Nazis and Father-Son Conflicts

In Weimar Culture, the outsider as insider, Peter Gay notes that many of the books and plays written during the 1920's had a father-son conflict as a major theme.

Just after the end of World War II, in the study The Authoritarian Personality, Theodor Adorno and others, identified the personality traits and beliefs that predisposed individuals to favor "anti-democratic propaganda." The study was commissioned by the American Jewish Committee. Anti-democratic propaganda meant racist propaganda, specifically anti-Semitic propaganda.

The study developed an "F-Scale" to identify the Authoritarian personality -- the "potentially fascistic individual" -- and sure enough, a severe father-son conflict was likely to be present in those most susceptible to anti-democratic propaganda.

While the study set out to analyze how Germans became so racist as to accept, or at least not challenge, the industrialized murder of Jewish citizens, it holds lessons for us today.

Republicans have succeeded in turning authoritarianism into patriotism -- the bogus reasons for going to war are irrelevant; patriotism demands that we support the war. If we continue down that road, where will our journey bring us? Adorno's answer: fascism.

Peter Gay describes "the Weimar Republic in 1932: clear vision [of the dangers that lay ahead] and political impotence, fear, suspicion, and moments of irrational hope; among the politicians of the middle, politics as usual, but with everyone else, a sense of emergency." I hate to say it, but that's not a bad description of the USA today.