“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.

”
― Ronald Reagan

“Your practice of psycho-analysis was a mistake. It has […] made the work of purification more
complicated, not easier. The psycho-analysis of Freud is the last thing that one should associate
with yoga.”
― Sri Aurobindo

“Paranormal activities” in contemporary

authoritarianism research in Germany

Author
Björn Goldstein,
Faculty of Sociology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany

In 1979 Jello Biafra, lead singer of the Dead Kennedys at the time sang in their track „California
über alles”: “…your kids will meditate in school […] Zen fascists will control you, 100% natural
…” He was criticizing the escapism of the US New Age movement that did not care about
rebelling against an unjust, exploitative and racist US society and was instead concentrating on
themselves and their self-realization. More than 40 years later his warning is being repeated by
German social scientists specialized in psychological authoritarianism research in the context of
the protests against the state measures to confine the spread of the Corona virus. The difference
with these researchers and Biafra is, that they are not concerned about the inhibition of left-wing
protest but about protests of politically rather left-leaning esotericists1 for individual freedom.
The focus on authoritarianism research on this new social movement was motivated by the
observation that these people protested together with right-wing conspiracy believers.
This article is a critique of two developments that are turning authoritarianism research into a
toothless tiger by turning away from the core tenets of authoritarianism research and turning
critical theory into “conformist theory” (Wallat 2022) by the invention of the “libertarian
authoritarian” (Amlinger/Nachtwey 2022).
Calling these developments “paranormal activities” is meant as an ironic hint to the fact that
contemporary authoritarianism research in Germany (1) focusses in an analytically very unprecise
way on a social group they label as “superstitious”, and (2) this new authoritarianism research is
“beyond” the authoritarianism research we used to know. An esotericist might say that you have
to be “next level” to grasp this “quantum leap” in authoritarianism research.

1
“Esotericism” is a catch-all term I use for practical purposes here. It should be clear that most
teachings considered belonging to this category are neither esoteric nor occult. Most of these
things are not kept as secrets for the initiated but are openly available for those who want.
Authoritarianism during the Pandemic (2020-2022)
In Germany, text book authoritarian behavior was obvious throughout the society and across all
political spheres during the years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Authoritarian aggression,
authoritarian submission, conventionalism and conformism, triggered by collective fear were
prevalent among all sections of the society. And this did not come as a surprise for anyone
familiar with psychological authoritarianism research. Zmigrod et al. (2021) cite 24 studies
published between 2004-2020 alone that show that societies which experience the spread of a
nonzoonotic disease adopt more authoritarian, conservative, conformist, xenophobic,
ethnocentric, morally vigilant, collectivist, obedient attitudes, and show more intolerance of
nonconformity and even more intrastate armed conflict. Nevertheless, research in Germany did
almost only focus on those who protested against the measures imposed by governments in
order to control the spread of the virus. An exception from this rule is that in the Leipzig
Authoritarianism Study 2022 the authoritarian syndrome was also diagnosed among those
enthusiasts who blamed people who refused to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to be responsible
for the pandemic (Decker et al. 2022, p.13).
The focus on the protests is not surprising because those on the protest side included in a
