There is plenty of history to show what leftists can do when they gain control of a country.
And it is way past time that we begin referring to Nazis as a radical Left Wing movement. It was then, it is now.
It is just that the Left, in their typical projection, have always called it “right wing” because that suited their narrative.
"The Left destroys everything it touches.
There are no exceptions."
The way I read it, the author was alluding to, and not putting a fine point on it, that it ISN'T that there is NOT LWA (Left Wing Authoritarianism) The the proof that is those hundreds of millions of people people murdered by their own Communist governments in the 20th Century.
It is that the academics who "study" this simply don't think people with their mindset and ideological leanings are capable of what history shows they are capable of. Their cloistered mindset is that Left Wing Authoritarianism isn't considered to be appropriate material to study or get a grant for because it simply doesn't exist.
Everyone knows the only kind of "authoritarianism" that is real is Right Wing Authoritarianism. (again, their mindset)
Great article, thanks for posting.
I admit, however, it had a lot more psychobabble in it than I like (I use the term "psychobabble" not to simply deride all words and terms bearing on these subjects, but to speak generally to both valid and invalid observations and categories of behavior. Kind of a catch-all phrase)
But there is validity, there, and well-stated, too.
In particular, I appreciate and understand completely the dynamic of this statement below, which has long been accepted as a mechanism to explain why Leftists like to go after the young voters (the younger, the better) and why they are at the forefront to decrease the voting age as well as the age of consent:
"... Many of the college kids, or cannon fodder, are run-of-the-mill narcissists who, with maturity and wisdom, will see their participation in these protests as regretful childish acts..."
It is normal for all humans to act narcissistic, and even more normal for young people to be both narcissistic and immature. But as people grow up, accept responsibilities, have to pay taxes and buy items like toilet paper, when they are in a position to raise a family, the natural and normal tendency is to be more realistic and sensible. More conservative.
When, one day they open up their paycheck to look at it in detail, they are astonished to see how much is being taken in taxes by the government. For many young people, they are fixed on the day-to-day processes of finding their way in the world. They are more fixated on how they are going to do their job and make a living. Raise their families and not run that ship onto rocks. And have a good time when they can.
The portion of money they pay in taxes each year almost always goes up, and does so in such a gradual way, most people going through that stage of life (adolescence to mid-late Twenties) don't learn the true value of money and property until things begin to get financially tight.
And they realize belatedly (due to the slow, steady, drip-drip-drip of increased taxes) that a huge portion of their pay is and has been sent to a government to do with it as they will, and they begin to think things like "I am working ONE WEEK each month to send that money, every cent of it, to the government!" And as they dwell on it, they realize that they are working the first three and a half months of the year to send to the government.
So, you go from a 16 year old kid who hears a politician like Kamala Harris state they want to give everyone a minimum guaranteed income and thinks that is a great idea...to someone who realizes that they are spending all sweat-drenched day on a July-baked black tar-paper roof nailing shingles only to have a third of their money taken from them and given to someone who sits on his ass all day watching television and eating Cheetos.
You grow up and you learn that all debts must be paid, and you make the connection that if that person lazing around all day is reneging on the social and moral contract to earn your daily bread as best you can, then that contract is a debt, and if all debts are paid, then you are the one who is paying someone else's debt with your hard-earned pay.
And then you make another connection: You realize you are on your way to becoming a slave because of that. As the number of people taking government money grows in a steady drip-drip drip each year, the percentage of those earning it to be given to them gets smaller by that same drip-drip-drip. And your payment on that other person's debt climbs higher each year.
And then, those fifteen year-old kids, if they are not Leftists, become 30 year-old nascent Conservatives. But as this author points out...not always. Some people never progress to a level of maturity more developed than that of that fifteen year old kid.
They remain stuck their for years until they die, or go through a transformational upheaval in life that rips them out of that Leftist mindset, much as it did for the famous Conservative David Horowitz. He was a hard-core Leftist working with the Black Panthers into his thirties, until who and what they really were could no longer be hidden from himself by his own rationalizing intellect.
So it can happen.