CDSMS EDITED BY JEREMIAH MORELOCK CRITICAL THEORY AND AUTHORITARIAN POPULISM Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism edited by Jeremiah Morelock Critical, Digital and Social Media Studies Series Editor: Christian Fuchs The peer-reviewed book series edited by Christian Fuchs publishes books that critically study the role of the internet and digital and social media in society. Titles analyse how power structures, digital capitalism, ideology and social struggles shape and are shaped by digital and social media. They use and develop critical theory discussing the political relevance and implications of studied topics. The series is a theoretical forum for in- ternet and social media research for books using methods and theories that challenge digital positivism; it also seeks to explore digital media ethics grounded in critical social theories and philosophy. Editorial Board Thomas Allmer, Mark Andrejevic, Miriyam Aouragh, Charles Brown, Eran Fisher, Peter Goodwin, Jonathan Hardy, Kylie Jarrett, Anastasia Kavada, Maria Michalis, Stefania Milan, Vincent Mosco, Jack Qiu, Jernej Amon Prodnik, Marisol Sandoval, Se- bastian Sevignani, Pieter Verdegem Published Critical Theory of Communication: New Readings of Lukács, Adorno, Marcuse, Honneth and Habermas in the Age of the Internet Christian Fuchs https://doi.org/10.16997/book1 Knowledge in the Age of Digital Capitalism: An Introduction to Cognitive Materialism Mariano Zukerfeld https://doi.org/10.16997/book3 Politicizing Digital Space: Theory, the Internet, and Renewing Democracy Trevor Garrison Smith https://doi.org/10.16997/book5 Capital, State, Empire: The New American Way of Digital Warfare Scott Timcke https://doi.org/10.16997/book6 The Spectacle 2.0: Reading Debord in the Context of Digital Capitalism Edited by Marco Briziarelli and Emiliana Armano https://doi.org/10.16997/book11 The Big Data Agenda: Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies Annika Richterich https://doi.org/10.16997/book14 Social Capital Online: Alienation and Accumulation Kane X. Faucher https://doi.org/10.16997/book16 The Propaganda Model Today: Filtering Perception and Awareness Edited by Joan Pedro-Carañana, Daniel Broudy & Jeffery Klaehn https://doi.org/10.16997/book27 Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism Edited by Jeremiah Morelock University of Westminster Press www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk Published by University of Westminster Press 115 Cavendish Street London W1W 6UW www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk Text © the editor and several contributors 2018 First published 2018 Cover: ketchup productions. Series concept: Mina Bach. Print and digital versions typeset by Siliconchips Services Ltd. ISBN: (Hardback): 978-1-912656-04-2 ISBN (PDF): 978-1-912656-05-9 ISBN (EPUB): 978-1-912656-06-6 ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-912656-07-3 ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-912656-21-9 DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/book30 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-CC-BY-NC-ND/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA. This license allows for copying and distributing the work, providing author attribution is clearly stated, that you are not using the material for commercial purposes, and that modified versions are not distributed. The full text of this book has been peer-reviewed to ensure high academic standards. For full review policies, see: http://www.uwestminsterpress.co.uk/ site/publish/ Suggested citation: Morelock, J. (ed.). 2018. Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism. London: University of Westminster Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/ book30. License: CC-BY-NC-ND To read the free, open access version of this book online, visit https://doi.org/10.16997/ book30 or scan this QR code with your mobile device: Acknowledgements Thanks are extended to the following publishers: to Logos journal, for permit- ting the publication of updated and extended versions of John Abromeit’s ‘Crit- ical Theory and the Persistence of Right-Wing Populism’ and Douglas Kellner’s ‘Donald Trump as Authoritarian Populist: A Frommian Analysis,’ both from volume 15, issues 2–3, 2016, at http://logosjournal.com/2016-vol-15-nos-2-3/; to Sense Publishers, for additional permissions on the Kellner piece, the Logos version of which also appears in Kellner’s American Nightmare: Donald Trump, Media Spectacle, and Authoritarian Populism, 2016; and to Yale University Press, for permission to reprint the ‘Modernity’ chapter from Stephen Eric Bronner’s The Bigot: Why Prejudice Persists, 2014. I cannot thank enough the members of the Critical Theory Research Net- work, without whom this volume would not have come together. I would also like to thank Douglas