Opinion | Is There Such a Thing as an Authoritarian Voter? - The New York Times - 0 views
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Jonathan Weiler, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has spent much of his career studying the appeal of authoritarian figures: politicians who preach xenophobia, beat up on the press and place themselves above the law while extolling “law and order” for everyone else.
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He is one of many scholars who believe that deep-seated psychological traits help explain voters’ attraction to such leaders. “These days,” he told me, “audiences are more receptive to the idea” than they used to be.
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“In 2018, the sense of fear and panic — the disorientation about how people who are not like us could see the world the way they do — it’s so elemental,” Mr. Weiler said. “People understand how deeply divided we are, and they are looking for explanations that match the depth of that division.”
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