Via Marginal Revolution, an interesting piece of social science on which factors predict anti-semitism in a sample of British voters. The authors found anti-Semitism to be most associated with: "ethnicity, support for totalitarian government, belief in malevolent global conspiracies, and anti-hierarchical aggression."
By "ethnicity" they mean a belief that to be British you should be born in Britain, white, and Christian, which I would call "ethno-nationalism"; they say their sample doesn't include enough non-white people to draw any conclusions about them.
Interesting about how they measured support for totalitarian government:
Totalitarianism scale was designed in order to measure sympathy for a totalitarian style of government among activists of the extreme left and right, with regard to such matters as the treatment of political opponents; it does not ask respondents for their view of actual totalitarian regimes, but instead elicits respondents’ agreement or disagreement with statements which reflect the kinds of arguments used to justify totalitarian political systems without reference to any specific ideology, such as ‘To bring about great changes for the benefit of mankind often requires cruelty and even ruthlessness’.
More or less, their conclusion is that anti-Semitism is associated with a lack of trust in others, an angry attitude toward authority, and a belief that those in power mainly represent others and are out to get "us."
This finding adds nuance to ongoing debates about whether antisemitism is more prevalent on the political right or left, by suggesting that (at least in the UK) it is instead associated with a conspiracist view of the world, a desire to overturn the social order, and a preference for authoritarian forms of government—all of which may exist on the right, the left, and elsewhere.
Very, very interesting. I'm especially impressed at the way the authors have shown that authoritarian leanings are often combined with hostility to an existing social order and its hierarchies, and that this is true on both the right and the left. I think similar work might extend this to other leanings, such as anti-vaxism, social class hostility, other forms of racial resentment, etc.
ReplyDeleteIt is important to note that historically hostility to the existing social order is, characteristically, quite specific: if the existing order is overturned in favor of an order the individual who fits this profile identifies with, that individual's support for the order (and especially the heroic leader) they identify with often/usually persists (despite the fact that it is now the "existing" social order), as do their various hates.
My impression is it is a very rare person that truly wants to "burn it all down." What people who say that want is to annihilate the specific parts of "it" that annoy them, and replace those things with often very similar ones that have more of a guise they like.