AI
Tuesday, March 31, 2026 4:05:47 PM
Why Some People Follow Authoritarian Leaders—And The Key to Stopping It
"The rise of end times fascism"
April 3, 2025
To protect democracy and counteract the allure of authoritarianism, reduce people's sense of fear and insecurity, psychology research says
By Danny Osborne
Nikita John Creagh/Getty Images
The reelection of Donald Trump, perhaps more than any other event in modern history, has thrust authoritarianism into the spotlight. From media pundits to conversations held in coffee shops, people are talking about authoritarian leaders. And for good reasons. President Trump and his warning of being a dictator “on day one,” coupled with his attempts to consolidate power, eliminate government oversight and silence his opposition, poses a grave threat to our democratic institutions.
Without downplaying the dangers of authoritarian leaders, studies from my research group and other labs from across the globe identify an equally serious threat to democracy: “authoritarian followers” who instinctively comply with a dictator. We need to understand this personality type so that we can find ways to encourage authoritarian followers to support democracy instead.
For over 80 years, political psychologists like me have studied the authoritarian personality—a collection of attitudes and behaviors that increase a person’s susceptibility to authoritarian leaders. We have found that authoritarian followers share three tendencies: they obey authority figures from their in-group (called authoritarian submission); they punish rule breakers (authoritarian aggression); and they rigidly endorse long-held traditions (conventionalism).
Work from my lab and others reveals that authoritarian followers express a range of anti-democratic attitudes including anti-gay prejudice, anti-immigrant attitudes, generalized prejudice, nationalism and even the belief in conspiracies. Although peer-reviewed work on 2024 Trump voters awaits, authoritarian followers were more likely to vote for Trump than for either Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden in the previous two elections. Thus authoritarian followers are a powerful force within the MAGA movement.
Why do people become authoritarian followers? Some research indicates that authoritarianism is heritable. For example, the correlation between twins’ authoritarianism is over five times stronger among monozygotic twins, whose genetic makeup is almost identical, relative to dizygotic twins, who share roughly half their genes. This strong genetic component to becoming an authoritarian follower does not, however, mean we are destined to obey dictators. Authoritarianism is also fostered by some of the personality traits captured by the so-called Big Five: openness to experience, conscientiousness (a preference for order and the tendency to follow norms), extraversion, agreeableness (the willingness to cooperate and empathize with others) and neuroticism (the tendency to feel anxious and insecure).
Crucially, the social, economic and physical environment also matter. Low levels of openness to experience and high levels of conscientiousness, coupled with an insecure and threatening environment, lead people to chronically view the world as a dangerous and threatening place. When we think that the world is unstable and unsafe, we search for ways to regain control. Unfortunately for our democratic institutions, placing trust in a dictator and becoming an authoritarian follower is one way to reestablish a sense of control.
Far-right politics seem to appeal to authoritarian followers’ desire to regain stability and extinguish perceived threats. For instance, fear and distrust of immigrants has been a core issue driving the recent return of far-right extremism. Movements including Brexit, the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Marine Le Pen’s successes in France, and Donald Trump’s return to power in 2024 all gained momentum by stoking voters’ fears that our way of life is under threat. Attacks against transgender rights and DEI initiatives are similarly rooted in perceived threats to traditional values.
What can people do to address the recent global surge of authoritarian leaders and followers? As an educator, my first instinct is to argue that we need to increase people’s political knowledge to instill democratic values of tolerance, pluralism and adherence to the rule of law. Yet this approach could backfire. Research on this topic shows that increases in education and political knowledge may make authoritarian followers more, not less, likely to express anti-democratic attitudes. For example, a study in the U.S. found that the relationship between authoritarianism and two core features of conservatism are stronger among those who are knowledgeable about politics.
Alternatively, pro-democracy advocates could employ “jiujitsu” persuasion to target the motivations underlying anti-democratic beliefs. For example, because authoritarianism arises from the need to mitigate perceived threats in the environment, we can expose people to safer ones. Indeed a newly published study by my colleagues and me shows that the diversity of one’s neighborhood correlates negatively with authoritarianism. Multicultural neighborhoods likely provide people with the chance to form close friendships with others from diverse backgrounds. In turn these experiences dispel worries that immigrants threaten deeply held cultural values or will take their jobs.
