How to Recognise an Authoritarian - PART III

Part III as follows :

11. IGNORE WHAT YOU CAN'T REFUTE

In instances where an authoritarian is caught in a bad situation, the best course of action is to ignore the accusation whenever possible.

If contrary evidence is offered, ignore it. Follow the preceding tactic to silence the questioner and to discourage further inquiry.

12. ACCEPT PRAISE, ASSIGN BLAME

You succeed, others fail.

A simple but time-honored practice of the authoritarian. When someone else does a good thing, take the credit for it to boost your status. When you do a bad thing, blame it on someone else!

If someone else has a good idea the authoritarian didn't think of, the best response is for the authoritarian to take that idea for their own, and thereby take the credit and weaken their enemy.

13. NEVER ADMIT YOU'RE WRONG

The successful authoritarian will never, ever admit they're wrong, because doing so shows fallibility, and no authoritarian can risk admitting that they're fallible. The Fascists of Italy had a slogan, "Mussolini is always right" -- which nicely captures this idea.

To the authoritarian, only a weakling admits they're wrong, because anything less than perfection (which they embody, of course), to the authoritarian, is damning. They consider themselves perfect beings, and get all nervous when their human fallibility is revealed to them.

14. WHEN YOU ARE WRONG, BLAME EVERYONE BUT YOURSELF

If you've really screwed up, the last thing a would-be autocrat wants to do is accept blame for the wrongdoing. Find a scapegoat, any scapegoat, and blame them for your screwup.

15. INSIST ON IDEOLOGICAL CONFORMITY

Ideological conformity is the fuel from which authoritarianism springs, by eliminating the natural human impulse to rebel against that which is contrary to their reason or experience.

By insisting on such conformity, the would-be leader creates followers, an essential component. These are people who then depend on the leader for guidance and instruction, which, for the authoritarian, is a highly desirable situation to be in.

While building power within an organization, the best way to do this is to brand wrong-thinkers (e.g., anyone who questions the would-be leader) traitors, spies, or provocateurs, and have them expelled from the organization. Such successive purges will create a homogenous, ideologically conformist movement and serve as a lesson to those few free thinkers who may still remain.

Dissent and diversity is considered weakness to the authoritarian, and will be opposed and fought at every turn, although they won't say that's what they're doing.

16. WEAR A UNIFORM

Uniforms and authority go way back. Authoritarians love symbols, because they create emotional responses in those who see them.

A uniform has always been a powerful symbol -- it allows you to transcend your everyday self and assume a role or persona. Like any costume, it masks your true self.

Any good authoritarian will seek to create a uniform, and stick to it. Authoritarians a very image-conscious. Also, it's important to insist that your followers wear such a uniform as well, to show that they're suitably conformist.

Look around for uniforms, and you'll find authoritarians. Of course cops and soldiers, but also business execs, and Marxists -- remember those snappy Red Army uniforms of decades past? Sadly even the shalwar kameez uniforms of the Shameem sisters have become a sinister symbol of this regime in some quarters.

The point of a uniform is symbolic abstraction -- you stop being you and become an it, part of something larger than yourself.
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Part IV coming up ......