The right-wing radicalism and authoritarian personality in Theodor Adorno

Abstract

The theme of this study is the political thought of Theodor Adorno, focusing on his contributions to right-wing radicalism and authoritarian personality. In the lecture he delivered on April 6, 1967, titled "Aspects of the New Right-Wing Radicalism," Adorno assumed that the new radicalism differed in no way from the old, meaning there were no ruptures in the authoritarian political positions that had been established in the pre-war and post-war periods, from 1945. This observation led him to consider fascism-nationalism as a social and political phenomenon linked to bourgeois society and authoritarian personality, which he investigated in the Essays on Social Psychology and Psychoanalysis. To study the theme, understanding the events and ideas alluded to by Adorno is related to history, in its dynamics of change and permanence, and to Critical Theory capable of discussing this movement. The persistence of authoritarian ideas and policies, even today, sparks the interest of researchers eager to understand the motivations and foundations. This justifies a return to Adorno's thought. Therefore, the proposed objective is to understand, in Adorno, the persistence (or return) of authoritarian political positions at a time when they were supposedly defeated at the end of World War II.