scholarly journals Introduction: The Frankfurt School and Authoritarian Populism – A Historical Outline

2018 ◽  
pp. xiii-xxxviii ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremiah Morelock ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Historical Outline

scholarly journals The Frankfurt School and the authoritarian personality: Balance sheet of an insight

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362110059
Author(s):  
Geoff Boucher
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Balance Sheet ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
The Other ◽  
Authoritarian Personality ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
School Research

Frankfurt School critical theory is perhaps the most significant theory of society to have developed directly from a research programme focused on the critique of political authoritarianism, as it manifested during the interwar decades of the 20th century. The Frankfurt School’s analysis of the persistent roots – and therefore the perennial nature – of what it describes as the ‘authoritarian personality’ remains influential in the analysis of authoritarian populism in the contemporary world, as evidenced by several recent studies. Yet the tendency in these studies is to reference the final formulation of the category, as expressed in Theodor Adorno and co-thinkers’ The Authoritarian Personality (1950), as if this were a theoretical readymade that can be unproblematically inserted into a measured assessment of the threat to democracy posed by current authoritarian trends. It is high time that the theoretical commitments and political stakes in the category of the authoritarian personality are re-evaluated, in light of the evolution of the Frankfurt School. In this paper, I review the classical theories of the authoritarian personality, arguing that two quite different versions of the theory – one characterological, the other psychodynamic – can be extracted from Frankfurt School research.

scholarly journals Trump’s 2016 Presidential Campaign and Adorno’s Psychological Technique: Content Analyses of Authoritarian Populism

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-36
Author(s):  
Timothy Haverda ◽  
Jeffrey A Halley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Special Interests ◽  
Lone Wolf ◽  
Rhetorical Devices ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Content Analyses

There has been a burgeoning interest in the sociology of the Frankfurt School as well as the oeuvre of Theodor W. Adorno since the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. The objectives of this study are to both illustrate the enduring importance of Adorno and to provide an important theoretical outline in making sense of Trump’s 2016 United States presidential campaign. Using Adorno’s understudied textual analysis of the radio addresses of Martin Luther Thomas and data from Trump’s 2016 US presidential campaign, we find that Trump’s own discourse can be condensed into three of Adorno’s rhetorical devices: (1) the lone wolf device or anti-statism/pseudo-conservatism, reflecting his criticism of “special interests” and his appraisal of business and (self-)finance; (2) the movement device, which amounted to glorification of action; and (3) the exactitude of error device which amounted to xenophobic, ethnonationalist hyperbole.

scholarly journals Review of Jeremiah Morelock (Ed.), Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism (2018). London: University of Westminster Press.

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-110
Author(s):  
Daniel Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
School Work ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Authoritarian Populism ◽  
Comprehensive Picture ◽  
Unique Nature

Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism (2018; University of Westminster Press), edited by Jeremiah Morelock, brings together the work of sociologists, political scientists, historians, and philosophers attempting to revitalise the empirical and theoretical work on antidemocratic trends of the early Frankfurt School, or Institute for Social Research. They do so in the analytic context of contemporary, globally observed ‘authoritarian populist’ movements, in which political (often right-wing) agitators pit a symbolically-constructed national ‘people’ against purported corrupt elites and minority scapegoat groups. The chapters cover wide ground and can be contrasted to some extent in terms of whether they frame the contemporary moment as highly similar to the era of the Great Depression and 1930s Fascism, or emphasise the unique nature of neoliberalism as a historical backdrop. Notable strengths of the volume include Morelock’s systematic introductory overview of early Frankfurt School work, as well as a thematic section on “Digital Authoritarianism” which resurrects the Institute’s tradition of propaganda content analysis for the social media era. Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism offers a highly comprehensive picture of the current geopolitical nightmare and the conceptual tools for attacking it, and serves as a welcome corrective to several recent simplistic applications of the authoritarianism concept in popular science outlets.

Marcuse and Habermas's Political Ideas in English

2019 ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Asaad Abdullwahab AbdulKarim ◽  
Waleed Massaher Hamad ◽  
Salah Ibrahim Hamadi
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Important Impact

Abstract     The Frankfurt School is characterized by its critical nature and it is the result of the Marxist socialist thought as it contributed to the development of the German thought in particular and the Western thought in general through important ideas put forward by a number of pioneers in the various generations of the school and most notably through the leading pioneer in the first generation, Marcuse, and the leading pioneer of the second  generation, Habermas, whose political ideas had an important impact on global thinking and later became the basis of the attic of many critical ideas. In spite of the belief of the school members in the idea of the criticism of power and community, each had his own ideas that distinguish him from the others.

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