SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AUTHORITARIAN

Robert Misik in conversation with Markus Brunner and Hans-Jürgen Wirth

SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AUTHORITARIAN

What makes right-wing narratives attractive to many people?

The USA is tipping over the abyss at breathtaking speed, and authoritarian and neo-fascist movements are also gaining ground in Europe. Many analyses deal with political science and, in particular, economic causes for the rise of this new right. There are a number of important socio-psychological factors that have themselves been researched for decades: Why people are susceptible to authoritarian messages; the dynamics that spark self-radicalisation when right-wing agitation impacts on societies; how people change themselves when authoritarian dispositions are evoked.

In his book „Sozialpsychologie des Autoritären“, Markus Brunner, social psychologist and sociologist, examines in particular the authoritarianism research of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and more recent studies on how a „rebellious-authoritarian character type“ develops and turns into „authoritarian aggression“, and what it does to people when „paranoid thinking increases more and more“.

A mass psychology perspective is essential if we want to understand the pathologies of our time. For many years, psychoanalyst Hans-Jürgen Wirth has been investigating the „emotional leitmotifs“ that favour right-wing populist attitudes, such as „anger, hatred, vengefulness, indignation, disgust, envy, resentment, bitterness, sarcasm, cynicism, destructiveness, refusal to empathise, hostility“. A lack of recognition may contribute to this in particular, as may a „mistrustful attitude towards the world“, which is often nurtured in childhood.

Markus Brunner,Social psychologist and sociologist; academic director of the Master's programme "Social Psychology/Clinical Psychology" at the Sigmund Freud University (SFU) Vienna

Hans Jürgen Wirth, Psychoanalyst, psychological psychotherapist and publisher of Psychosozial-Verlag; Professor of Psychoanalytical Social Psychology at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main

Moderation
Robert Misik, Author and journalist

Markus Brunner:
Social psychology of the authoritarian
On the topicality of the Frankfurt School's authoritarianism research
Psychosozial-Verlag, 2025, 24,90 €