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With a record number of elections around the world and far right parties gaining ground, much of the conversations focus on the personalities of the leaders and their entourage. While some of it provides much needed comic relief, could our fascination with the individual be a distraction? Just like our fascination with serial killers, it often overlooks the culture that produces them.
These dark figures are not just freaks of history. They are us, they are reflections of our politics, our culture, our behaviours. They are a product of our world, not just an aberration.
So instead of wondering how they could become so grotesque and cruel, we could try to better understand why people vote for them. What differentiates them from their voters? What makes some people want to follow and obey, and others not?
While we often get post election analyses, these usually only look at differentiations based on gender, age, ethnicity, perhaps location.
In Escape from Freedom, written in 1941, Erich Fromm warned that explanations for why people choose authoritarian figures were often too simplistic: some say it’s purely political, others that it’s due to socio-economic conditions, others that it’s psychological conditions, voters were dumb or brainwashed. Fromm thought these were dangerous as they would not help us truly understand, and would therefore make us unable to prevent it from happening again in the future.
He wanted to understand why after centuries of struggles for freedom, people would then choose unfreedom. To understand, we must differentiate between two meanings of freedom: negative freedom, which is freedom from someone else’s interference or control, and positive freedom, freedom to the full realisation of the individual’s potential, including intellectual, emotional and sensuous. The latter brings responsibility and this can become a burden.
While people’s “economic activity and their wealth gave them a feeling of freedom and a sense of individuality,” he wrote, “at the same time, these same people had lost something: the security and feeling of belonging which the mediaeval social structure had offered. They were more free, but they were more alone.”
Positive freedom, he concludes, has never been achieved. And this has led us to feel isolated, powerless and more ready to abandon freedom for a kind of security, to rid ourselves of doubt through what he called ‘mechanisms of escape,’ which include authoritarianism, destructiveness, and automaton.
When people are free, life can become unpredictable, and the authoritarian tries to control this unpredictability by imposing order from the outside. Those who are drawn to fascists, populists, nationalists, have what he called an ‘authoritarian personality,’ a wish for submission and domination (masochism and sadism). Leaders and voters share the same desires: to dominate, rule over, control others. The authoritarian personality is told who the enemy is and who to subjugate. This makes people feel like they belong.
The destructive person tries to destroy what they cannot control. Men who beat their wives, school shooters, suicide bombers, the genocidaire. Fromm calls them ‘necrophiles’, they fixate on death and destruction because life and creation makes them feel insignificant and anxious.
The last mechanism of escape, to which most of us belong, is the automaton. The automaton conforms to everyone else, wears the same clothes, eats the same food, has the same beliefs. These people think they are free, that their beliefs are theirs, but they are just a tiny cog in the machine, where thinking has been replaced by pseudo-thinking. This group is often found in democracies where it is not controlled by force, but by advertisement. It leads to powerlessness and despair. This, Fromm says, makes people gaze toward approaching catastrophes as though they were paralysed. This is fertile ground for fascism.
So what are we to do?
To achieve positive freedom, a commitment to critical thinking and truth is essential. We should also seek ways to express our full potential through what Fromm calls, “spontaneous activity of the total, integrated personality.” The purpose of spontaneous activity should lead to the transformation of our society, Fromm says. This is how we unite with the world, with others, with nature. He suggests we look to artists and small children, as two groups of people who can express themselves spontaneously.
“The victory over all kinds of authoritarian systems will be possible only if democracy does not retreat but takes the offensive and proceeds to realise what has been its aim in the minds of those who fought for freedom throughout the last centuries. It will triumph over the forces of nihilism only if it can imbue people with a faith that is the strongest the human mind is capable of, the faith in life and in truth, and in freedom as the active and spontaneous realisation of the individual self,” Fromm concludes.
Words, Veronica Yates and illustration, Miriam Sugranyes.
References
Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm.
Further Resources
The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt.
Necropolitics, Achille Mbembe.
Strongmen: How they rise, why they succeed, how they fall, Ruth Ben-Ghiat.
Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra.
Psychopolitics, Byung Chul Han.
“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilise, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilisatrice.” ― Edward W. Said
“We are asked to love or to hate such and such a country and such and such a people. But some of us feel too strongly our common humanity to make such a choice.”— Albert Camus
“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilise, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilisatrice.” ― Edward W. Said
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” — Groucho Marx
“I believe that he who hates is destroying himself.” — Jorge Luis Borges