prominent manner political (extreme) right-wing people, the classic authoritarians which
researchers of the field have been focusing on for 70 years. Additionally two right-wing
Presidents, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, who where “Corona skeptics” gained a lot of
media attention in Germany.
Soon the researchers of the authoritarianism studies about these protesters, the „Querdenker“
(Germany) and the „Coronarebellen“(Switzerland), were confronted with a theoretical problem.
The majority of the protesters did not fit into the well-established authoritarian scheme. Attitudes
here were basically liberal-left-wing, anti-authoritarian and non-conformist; with the exception of
a minority of extreme right-wingers on these protests. It should be mentioned that the
constellation of protesters differed from region to region. In East-Germany protests were in
many cities dominated by right-wingers. It was obvious that the right-wing party AfD soon tried
to present itself as the parliamentary voice of the protesters, after they had been among the
loudest advocates for very strict authoritarian anti-Corona measures at the beginning of the
pandemic. What did also fit into the classic understanding of authoritarianism was the
comparatively high prevalence of conspiracy believers or a conspiracy mentality among the
protesters, even higher than the 10-20% corona related conspiracy beliefs in the general German
population (Kuhn 2022). A condition that very often is more or less openly expressing anti-
Semitic tropes.
Another finding was an above average dispersion of opinions and beliefs to which the
researchers gave the labels „esotericism“, „superstition“ or „spirituality“. Another surprise. The
belief in supernatural phenomena had been dismissed for having any correlation with
authoritarianism by 25 years of Bob Altemeyer‘s research (Altemeyer 2006), one of the most
important figures of the field. He also said earlier in relation to the environmental movement that
„right-wing-authoritarians tended not to be ‚tree-huggers‘“ (Bob Altemeyer, 1996, p. 42). The
“tree-hugger” is a stereotype image of modern esotericists as well. Even though authoritarianism
research did not find a correlation here, one has to be aware that a discourse about the
connection between esotericism and the extreme right is very present in Germany among those
who are inspired by critical theory. These accounts range from outright despisers of believers of
the supernatural, like Herbert Rätz (2009) or Colin Goldner (e.g. 2005), to people actually
fascinated by these topics like Rüdiger Sünner (1998). It can be speculated that the motivation to
search for authoritarians among the esotericists might have been motivated by this discourse.
In the original California F-scale of the Berkeley group from 1950 (Adorno et al.), the mother of
all authoritarianism scales, „superstition“ existed as a subdimension of authoritarianism on the
base of a psychoanalytical interpretation, and, I would like to add, a rather superficial
understanding of esotericism and occultism, and probably also a strong euro-centric bias.
Nevertheless, this subdimension became again the focal point of our colleagues from Leipzig, at
least in 2020, and Basel. Amlinger and Nachtwey (2022) were very aware of the anti-authoritarian
attitudes among the esotericists and therefore invented a new type of authoritarian, the
„libertarian authoritarian“, an egoistic individual whose highest authority is herself. This turns the
authoritarian syndrome upside-down. Of course, it stands to reason if Social Dominance
Orientation might play an important role in some of those they label “libertarian authoritarians”
but this is not what Amlinger/Nachtwey proclaim. They describe in a generalizing manner a
person that in many respects resembles someone who feels, thinks and tries to behaves in an
autonomous way. Almost like a desperate attempt to fulfill the ideal of Adorno (1969) in a not
consolidated world. Now, the authors suggest, that we should call such a person an authoritarian.