Other work suggests that we can harness authoritarian followers’ impulse to submit to authority figures and conform to group norms for the social good. For example, research from Singapore—where authorities endorse multiculturalism—shows that authoritarian followers support cultural diversity. Other work from Poland indicates that authoritarian followers support prohibiting hate speech against minority groups including members of the LGBTQ community, Muslims and people of African descent, because this hostile rhetoric violates social norms. These studies show that, under some limited conditions, leaders can harness authoritarian followers’ destructive impulses for the social good.
Although Trump’s return to power has reignited popular interest in authoritarianism, social scientists have long wrestled with its origins. Their insights can help us predict what the next four years will look like, as well as identify ways to address the challenges that are likely to come. Democracy rarely falls at the hands of a single individual. Rather it dies through the complacency and obedience of otherwise well-intentioned authoritarian followers. We must help them follow their better angels. As the historian Timothy Snyder has warned, “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.”
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Danny Osborne is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Auckland where he examines the causes and consequences
of inequality. He is also the lead editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology (2022) and has published over
175 peer-reviewed manuscripts on topics relevant to political psychology.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-some-people-follow-authoritarian-leaders-and-the-key-to-stopping-it/
See also:
brooklyn13. Your crook tactic of throwing mud without valid evidence in support of it continues.
"I think I read somewhere that you are trying to distance yourself from previous posts, in which you claimed to have "read somewhere", something, after you realized their theses were dubious. You still have numb nuts, here, who are insisting this war was instigated on "Bibi's" behalf and wondering what he'll demand next."
Your first there is a clear cut, absolute lie. You don't think you read anywhere that i have tried to distance myself from anything i have said because you couldn't have.
To your
"Don't really understand who the "us" is you refer to, it seems like plenty of local posters are cheerleading these attacks and buying into the Trump spin."
My "us" obviously could only mean those you have disputed most with. I moderate the board with DesertDrifter, i speak for myself only and have never claimed anything different, so your effort there to marry me with all other opinions on this board is yet another dishonest move of yours.
No doubt Netanyahu has been asking Trump to attack Iran since 2016, so there would be no big wrong in saying Trump did it on Netanyahu's behalf.
Exactly why Trump picked now to do what he has done only Trump knows. All the rest 'detail' on that is conjecture.
Bottom line is that you have made those comments about me without giving an iota of evidence for them, so that post of yours goes.
To Heather Cox Richardson's there is nothing there i disagree with. Nothing there which contradicts anything i have said, including her mention of Trump ripping up the deal between Obama and Iran, including the fact Trump ran as a dove and is acting the hawk he has always been, and including . Obviously she covers more than i have, but i have said this repeatedly:
"The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the president, the power to declare war. After fighting for their independence against a king they considered a tyrant, the men of the constitutional convention were not about to hand the power of raising an army to a single man. One delegate commented that he “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.”
Trump’s attack on Iran also violates the charter of the United Nations, under which members promise not to attack other states. This particular attack raises the specter of a larger war. In an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council today, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “[e]verything must be done to prevent a further escalation” in the Middle East."
Your - https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-28-2026
Snyder is good, this from Richardson's:
Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder noted in Thinking About… that Trump’s personal corruption is another interpretive framework for thinking about his decision to go to war. Trump’s sudden foray into regime change after years of attacking other presidents who tried it raises the question of whether he is acting for other countries in the Middle East he considers his allies.
“Given the stupefyingly overt corruption of the Trump administration,” Snyder wrote, “one must ask whether the United States armed forces are now being used on a per-hire basis.” Snyder noted that Gulf Arab states eager to curb Iran’s power “have generated extremely generous packages of compensation for companies associated with Trump personally and with members of his family.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-28-2026
is spot on. Your post goes because of those ridiculous baseless attacks on my credibility put up by you without required links in support.
No more - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=177349865
... and ...
Timothy Snyder is super good -- "‘Just by existing, he’s extended this war’: Timothy Snyder on Trump, Russia and Ukraine
Martin Pengelly in Washington
[...]
