Quotes About Authoritarianism

Low-intensity authoritarianism corrodes pluralism; new economic and political elites emerge, and their agendas take precedence over the best interests and the needs of their people.

If the end of tension is what you want, fascism is the thing for you.

Taken to extremes, scapegoating feeds the political pathology called fascism, a movement ideology centered on a "radical and authoritarian nationalism" that actively suppresses "openness and opposition" to the movement and the nation-state it hopes to commandeer.15 When this diseased brand of nationalism rushes in to fill our inner emptiness, its mildest manifestation is the belief that nation's critics are unpatriotic, even traitorous. At

American democracy at its best is like that island of restored prairie. In a world where human diversity is often suppressed—where authoritarian regimes have kept people lined up like rows of cultivated corn, harvesting their labor and sometimes their lives to protect the interests of the state—the diversity that grows in a democracy delights the heart as well as the eye.

However, its ultimate motivation is fanatics' hostility to the principle of an open society in which formal equality is recognized for everyone.

Not surprisingly, nondemocratic regimes by their nature are built around the restriction of individual freedom.

Like Nazis at a Ku Klux Klan rally, they were comfortable ideologically, but not in terms of corporate culture.

the Arab Spring, which has transformed Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and, as I write, shortly Syria. These transformations each demonstrate the potency of the idea of democratic institutions.

She concentrated on the former East Germany, stronghold of the infamous secret police, the Stasi (the Ministry for State Security).

he had charged that the democratic countries of the world had "retreated at every step" before the onslaught of fascism, and that "the Colored people of the United States must ever keep in mind that the reactionary forces seeking to smash democracy in Spain are the same forces which would destroy our constitutional rights at home.

We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to, quote, 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.

Adults must aim to diminish their egocentric and authoritarian attitude toward the child and adopt a passive attitude in order to aid in his devleopment.

The parent-child relationship in the home usually reflects the objective cultural conditions of the surrounding social structure. If the conditions which penetrate the home are authoritarian, rigid, and dominating, the home will increase the climate of oppression.30 As these authoritarian relations between parents and children intensify, children in their infancy increasingly internalize the paternal authority.

Pedro Juan Gutiérrez

Obedience indeed is only the pitiful and cowardly egotism of him who thinks that he can do something better than reason.

What is it every authoritarian government says? If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.

The Olyix can't always have been miserable fascist bastards," Yuri said. "Something changed them.

I've withdrawn her university permit so she doesn't continue spreading that kind of sedition among impressionable young minds.

coercive leaders are Adolf Hitler in Germany, the Taliban leaders in Afghanistan, Jim Jones in Guyana, and North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il, each of whom has used power and restraint to force followers to engage in extreme behaviors.

Nazi ideology was thoroughly and unabashedly self-centered.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.