Making sense of projective and libertarian authoritarians

Before I will turn to the criticism of these new developments, I will start with explaining the new
assumptions about authoritarianism in the two sources I am referring to.
The first one is the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study (Leipziger Autoritarismusstudie) from the
years 2020 and 2022. This regularly published study measures authoritarian and right-wing
attitudes in Germany in an excellent methodological and theoretical manner. It is a highly reliable
source of statistical data and convincing interpretations in the last 17 years that many journalists,
researchers and policy makers in Germany refer to. Its publishers, most prominently Oliver
Decker, constantly alert the public about right-wing attitudes, especially those within the middle
of the society, in a convincing manner that deserves highest respect from anyone interested in a
stable democracy in Germany. In recent years Decker made some very valuable contributions for
the understanding of these dynamics within the post-fascist German society. His analysis that in
(West-)Germany the identification of people with the strong German economy might serve as a
“narcissist seal” is a remarkable theoretical contribution to the field (Decker 2019).
The second one is Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey’s bestselling book “Gekränkte
Freiheit. Aspekte des libertären Autoritarismus” (“Offended Freedom. Aspects of libertarian
authoritarianism”) from 2022. With their book they popularized the idea of a new type of
authoritarianism within the German public. It is noteworthy that most German readers havn’t
been familiar with psychological authoritarianism so far and are now educated about the concept
for the first time, unfortunately in a very twisted manner. Their influence is comparatively strong
because Oliver Nachtwey is a known sociologist from Basel University who in the past did write
the following highly reputed text “Die Abstiegsgesellschaft” (“Downward Mobility - Dissent in
the Age of Regressive Modernity (2016).
These researchers write about authoritarianism from a psychoanalytical lens. For the purpose of
making the criticism against their theorizing intelligible I will summarize the classic
psychoanalytical argument shortly:
In Freud's psychodynamic model the internalization of social norms is described as an unpleasant
process (1930). Socialization takes place in the patriarchal family through the mediating authority
of the father. He is the agency of society and it is through the struggle of the child with the father
that the reality principle emerges. In the best case possible, an individual with a strong ego
develops, which is optimally adapted to society.
The adaption process takes shape as first an identification with the father’s ideals and then the
ideal’s of the society itself, with the established norms of the majority. The whole process is a
constant infringement on the desires of the individual, a narcissist insult against the child. The
identification with an abstract authority is a defense against this insult.
In the fatherless post-war society, an ego-strong individual can no longer develop, since there is
no confrontation with a strong father anymore. To the contrary the father’s weakness as an
employee and administered individual is perceived by the child. Therefor people are socialized
directly through social institutions, including state institutions. Herbert Marcuse (1963) argued
that the lack of a confrontation with a father during the socialization process results in a general
ego-weakness that makes people prone to authoritarianism. The externalized authority can now
without much inner resistance of the individuals unfold its full power over society, and the inner
aggression (super-ego’s bad conscience), that is directed against inner “anti-social” impulses, can
now easily be mobilized against enemies of the state.
The authors of the Leipzig Authoritarianism Studies and Amlinger/Nachtwey understand their
own reasoning to be in line with this Freudian and critical theory explanations of
authoritarianism.
Their theoretical argument turns back to the idea that an authoritarian personality is a
sadomasochistic personality in the sense Erich Fromm had described it (1994).
Nonetheless, according to these authors the three major markers of authoritarianism
(authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission and conventionalism) do not play the most
important role in authoritarianism anymore. The two sadomasochist markers, submission and
aggression, are played down. Instead the element of projectivity is highlighted. Projectivity is
understood as individual’s own undesirable, ambivalent, frightening characteristics and feelings
appear as attributes of other groups or external authorities.
The whole theoretical model looks like this: Projectivity and sadomasochism are both latent
dimensions of the authoritarian syndrome. Superstition and conspiracy mentality are latent
dimensions of projectivity. Authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submissiveness and
conventionalism are latent dimensions of sadomasochism. The model already assumes that
projectivity and sadomasochism are equally important subdimensions. In the context of the
authors’ attempts to make sense of the empirical data from the Corona protests they assess
projectivity much more than sadomasochism. The other flaw is that conspiracy mentality and
superstition are put together in the projectivity dimension in a theoretically very shaky way. These
are the problems I will address below in detail.
According to Amlinger/Nachtwey (2022), in late modernity the norms of self-realization and
self-determination conflict with the social reality that prevents these ideals. The disappointed also
share these values and feel empowered to generate knowledge themselves and distrust experts
who, given the complexity of the world, are alone able to explain the world. The predominance
of the contradiction from identification with late modern values and its subversion by unbridled
criticism produces a new kind of authoritarian: the “libertarian authoritarian.”
What might sound like a conservative defence of traditional norms is meant by the authors to be
an advancement of critical theory in late modernity. The sociologist Hendrik Wallat (2022)
eagerly insists that this cannot pass as critical theory anymore but should be labeled “conformist
theory” promoting simply the norms of the German social-democracy. Wallat criticizes especially
the attacks on critical theory’s insistence of individual freedom implicit in Amlinger/Nachtwey’s
book and its replacement by “social freedom”. According to Wallat their “social freedom” is “a
euphemism for authoritarian socialization” that turns the freedom seeking sensual human being,
that Adorno and Horkheimer were defending, into a sinner.

