What's Behind Rising Authoritarianism: Answers from Political Psychology & the Third Reich

Abstract

Liberty is never more precarious than in uncertain times. From the Great Depression to the Great Recession, from the Peloponnesian War to the so-called War on Terror, harsh times attract harsh measures. Sufficiently frightened, humans become quite willing to trade liberty for security, citizenship for slavery. Although preferring security to liberty makes psychological sense, in our modern world it can backfire. The evolutionary rationale for fear-based traditionalism, the search for certainty in a world fundamentally defined by uncertainty, rebounds — mutates — injecting into the populous what political psychologists call the “authoritarian personality.” This paper examines the rise of the Third Reich to show how economic and political uncertainty can undermine liberal democracy.

Keywords: third reich, world war 2, political psychology, terror management theory, adolf hitler, weimar republic, authoritarian personality, political theory, demagogues, causes of war, international relations, history of conflict, inter-state conflict, moral psychology, mass movements, theories of conflict