I’ll definitely check her out later today. Thanks for the recommendation….
If you haven’t yet checked this out, I can sum it up for you.
Karen Stenner believes acceptance of authoritarianism is directly related to the Big 5 personality trait of Openness.
Many in psychology believe there are five primary personality traits. Learn about the "Big 5" personality traits, as well as what it means to be high or low in each.
www.verywellmind.com
She uses gross stereotypes to justify her position. If you see all people on the political right through the lens of stereotype then I can see how this would resonate. To the credit of Yascha Mounk, he says at the very beginning of the podcast that he doesn’t believe what Karen Stenner is saying is necessarily correct but I can see why some would eat this stuff up.
After she gets through her caricature of “if you want to conserve things then you are an authoritarian”, she ventures into some more interesting ideas. Essentially what she says is the faster society changes, fewer and fewer can keep up. If society doesn’t change at all then everyone can keep up, and if society changes at a medium pace then perhaps 90% of the people can adapt with society, while if change is super-fast then very few can adapt to the changes. Those who can’t adapt fast enough become backwards looking, wanting to conserve, and are therefore authoritarian. In effect, we got authoritarian Donald Trump because demographics are rapidly changing, gays are everywhere on TV, women are men, children can be trans, etc., etc.
Stenner’s proposed solution to halting this march of authoritarianism is to slow the rate of change and increase unifying traditions that increase what she terms “us-i-ness”. Using her earlier foundation it sounds like she’s come to the oxymoron of conservatism (which is authoritarianism) is the solution to authoritarianism. I don't mean to talk it down too much because I think the last 20 minutes of the podcast is the strongest part.
Karen Stenner isn’t my thing but she commonly collaborates with Johathan Haidt who I do highly respect so she can’t be all bad. That said, I much prefer the work of Johathan Haidt.