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Comment by fortythirteen | Hacker News Reader

Their authoritarian scale is the RWA, or Right Wing Authoritarianism. They did no test for general authoritarianism, meaning that their summary is suspect. It's no surprise to anyone that the mostly left-wing remain voters scored low in right wing authoritarianism.

Edit: thanks for the brigaded downvotes with no rebuttal, proving that you just don't like your cognitive biases challenged with facts.

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This was my original reaction as well; it's not at all surprising that a policy supported by the left would have supporters who score lower on RWA relative to their right-wing counterparts on the other side of that policy. It would be interesting to see more granular survey results, since there is a bucket of questions that do a better job of measuring the A in RWA.

Yes, a pity that the researchers didn't correlate Brexit positions with Stalinism and Maoism, political stances that are definitely widespread common enough that they could find meaningful connections.

I'm assuming sarcasm, so forgive me if I'm wrong. I'm a pretty centrist, non-politically active guy, and I personally have one acquaintance that identifies as a marxist, another as a communist, and a third, literally as a "radical feminist marxist" who has participated in protests/riots. I know nobody that identifies as a fascist. Anecdotally, left-wing authoritarianism is much more prevalent in my milktoast town.

Edit, because HN won't let me reply to the claim of "misunderstanding" Marxism (and the clear gaslighting of the words "communist" and "radical" that were used):

Clearly, my "radical marxist" acquaintance destroying public and private property, while actually flying the Soviet flag, is wholly misunderstood for the non-authoritarian, peaceful, theoretical marxism it actually is.

Edit 2: Are you perceiving the whole comment or is your cognitive bias actually blocking out the words "communist" and "soviet"? You're picking a minute fraction of my sentences that suit your disposition and acting like they're the whole.

Marxism is not the same as Stalinism or Maoism, and is not necessarily an authoritarian belief system. Fascism is by definition authoritarian. I don't know how you define "left-wing authoritarianism," but the fact that you treat participating in a protest as some extreme point of it suggests to me that you don't know much at all.

Edit: If you think destroying property is necessarily authoritarian, once again, you don't know what that word means.

Edit 2 (seriously, this is the way you want to have a discussion?): going on and on about "gaslighting" and "cognitive biases" isn't make you look any better. I've known a number of people who toy with soviet chic without actually condoning the actions of the USSR; it's not a surprising in a country where the mildest trade unionism is equated with Full Communism by a large part of the population. I don't like it, but I know enough to know that most of the people flying it aren't Stalinists (or Maoists) by any stretch of the imagination.

The standard authoritarian scales are indeed tuned to detect right-wing ideology. That being said, it's easy (though unpopular) to construct measures that capture Left-Wing Authoritarianism (the "Loch Ness Monster," as Altemeyer famously labeled it). Unsurprisingly, authoritarianism turns out to exist in equal measure on left and right. A couple samples of the literature; there are plenty more if you google around:

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pops.12470 [2] http://www.bartduriez.com/sites/default/files/documents/PDF/...

1. There may be a scale, but they didn't use it. 2. Go to an Antifa riot and you'll see your "Loch Ness Monster"

Oh, my comment was a concurrence. LWA is plainly obvious to any reasonable observer.

My bad. I'm so used to the cognitive dissonance around here.

Authoritarianism is inherently right-wing, if you use the original definition of right and left.

According to original definitions (from French revolution), the left objects to power inequality between people and consider citizens should be equals; while the right doesn't have problem with power inequality in society and accepts things like hereditary nobility.

And the fact is, despite propaganda that sometimes equates leftists and bolsheviks, large majority of leftists still identifies with this definition.

>Authoritarianism is inherently right-wing, if you use the original definition of right and left.

Communism.

Not sure what your argument is. Word "communism" has different meanings.. maybe you could attempt to put your thoughts into full sentences?

Doesn't matter how many different meanings communism has, each and every one will ultimately be authoritarian

I think you're confusing authoritarian and totalitarian. It's a shame we cannot have a meaningful discussion, though.

And how does the left get to that state of affairs in a world of power inequality?

A large majority of the right may identify with Christian ideas of charity but look at how that usually turns out.

I don't understand what you're asking about - what state of affairs?

In many countries today, we have democracy, which is according to the above definition leftist (and also very anti-authoritarian!) idea.

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