Anti-intraception
The decision to re-introduce “superstition” into the conceptualization of authoritarianism is quite
arbitrary. Why “superstition” at all, and why is it given such a prominent place for the
authoritarian syndrome? I do not doubt that the studies had been conducted in a
methodologically reliable way and that the described correlations are significant. The problem is
the choice of subscales for authoritarianism. The probable motivation to do so has been
suggested above, and it is understandable from this starting point. If researchers want the
authoritarianism concept match the unusual findings of your research you have to rearrange the
importance of certain aspects of the syndrome.
If they hold the original fascism-scale in such high esteem, the researchers could have shifted
“anti-intraception” into the focus, too. In the development of the F-scale and the analysis of the
results “anti-intraception” was very important. It stands for the unwillingness, inability or
insensitivity to deal with the own internal world of a person, its own thoughts and feelings. Intra-
ceptive people are also interested in arts and literature where the feelings and thought of other
people’s psychological processes find their expression. Authoritarians in the “Authoritarian
Personality” (1950) express that they are not concerned with such things. They are the ones who
don’t believe what they cannot see and say that they are realists who are only concerned about
“real things”. They do not engage in any form of self-reflection which they regard as entirely
unnecessary. Hostility against feelings, fantasies, speculations, aspirations „an imaginative human
outlook“ and „rendering the content of consciousness narrow“ is typical for authoritarians.
(Adorno et al. 1950, 234) The authors write „The extremely anti-intraceptive individual is afraid
of thinking about human phenomena because he might, as it were, think the wrong thoughts; he
is afraid of genuin feeling because his emotions might get out of control. Out of thought with
large areas of his own inner life, he is afraid of waht might be revealed if he, or others, should
look closely at himself“ (ibid.). And later on: „the intellectual functioning of ethnocentric
individuals, even those with above-average IQ‘s, seems to be relatively rigid, to work better in
relation to things, than to people, to be primarily extraceptive, and to become disrupted when
required to deal with more psychological issues, especially those involving personal needs and
emotions“ (ibid, 287).
This subdimension of authoritarianism could have similarly been included into current research
as hasn’t been to date. Just like superstition it had been dismissed by modern non-psychoanalytic
authoritarianism research. If we want to turn back to psychoanalysis in order to describe
authoritarianism as a syndrome we could also have a closer look at anti-intraception. If we did, it
would be even harder to argue that we have found a new kind of “authoritarian syndrome”.
Esoteric teachings, be it in the field of healing or spiritual practices, are always deeply concerned
with self-awareness and understanding of experiences within an individual. It is a main
characteristic of actual beliefs and practices as well as of the original meaning of “esoteric” as an
inner way of spirituality, similar to esoteric Judaism and Christianity, in the so called “eastern
traditions” as well as in the native traditions of the Americas. Amlinger and Nachtwey (2022) are
aware of this but simply state that this aspect of authoritarianism is not important anymore today
because we have a new type of authoritarian today, the “libertarian authoritarian.” Saying that an
authoritarian does not have authoritarian characteristics because the characteristics of an
authoritarian are not authoritarian is like saying a circle is not required to be round because
roundness is not typical for a circle. This kind of reasoning is tautological and also an example of
overconfidence in making the world according to one’s beliefs. In the study of western
esotericism this is known as New Thought, an esoteric tradition ranging from William James to
Donald Trump (Lachman 2018). If we really do want to understand societies from a
psychoanalytical perspective we should at least not only pick what fits our own beliefs but give
the whole concept a fair chance.

Superstition
According to Dale B. Martin (2004) “the definition of ‘superstition’ in the modern world is
parasitic on whatever is taken to be ‘scientific.’ ‘Superstition’ is the “other” to ‘science.’”
The history of the term is a history of the subjugation of nonconformist beliefs and practices.
Superstition (from Latin superstare: stand over or above) was first used as a term to describe
beliefs that were heretical to the teachings of the Christian Church. People who according to the
Church authorities went to extremes in their religious Christian practices or those who were not
baptized (mostly Jews and Pagans) were regarded as superstitious, as well as those who did
engage, or allegedly engaged, in magic, witchcraft or anything that could be branded satanic. The
practices of magic and witchcraft described in the Hebrew Bible were punishable by death.
Christians and Muslims kept the practice alive. Many things we find here are still popular among
some esotericists today, like the knowledge of stones/crystals, and have had a very bad reputation
for thousands of years, to say the least. In this respect esotericism bashing is an established
cultural practice many people today still adhere to. The term “superstition” had since its
introduction marked those who did not conform with the norms of the established authorities.
Since the emergence of Protestantism and later on the Enlightenment esotericism became the
identitarian reverse mirror image for “true” Christians, intellectuals and academics (Hanegraaff,
2012).

