What he has through his years of research discovered - who authoritarian followers are, what their characteristics are, how they act, how they think, why they think and act the way they do - explains the roots of fascism and authoritarianism in a way that many will find helpful. His conclusions also describe the current state of the Republican Party and most of its followers.
Altemeyer's research deals mostly with the followers of authoritarians; those who submit to their authorities. Right-wing authoritarians show a high degree of submission to the perceived legitimate authority figures in their society, high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities, and are highly conventional, adhering to traditions and social norms endorsed by society and authority figures while believing that the rest of society should as well. Most right-wing authoritarians are conservative, though they can also be politically on the left (think Stalinist-era Communist Party cadres).
The Right-wing Authoritarian Scale has been developed to determine how authoritarian a person is. Most people who take the test admit to a certain amount of submissiveness to authorities: people follow traffic laws, for example. Right-wing authoritarians, however, submit on a far greater scale, and will do so regardless of whether what their leader is doing is evil, corrupt, undemocratic, unprincipled, or dishonest. Conservatives and Republicans tend to scale much, much higher on this scale than most other Americans. Republicans, no matter where they were from or at what level of government, were much less diverse in their responses than Democrats.
Right-wing authoritarians display high levels of hostility towards any "out groups" that their authorities tell them they are against (an "us versus them" mentality); this can be seen in Republicans' marked anti-homosexuality stance, fervent anti-immigrant and anti-minority legislations, and their religious devotion to the Constitution - which does not stop them from curtailing sacred and inalienable rights with policies such as the PATRIOT Act.
This hostility towards the out group is also remarkable in that they approve of authorities who attack members of the out group, despite any crimes the authority figure may have committed. People showing this trait are also unable to display normal levels of empathy, to "go a mile in someone else's shoes" - Republicans have no sympathy for those who have fallen on bad times through no fault of their own and are virulently against any form of universal health care.
Right-wing authoritarians share a strong sense of group loyalty and cohesion, are more likely to be fundamentally religious (thereby also being extremely prejudiced), trust leaders who cannot and should not be trusted despite evidence to the contrary (Richard Nixon, George W. Bush), do not hold authority figures accountable for crimes, and accept illegal abuses of power by government authorities (the PATRIOT Act, legislation discriminating against minorities and immigrants).
Authoritarians cannot draw logical conclusions based on evidence. They hold many contradictory ideas at the same time in their head, use double standards, accept insufficient evidence to support their beliefs, and believe fully without questioning what their leaders tell them.
Authoritarians are dogmatic, hypocritical, oppressors who abuse their power when they have it to dominate others and inflame inter-group conflict. They are self-righteous, do no believe in any of their own failings, and embrace religion as a way of masking their guilt while sustaining this self-righteousness.
All of these traits of authoritarianism can be seen in the modern Republican Party and their followers.
Authoritarian conservatives believed more firmly and for a longer time than most other Americans the egregious lies that the Bush administration spread about Saddam Hussein's connections to the September 11 terrorist attacks and the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Republicans claim to believe in small government and the Constitution, yet while in power they massively expanded the government and infringed upon the inalienable rights of millions of Americans in flagrant violation of these so-called beliefs. Though they nominally should believe in the Constitutional right that every citizen shall not be put to cruel or unusual punishment, conservatives had no problem when the Bush administration sanctioned torture, arrested citizens without trial, repealed habeas corpus, or turned the country into a police state. Conservative authoritarian followers unflinchingly followed George W. Bush, and the Republican Party single-mindedly pursued a dogmatically authoritarian track while in power.
The Republican Party and its base are constantly in fear of those who are not like them: Muslims, Blacks, immigrants, gays, atheists. They believe these "others" to have a sinister, nefarious plan to deliberately destroy the country - just see some of what they have had to say about the first president of non-European descent.
Republicans cannot accept the legitimacy of a Democratic president. Conservatives believe, because they were told so by their authorities, that Obama is a terrorist, a Muslim, that he hates America, that he is a Communist and that he used massive voter fraud and a biased media to cheat a win out of the 2008 Presidential election.
The Republican Party, its members, representatives, and most of its followers are authoritarians. The traits that distinguish them as such blend as well into fascism - an undemocratic ideology that believes in devotion to a strong leader, aggressive nationalism, suppression of others, and the right to engage in violent war to secure its safety.
Republicans are nationalistic, ethnocentric, glorify and exalt the military, reject any measure to increase equality, oppress those who are not like themselves, and stop at nothing, no matter how undemocratic, to rout their political enemies and gain power. Republican lawmakers who exhibit exceptionally high authoritarian tendencies and display one of the above-mentioned fascist ideological traits are likely to rise up through the party; the same cannot be said for Democrats.
The Republicans' hatred of democracy is well-documented:
-in the 2000 Presidential election, there were multiple cases of crimes by Republicans that effectively disenfranchised thousands of African Americans in the hotly-contested state of Florida, allowing nominee George W. Bush to be awarded the state's electoral votes by the conservative Supreme Court in an unprecedented decision that, for the first time in the entire history of the country, was told would count for this one instance;
-in 2004, Republican lawmakers held an open vote in the House of Representatives for over three hours (the mandated limit is 20 minutes) in order to threaten enough other members to vote for a bill that added billions of dollars to the national deficit;
-the democratically-elected Democratic majority in the United States Senate was unable to pass any legislation or appoint any person due to the undermining of democracy that is embodied in the filibuster as used by Republicans
-Republican-controlled state legislatures all over the country are pursuing policies that adversely affect and disenfranchise African-Americans, Latinos, students, and immigrants - all of whom tend to vote for Democrats.
-in the Republican-controlled Wisconsin state legislature, lawmakers flagrantly violated laws in order to pass an anti-union law that they did not campaign on; in the aftermath, a contest for Supreme Court was awarded to the conservative after a county clerk in a heavily-Republican district made a "mistake" in miscounting over 7,000 votes that happened to hand the victory to the Republican.
The Republican Party is the party of Watergate, Iran-Contra, Iraq, Afghanistan, McCarthyism, the PATRIOT Act, multiple sex scandals, Savings and Loans, and the Committee on Un-American Activites; the party that massively increased the nation's debt and then used it to hold the country hostage several times for partisan political gain.
The modern Republican Party cares exclusively about the corporations that run the economy and the super-rich plutocracy who benefit from their economic policies. They will do all in their power to maintain and enhance their corporate overlords, including holding the American and global economies hostage to preserve the favored status in tax brackets of the world's most well-endowed businesses and oligarchs.
Republicans have shown almost no interest in curtailing the pervasive and outrageous influence that corporate money presses upon American politics; on the contrary, they have embraced it, thereby undermining democracy even further.
This is despite clear evidence showing that the American economy was at its strongest when taxes on the rich were at their highest, savings from tax cuts are much more likely to be saved than spent by the wealthy, the United States is the least-taxed industrialized country in the world, and that corporate profits are higher than ever but they are not now and do not usually create that many jobs. But facts and evidence don't matter to the authoritarian, slavish devotion to their ideology does.
The Republican Party is a monolithic, extreme right-wing, antidemocratic, ideologically driven authoritarian, corporate, and fascist political organization.
They are not interested in governing, nor compromise. They exist solely to gain political power at any cost and to destroy their political opponents, while worsening the oppressive socio-economic power relations that keep all minorities - religious, ethnic, racial - excluded from the upper echelons of society in the richest country in the world. And they are dangerously close to gaining control of the levers of power of the richest, most powerful country in the world.
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