Snyder also laments as “laughable” the behavior of the US supreme court, which “cleared the landscape as best it could for Trump to return. This [legal] immunity business … and the ruling that he was not an insurrectionist, or that the insurrection clause in the constitution, article three of the 14th amendment of the US constitution [which disqualifies insurrectionists from federal office], has effectively been vacated: these are extraordinary actions to make it possible for him to come back.”
[...]
“I think the throughline for Trump, going all the way back to the 1980s and his visit to the Soviet Union, through his first presidential campaign and up to the present, has always been submissiveness towards the power in the Kremlin. I would be very happy for him to break with that. I don’t see any evidence of it yet.
“The scenario is that Trump is made to understand that Vladimir Putin is bullying him and that Trump should therefore do the right thing. But so far in his entire career, Trump has seemed to enjoy being bullied by Putin. And so far [Trump’s] negotiating strategy for Ukraine, so far as they’ve revealed it, has not been to make Russia weaker, it’s been to make Ukraine weaker.”
Snyder has said Trump is Russia’s “only chance of winning the war”. He said so “because the Russians say it”. Snyder speaks “five languages reasonably well, a few more quite badly, and read[s] about a dozen”.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175606745
... also, from 2017 ...
Marix999, Yale Historian Timothy Snyder on How the U.S. Can Avoid Sliding into Authoritarianism (see below)
Agree it's likely Putin has something on him due particularly to his Russian trips. Then that it's essential we continue to focus
on the authoritarian nature of Trump himself. And on the absolutely authoritarian nature of his presidency from the very start.
-
In his brief career as president and a candidate for president, Mr. Trump has attacked virtually every major institution in American life: Congress, the courts, Democrats, Republicans, the news media, the Justice Department, Hollywood, the military, NATO, the intelligence agencies, the cast of “Hamilton,” the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” the pope and now professional sports. He has attacked the Trump administration itself, or at least selected parts of it (see Sessions, Jeff), and even the United States of America (“you think our country’s so innocent? .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/us/politics/putin-trump-bill-oreilly.html ”).
[...]
Historian Timothy Snyder: “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy
With two Timothy Snydert videos, October, 2017 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=135407197
"The rise of end times fascism"
April 3, 2025
To protect democracy and counteract the allure of authoritarianism, reduce people's sense of fear and insecurity, psychology research says
By Danny Osborne
Nikita John Creagh/Getty Images
The reelection of Donald Trump, perhaps more than any other event in modern history, has thrust authoritarianism into the spotlight. From media pundits to conversations held in coffee shops, people are talking about authoritarian leaders. And for good reasons. President Trump and his warning of being a dictator “on day one,” coupled with his attempts to consolidate power, eliminate government oversight and silence his opposition, poses a grave threat to our democratic institutions.
Without downplaying the dangers of authoritarian leaders, studies from my research group and other labs from across the globe identify an equally serious threat to democracy: “authoritarian followers” who instinctively comply with a dictator. We need to understand this personality type so that we can find ways to encourage authoritarian followers to support democracy instead.
For over 80 years, political psychologists like me have studied the authoritarian personality—a collection of attitudes and behaviors that increase a person’s susceptibility to authoritarian leaders. We have found that authoritarian followers share three tendencies: they obey authority figures from their in-group (called authoritarian submission); they punish rule breakers (authoritarian aggression); and they rigidly endorse long-held traditions (conventionalism).
Work from my lab and others reveals that authoritarian followers express a range of anti-democratic attitudes including anti-gay prejudice, anti-immigrant attitudes, generalized prejudice, nationalism and even the belief in conspiracies. Although peer-reviewed work on 2024 Trump voters awaits, authoritarian followers were more likely to vote for Trump than for either Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden in the previous two elections. Thus authoritarian followers are a powerful force within the MAGA movement.
Why do people become authoritarian followers? Some research indicates that authoritarianism is heritable. For example, the correlation between twins’ authoritarianism is over five times stronger among monozygotic twins, whose genetic makeup is almost identical, relative to dizygotic twins, who share roughly half their genes. This strong genetic component to becoming an authoritarian follower does not, however, mean we are destined to obey dictators. Authoritarianism is also fostered by some of the personality traits captured by the so-called Big Five: openness to experience, conscientiousness (a preference for order and the tendency to follow norms), extraversion, agreeableness (the willingness to cooperate and empathize with others) and neuroticism (the tendency to feel anxious and insecure).
