I suspect that the problem with identifying “left-wing authoritarians” could be that when someone becomes too obviously authoritarian, left-wing people who don’t agree with them re-classify them as right-wing.
That is, the real problem is not defining “authoritarian personality”. I believe such personality type exists empirically, and can hold many kinds of political beliefs (even libertarian beliefs). The real problem is defining “right-wing” and “left-wing” meaningfully, without sneaking in something about authority.
It’s not that “authoritarian” is silently re-defined as “not left-wing”, but rather that “left-wing” is silently re-defined as “not authoritarian”. So when you have a situation where left-wing people come to power and their corrupted human hardware becomes obvious, for example in Soviet Russia, a few decades later you will find people who are telling you with straight face that “actually, Stalinists were right-wing”.
What they mean by saying that, in my opinion, is something like: “I admit that these people were horrible, which means I have to deny that they belonged to my tribe”. (People who think that Stalinists were the good guys usually don’t feel the need to re-classify them as right-wing.) In tribal thinking, my tribe is defined as “the good people”, so if someone was a member of my tribe, they couldn’t be evil, and if someone was evil, then by definition they were not really members of my tribe. (Analogically, religious people who disapprove of Inquisition say that the inquisitors were not true Christians, etc.)
(There is also the recently popular tendency to re-define words to mean “X, except when our tribe is doing that”. Which means you cannot be sexist against men, racist against white people, and if you blindly believe and worship someone left-wing on tumblr it does not make you an authoritarian personality. But to me it seems that most people understand this as a dishonest move, and perhaps only the true believers really buy it. On the other hand most people are unable to define “left-wing” and “right-wing” other than saying how the common consensus already classifies the existing political parties.)
I suspect that the problem with identifying “left-wing authoritarians” could be that when someone becomes too obviously authoritarian, left-wing people who don’t agree with them re-classify them as right-wing.
That is, the real problem is not defining “authoritarian personality”. I believe such personality type exists empirically, and can hold many kinds of political beliefs (even libertarian beliefs). The real problem is defining “right-wing” and “left-wing” meaningfully, without sneaking in something about authority.
It’s not that “authoritarian” is silently re-defined as “not left-wing”, but rather that “left-wing” is silently re-defined as “not authoritarian”. So when you have a situation where left-wing people come to power and their corrupted human hardware becomes obvious, for example in Soviet Russia, a few decades later you will find people who are telling you with straight face that “actually, Stalinists were right-wing”.
What they mean by saying that, in my opinion, is something like: “I admit that these people were horrible, which means I have to deny that they belonged to my tribe”. (People who think that Stalinists were the good guys usually don’t feel the need to re-classify them as right-wing.) In tribal thinking, my tribe is defined as “the good people”, so if someone was a member of my tribe, they couldn’t be evil, and if someone was evil, then by definition they were not really members of my tribe. (Analogically, religious people who disapprove of Inquisition say that the inquisitors were not true Christians, etc.)
(There is also the recently popular tendency to re-define words to mean “X, except when our tribe is doing that”. Which means you cannot be sexist against men, racist against white people, and if you blindly believe and worship someone left-wing on tumblr it does not make you an authoritarian personality. But to me it seems that most people understand this as a dishonest move, and perhaps only the true believers really buy it. On the other hand most people are unable to define “left-wing” and “right-wing” other than saying how the common consensus already classifies the existing political parties.)