The Appeal of Authoritarianism

The radical freedom that Sartre believed the individual has with an existence that provides no preordained meaning is mocked by the present Authoritarianism the president of the United States pursues daily.  Donald Trump, during the 2016 campaign said, “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?”  If this were an idle boast it would be innocuous, but his followers are so mesmerized by him that they seem to celebrate his utterances that are obvious lies and his actions that are often mean spirited.

Erich Fromm in “Escape from Freedom” indicates that Authoritarianism is a mechanism of escape from freedom for those persons who experience their being with an “unbearable feeling of aloneness and insignificance.” As they cede control to the Authoritarian Fromm says, they may “attempt to become a part of a bigger and more powerful whole outside of oneself, to submerge and participate in it. This power can be a person, an institution, God, the nation or a psychic compulsion. . . . One surrenders one’s own self and renounces all strength and pride connected with it, one loses one’s integrity as an individual and surrenders freedom; but one gains a new security and a new pride in the participation in the power in which one submerges.”

Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad in “The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power” also discuss the individual’s relinquishment of freedom. They explain how the process of “surrender and control” works they say, “Surrendering control usually means shifting from internal control to being controlled externally, whether by a person or ideology.  But this shift is not clear cut for one must internalize the ideology to follow it, and the willingness to obey another is also internal.”

Both of the above passages speak to the process by which individuals surrender their freedom and control to the Authoritarian.  The individual must internalize the surrender of control so she feels she belongs to and participates in something greater than herself and that she shares in the power of the Authoritarian. The individual who does this sacrifices the freedom Sartre espouses and so forfeits the opportunity for authentic meaning in life.