Crucially, the social, economic and physical environment also matter. Low levels of openness to experience and high levels of conscientiousness, coupled with an insecure and threatening environment, lead people to chronically view the world as a dangerous and threatening place. When we think that the world is unstable and unsafe, we search for ways to regain control. Unfortunately for our democratic institutions, placing trust in a dictator and becoming an authoritarian follower is one way to reestablish a sense of control.
Far-right politics seem to appeal to authoritarian followers’ desire to regain stability and extinguish perceived threats. For instance, fear and distrust of immigrants has been a core issue driving the recent return of far-right extremism. Movements including Brexit, the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Marine Le Pen’s successes in France, and Donald Trump’s return to power in 2024 all gained momentum by stoking voters’ fears that our way of life is under threat. Attacks against transgender rights and DEI initiatives are similarly rooted in perceived threats to traditional values.
What can people do to address the recent global surge of authoritarian leaders and followers? As an educator, my first instinct is to argue that we need to increase people’s political knowledge to instill democratic values of tolerance, pluralism and adherence to the rule of law. Yet this approach could backfire. Research on this topic shows that increases in education and political knowledge may make authoritarian followers more, not less, likely to express anti-democratic attitudes. For example, a study in the U.S. found that the relationship between authoritarianism and two core features of conservatism are stronger among those who are knowledgeable about politics.
Alternatively, pro-democracy advocates could employ “jiujitsu” persuasion to target the motivations underlying anti-democratic beliefs. For example, because authoritarianism arises from the need to mitigate perceived threats in the environment, we can expose people to safer ones. Indeed a newly published study by my colleagues and me shows that the diversity of one’s neighborhood correlates negatively with authoritarianism. Multicultural neighborhoods likely provide people with the chance to form close friendships with others from diverse backgrounds. In turn these experiences dispel worries that immigrants threaten deeply held cultural values or will take their jobs.
Other work suggests that we can harness authoritarian followers’ impulse to submit to authority figures and conform to group norms for the social good. For example, research from Singapore—where authorities endorse multiculturalism—shows that authoritarian followers support cultural diversity. Other work from Poland indicates that authoritarian followers support prohibiting hate speech against minority groups including members of the LGBTQ community, Muslims and people of African descent, because this hostile rhetoric violates social norms. These studies show that, under some limited conditions, leaders can harness authoritarian followers’ destructive impulses for the social good.
Although Trump’s return to power has reignited popular interest in authoritarianism, social scientists have long wrestled with its origins. Their insights can help us predict what the next four years will look like, as well as identify ways to address the challenges that are likely to come. Democracy rarely falls at the hands of a single individual. Rather it dies through the complacency and obedience of otherwise well-intentioned authoritarian followers. We must help them follow their better angels. As the historian Timothy Snyder has warned, “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given.”
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
Danny Osborne is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Auckland where he examines the causes and consequences
of inequality. He is also the lead editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Political Psychology (2022) and has published over
175 peer-reviewed manuscripts on topics relevant to political psychology.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-some-people-follow-authoritarian-leaders-and-the-key-to-stopping-it/
See also:
brooklyn13. Your crook tactic of throwing mud without valid evidence in support of it continues.
"I think I read somewhere that you are trying to distance yourself from previous posts, in which you claimed to have "read somewhere", something, after you realized their theses were dubious. You still have numb nuts, here, who are insisting this war was instigated on "Bibi's" behalf and wondering what he'll demand next."
Your first there is a clear cut, absolute lie. You don't think you read anywhere that i have tried to distance myself from anything i have said because you couldn't have.
To your
"Don't really understand who the "us" is you refer to, it seems like plenty of local posters are cheerleading these attacks and buying into the Trump spin."
My "us" obviously could only mean those you have disputed most with. I moderate the board with DesertDrifter, i speak for myself only and have never claimed anything different, so your effort there to marry me with all other opinions on this board is yet another dishonest move of yours.
No doubt Netanyahu has been asking Trump to attack Iran since 2016, so there would be no big wrong in saying Trump did it on Netanyahu's behalf.
