The authoritarian/libertarian hybrid

Abstract

This article suggests that a hybrid fusion of authoritarianism and libertarianism is an increasingly common and disturbing presence in today’s politics, bringing to the surface a long-standing potential for incoherent and volatile political orientations. Three areas where this fusion can be seen are discussed: Trumpism, Covid-related and other recent forms of conspiracism, and transgender activism. Taking its cue from Erich Fromm’s classic 1941 text Fear of Freedom, we note the continued relevance of mid-twentieth century theories of authoritarianism, while pointing to the need to complement those analyses with a parallel understanding of libertarianism in its politically diverse forms. The psychoanalytic concept of the core complex, expressed in the dynamic between agoraphobic and claustrophobic modes of relating to the social world, is drawn upon to explain the convergence of, or oscillation between, the two apparently contradictory tendencies of authoritarianism and libertarianism. Hopper’s theory of ‘incohesion’ as a core group dynamic is also seen as a potential resource in the study of this hybridity. A key political divide now exists between both ‘phobic’ phantasy-based orientations on the one hand, and reality-oriented states of mind on the other.