh just say like at mk ultra or at the macy conference i mean the fact is is that that's the only people at the table right i mean the people that they are you know relating to the people that

they're defending the people that are funding them and so um the the whole the whole point about what they're proposing is that the people have to be unaware of the psychological technique that is being applied against them. The stuff doesn't work if people know that you're trying to bamboozle their minds. You see? So it is just, it is a complete contradiction. And in fact, I would call it just a lie that all we want is like a place at the table and in the public discussion of these issues. You can't, it directly contradicts the power of propaganda. So that isn't, that is not, you know, something that they're interested in.

They're just trying to deflect away from the idea that, you know, you guys are doing all this in secret. And so, you know, the last sentence is important. because you can see that really, you know, there is the equivocation between fascism and eros, right? I mean, fascism is bad, but eros is good. And so it's not, it isn't so much that propaganda is bad. It's just who's at the wheel steering the thing, right? Now, think about, oh, God, I mean, I mean, you know, the different elements,

of like the counterculture, which would be one of the products of this process, you know. You know, where is the negative effects of the counterculture being, you know, considered in this? You know, by juxtaposing it as they have, you know, fascism, arrows, gee, it should, I mean, which side of the street are you going to be on? well, for heaven sakes, you know, arrows, democracy, it's all this just, it's, you know, it's the, it's the world that Herbert Marcuse fantasized about. But the problem is, of course,

we know exactly where it takes us, right? It takes us into a deracinated, which is no ethnic power to resist oligarchic manipulation, more or less, and into a world with the family is no longer functioning. I mean, there was plenty of, you know, arrows when the great society programs are being, you know, pointed out, right, as something we could move toward. And then as you moved away from the family,

according to this idea, it would be beneficial. All of these positive things, the people would be happier. You would have, you know, more democratic. Well, what happened? As the family disintegrated inside the black culture in America,

every single negative demographic marker went dramatically negative. I'm talking about violence, education, wealth creation, out of wedlock births, you name it. And these statistics had been on the uptick, on the uptick. on the uptick using the kinds of restraint that the authoritarian personality is railing against, developing and using the kinds of restraints, the black communities in America had been on the uptick since the end of the Civil War. They were in a positive direction in every single way you could characterize them.

And Pete, because I'm so old, I can give you firsthand primary documentation of this. I was in South Central LA and Watts in the early 60s. My dad used to take me there for lunch because he had a business there in Hawthorne, and so we would go over there because he liked the restaurants. That culture was on the uptick. Even though I was like 11 years old, I could see that this was a culture on the uptick. In fact, I would just, to my 11-year-old mind, if you'd just left them alone, they would be 100% into the middle class within two generations.

That's really how dramatic the move into the polysexualism that occurred, you know, when they bought about the great society. And now you can just see it. So it destroyed them. It destroyed the black culture. Now you have the expression, the baby daddy, right? There's no such thing as father. I mean, that would imply family.

You just have a baby dad. It implies at least the mother knew the identity of the person who impregnated her, right? Baby daddy. So this is how far it's come and this is what it was intended to do because now you have broken ethnicities with individuals who have no, you know, who I don't really have any kind of political power. the more they can isolate, the more they can fragment, the less each unit had, less power each unit has. So, you know, it isn't just that it's evil, it's undemocratic, it's mind control, its secret society, all of those things are obvious in the authoritarian personality. But also, it's genocidal. I mean, you can see where it's taken our culture.

and the authoritarian personality is just one of the, you know, you could use a dozen different kind of elements to plug into this overall process. You don't need to use this one. You know, you can use the Macy Conference or it's Club of Rome. I mean, there's a million things you could use. But the fact is, we know now where they take us. It's genocide. It's just, you know, we just get shattered, the ethnicity gets shattered, the family get shattered,

the individual, you know, the males are pornographic and the women are told if they either have no children, get into the workplace, or if you have a kid, it's your single mom, get on the government check. This is our world. So we can, you know, by clarification, by understanding, you know, the process that we've been subjected to, and by looking at the sophistry, inside the authoritarian personality, the pseudoscience, how it's setting up intimidation, you know, how it is excluded. Jews from any kind of negative characterization, because to do so is neurotic, it's right in their methodology. You know, maybe we can begin a process, you know, to have a dialogue and talk

about this a little bit, get some facts and evidence on the table, and have table set up, not with just one psychologist from, you know, the Frankfurt school at the table, with every other individuals being there, but actually have tables set up where there are individuals representing what remains of Christian and European culture. I changed my mind. Let's finish on this. Even after everything we've talked about today, even after everything we've laid out in this document, even after we examine our eyes and we talked about how they, we've examined what we see and not examine our eyes, what we've experienced, And even after they talk about how they have to go after people who are conspiracy theorists,

people will say this is just another document. It was something the think tank put out in 1950. Other than the fact that pretty much everything that they suggested in here came to fruition, people will say, well, believing that this had any bearing on what we're experiencing now is a complete conspiracy theory, Joe. It is. And in fact, that's, that is another expression conspiracy theory that is simply designed to shut down thought. You know, I think, you know, it's kind of hard to read. I can't imagine anyone actually reading the authoritarian personality because it's, it's enormous and it's just incredibly boring. And it's just sophistry. If you're negative toward it and you kind of sense what it is, then you have no energy to go through it. I think no sane person can actually read the thing. But I would just recommend from, um, from, cybernetics to Littenton, Jeffrey Steinberg's article. It came out an executive intelligence review in 2000. And he outlines the process that the authoritarian personnel is within. He puts it

in context. You know, I tried to do it today, you know, going back to Gregor Luchos and then Hungarian, Soviet, and then going forward into, you know, great society, M.K. Ultra and the counterculture. But Steinberg has, you know, one thing about the LaRouche guys is they are impeccable in terms of their citation. So, you know, in a, you know, when we're just talking like this, it's hard to be absolutely precise and to give, you know, all the details that where the public can get the information. But if you want to see the process that the authoritarian personality is part of, I think Steinberg's article is a great place. to start. And then I would just say

don't miss any of your podcasts because you do a really good job of, you know, it's like you were deconstructing Marcuse, you know, the idea of repressive tolerance in one of the shows you did recently

and I thought that was really excellent. You know, so independent media is alive and well and we're getting the information out and we kind of know the problem finally. And so, you know, hopefully we can start having some fact and social policy soon. Well, I appreciate that, Joe.

The article you were talking about, it's from cybernetics to Littleton, techniques of mind control? Yes, that's correct. Yeah. I'll link that in the show notes. I'm sending that to myself right now. I will also link your

article on the history of where the National Socialists came from. And is there anything else that you want to plug before we end this? No, I just want to plug your show again. It's really, you have a really terrific show. I mean, it's one of the ones that I, whenever there's a new podcast,

I always make time to listen to it. I hope everyone does. I appreciate that, Joe. And thank you very much. And we'll do this again real soon. Thanks. All right. Thank you, sir.