Exactly why Trump picked now to do what he has done only Trump knows. All the rest 'detail' on that is conjecture.
Bottom line is that you have made those comments about me without giving an iota of evidence for them, so that post of yours goes.
To Heather Cox Richardson's there is nothing there i disagree with. Nothing there which contradicts anything i have said, including her mention of Trump ripping up the deal between Obama and Iran, including the fact Trump ran as a dove and is acting the hawk he has always been, and including . Obviously she covers more than i have, but i have said this repeatedly:
"The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the president, the power to declare war. After fighting for their independence against a king they considered a tyrant, the men of the constitutional convention were not about to hand the power of raising an army to a single man. One delegate commented that he “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.”
Trump’s attack on Iran also violates the charter of the United Nations, under which members promise not to attack other states. This particular attack raises the specter of a larger war. In an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council today, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “[e]verything must be done to prevent a further escalation” in the Middle East."
Your - https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-28-2026
Snyder is good, this from Richardson's:
Scholar of authoritarianism Timothy Snyder noted in Thinking About… that Trump’s personal corruption is another interpretive framework for thinking about his decision to go to war. Trump’s sudden foray into regime change after years of attacking other presidents who tried it raises the question of whether he is acting for other countries in the Middle East he considers his allies.
“Given the stupefyingly overt corruption of the Trump administration,” Snyder wrote, “one must ask whether the United States armed forces are now being used on a per-hire basis.” Snyder noted that Gulf Arab states eager to curb Iran’s power “have generated extremely generous packages of compensation for companies associated with Trump personally and with members of his family.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-28-2026
is spot on. Your post goes because of those ridiculous baseless attacks on my credibility put up by you without required links in support.
No more - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=177349865
... and ...
Timothy Snyder is super good -- "‘Just by existing, he’s extended this war’: Timothy Snyder on Trump, Russia and Ukraine
Martin Pengelly in Washington
[...]
Snyder also laments as “laughable” the behavior of the US supreme court, which “cleared the landscape as best it could for Trump to return. This [legal] immunity business … and the ruling that he was not an insurrectionist, or that the insurrection clause in the constitution, article three of the 14th amendment of the US constitution [which disqualifies insurrectionists from federal office], has effectively been vacated: these are extraordinary actions to make it possible for him to come back.”
[...]
“I think the throughline for Trump, going all the way back to the 1980s and his visit to the Soviet Union, through his first presidential campaign and up to the present, has always been submissiveness towards the power in the Kremlin. I would be very happy for him to break with that. I don’t see any evidence of it yet.
“The scenario is that Trump is made to understand that Vladimir Putin is bullying him and that Trump should therefore do the right thing. But so far in his entire career, Trump has seemed to enjoy being bullied by Putin. And so far [Trump’s] negotiating strategy for Ukraine, so far as they’ve revealed it, has not been to make Russia weaker, it’s been to make Ukraine weaker.”
Snyder has said Trump is Russia’s “only chance of winning the war”. He said so “because the Russians say it”. Snyder speaks “five languages reasonably well, a few more quite badly, and read[s] about a dozen”.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=175606745
... also, from 2017 ...
Marix999, Yale Historian Timothy Snyder on How the U.S. Can Avoid Sliding into Authoritarianism (see below)
Agree it's likely Putin has something on him due particularly to his Russian trips. Then that it's essential we continue to focus
on the authoritarian nature of Trump himself. And on the absolutely authoritarian nature of his presidency from the very start.
-
In his brief career as president and a candidate for president, Mr. Trump has attacked virtually every major institution in American life: Congress, the courts, Democrats, Republicans, the news media, the Justice Department, Hollywood, the military, NATO, the intelligence agencies, the cast of “Hamilton,” the cast of “Saturday Night Live,” the pope and now professional sports. He has attacked the Trump administration itself, or at least selected parts of it (see Sessions, Jeff), and even the United States of America (“you think our country’s so innocent? .. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/04/us/politics/putin-trump-bill-oreilly.html ”).
[...]
Historian Timothy Snyder: “It’s pretty much inevitable” that Trump will try to stage a coup and overthrow democracy
With two Timothy Snydert videos, October, 2017 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=135407197
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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