Kellner, Christian Fuchs and Andrew Lockett for reviewing early drafts of the introduction and providing helpful comments. Lastly, I thank the department of sociology at Boston College, especially Zine Magubane and Stephen Pfohl. Competing interests The editors and contributors declare that they have no competing interests in publishing this book. Contents Preface xi Douglas Kellner Introduction: The Frankfurt School and Authoritarian Populism – A Historical Outline xiii Jeremiah Morelock Theories of Authoritarianism 1 1. Frankfurt School Critical Theory and the Persistence of Authoritarian Populism in the United States 3 John Abromeit 2. The Persistence of the Authoritarian Appeal: On Critical Theory as a Framework for Studying Populist Actors in European Democracies 29 Lars Rensmann 3. Understanding Right and Left Populism 49 Samir Gandesha 4. Donald Trump as Authoritarian Populist: A Frommian Analysis 71 Douglas Kellner Foundations of Authoritarianism 83 5. From Modernity to Bigotry 85 Stephen Eric Bronner 6. Opposing Authoritarian Populism: The Challenge and Necessity of a New World System 107 Charles Reitz 7. Public Sphere and World-System: Theorizing Populism at the Margins 135 Jeremiah Morelock and Felipe Ziotti Narita x Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism Digital Authoritarianism 155 8. Racism, Nationalism and Right-Wing Extremism Online: The Austrian Presidential Election 2016 on Facebook 157 Christian Fuchs 9. Authoritarianism, Discourse and Social Media: Trump as the ‘American Agitator’ 207 Panayota Gounari 10. Phantasmagoria and the Trump Opera 229 Forrest Muelrath About the Contributors 249 Index 251 Preface to Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism Douglas Kellner Since the Brexit referendum in U.K., the election of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. election, and the rise of right-wing populist movements throughout the globe, there has been intense focus on authoritarian populism on a global scale. The articles collected in this volume carry out a Frankfurt School critique of authoritarian populism, dealing with Trump, various right-wing populist movements in Europe, Latin America, and throughout the globe. The con- tributors make use of classic Frankfurt School Critical Theory to address con- temporary populism and especially its authoritarian varieties as an important phenomenon and threat in the contemporary moment, using key ideas and theorists of the Frankfurt School to interpret and provide a critique of Trump and the Trump phenomenon, as well as authoritarianism in its varied contem- porary forms. In 1950, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno helped to assemble a volume titled The Authoritarian Personality, which constructed a psychologi- cal and sociological profile of the potentially‘ fascistic individual’ (Adorno et al. 1950). The work was based on interviews largely with American workers, and the cumulative racist, antidemocratic, paranoid, and irrational sentiments in the case studies suggested that there were dangers of fascism in the United States, and since that day there have been many studies of authoritarianism in U.S. politics, a study intensified in the contemporary era of authoritarian populism. Around the same period as TheAuthoritarian Personality, Leo Löwenthal and Norbert Guterman published in 1949 Prophets of Deceit, which studied Father Coughlin and other rabble-rousers of the era, envisaging the ‘possibility that a situation will arise in which large numbers of people would be susceptible to his xii Critical Theory and Authoritarian Populism psychological manipulation,’ thus anticipating a Prophet of Deceit and conman like Donald Trump! As I note below in my study of Erich Fromm in this volume, Trump has neither the well-articulated party apparatus, nor the full-blown ideology of the Nazis, and thus more resembles the phenomena of authoritarian populism or neofascism, which we can use to explain Trump and his supporters. Contributors to this volume use a variety of Frankfurt School theorists, texts, and ideas to illuminate Trump and authoritarian populism. They engage au- thoritarian populism on a global scale in various ways, as the Editor indicates in the Introduction. The studies collected demonstrate the continued relevance of Frankfurt School Critical Theory to critically engage key phenomena of the present moment, as well as the dangers inherent in Trump and other authori- tarian populist movements – dangers the members of the Frankfurt school in exile from Hitler’s Germany were all too familiar with in the light of their expe- riences of German fascism. References Adorno, T. W., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, and R. Nevitt San- ford, eds. 1950. The Authoritarian Personality. New York: Harper and Row. Kellner, Douglas. 2016.