Psychoanalysis and superstition

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis is the theoretical backdrop of all authoritarianism research in the
Frankfurt School tradition. Freud was an Atheist with a lifelong fascination for mystical
experiences. In his conversations with his former student Carl Gustav Jung he warned that Jung
has to take care that occultism does not enter the psychoanalytic teaching. This was the time
when pompous irrationality entered politics in form of the Nazi party and Jung developed his
archetype teachings. At the same time Freud’s most admired friend and almost intellectual role
model was the Christian mystic and pacifist writer Romain Rolland. Rolland was the very friend
who summarized Ramakrishna’s experiences with the now famous “oceanic feeling” Freud was
referring to in the first chapter of “Das Unbehagen in der Kultur” (“Society and its Discontents”)
(Freud 1930). Rolland had mentioned this feeling to describe a mystical experience of oneness
(with God, the Universe, you name it) to convince Freud of the reality of the embeddedness
within an all-encompassing reality “behind” sensory experience. Freud never had such an
experience and explained that this experience can only be a regression to an early developmental
stage in the child when it does not yet distinguish between herself and the outside world, when
the breast of the mother is perceived as part of oneself.
Unfortunately, this theory cannot be proven and we may or may not believe it, just as the thing it
claims to explain, the human experience of God. Freud was quite liberally making arguments on
mere assumptions that fit into his overall view of the world. That does not mean that he was not
doing empirical science. He did work empirically, albeit on a very small number of test subjects
from a very peculiar group of people, mostly upper-middle-class women from Vienna of the turn
of the 19th to the 20th century. Since the start of the replication crises in psychology 12 years ago,
researchers have become quite aware that generalizations of results found in psychological
experiments conducted a too rarely with too WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich,
democratic) (Henrich 2010) subjects is not good science. How can researchers of
authoritarianism today not take this into account? Maybe it is the critical theory identification of
researchers that they affectively reject anything that looks like a positivist attack on
psychoanalysis. Let us not forget, that it was the Frankfurt School’s opponent in the 1960s
“positivism dispute” Karl Popper who said that psychoanalysis is a pseudo-science (Popper
1961).
Freud’s writing is in many ways inspiring, and advancements in psychoanalytic therapy may have
helped many individuals. Its humanist approach to patients and the human psyche which cannot
be explained independently from society is still something we can learn from. This aspect is what
was introduced into critical theory and made it the sensitive approach that it still is. Nevertheless,
psychoanalysis is a theory that has a neglectable empirical underpinning, it uses esoteric concepts
like “energies” (of drives) that in a rather hydraulic manner work in the human individual and
social psyches, and proof of its healing evidence is comparable to the use of homeopathic
medicine (e.g. Shedler 2010, Hahn 2013). (Of course, psychotherapy aims at coming along in
society not at “healing”.) This also applies to the theoretical concept “projectivity”, it is as
fascinating and popular but also a highly controversial subject in itself (Baumeister et al. 1998).

Critical theory and superstition

The discussion of superstition and occultism among critical theorists of the first generation was
very ambivalent and did not have the strong anti-metaphysical leaning that the new
authoritarianism studies from Germany and Switzerland suggested. The current depiction of
esotericism etc. is very superficial, prejudiced. It even tends to evaluate the values and beliefs of
rich, male and educated individuals to be superior to other values and beliefs. By depicting the
beliefs and values of esotericists to be basically nonsense and at the same time finding that the
average “superstitious” person is not rich, female and not so well educated (Schließler et al.
2020). It might be added, Germany ranks among the countries with the lowest percentage of
believers in supernatural phenomena. The researchers implicitly describe a materialist and
rational-scientific interpretation of the world as the normative “good” and the belief in the
supernatural as “bad” in the sense that it is among the most important aspects of
authoritarianism. In this respect it is justified to say that from the perspective of these researchers
the perfect “democratic personality” would be male, rich, educated and German. I am sure that
this ethnocentric bias is entirely unintended and it might serve as a good starting point for further
discussions on the reconceptualization of authoritarianism.
This bias is already visible in the works of the Frankfurt school theorists who were adherents to
the world historical developmental models of Hegel and Marx. For them the scientific approach
to the world was alone a result of the European enlightenment and its subsequent developments.
Every irrational cultural practice, religion and philosophy of traditional societies were perceived
as ideological products fitting to a pre-modern stage of development. The “wild thinking” of the
“savage mind” (Lévi-Strauss 1966) was considered inferior to modern thinking. We do not know
if in 2023 these left-wing intellectuals would still say that the belief of billions of people, outside
of Western Europe in particular, are below the “standard of civilization” because they believe in
the influence of spirits, ghosts, ancestors, talismans, prayers, angels, demons, gods, goddesses,
energies, numerology, astrology etc. What we do know is that especially Adorno and Horkheimer
had a keen interest in theology and that they distinguished between religion and “superstition”. In
today’s studies this distinction is lost.
The words „superstition“ and „occultism“ are the terms most commonly used by Frankfurt
School authors to describe the range of beliefs and practices that today very often are
summarized with the equally broad term „esotericism“ or even „spirituality“. The strong
opposition against occultism is visible in particular in a couple of book chapters written by
Theodor W. Adorno (e.g. 1950, 1963). It is obvious that he understands occultism in the first half
of the 20th century as a dangerous relapse to an earlier historical period, and that he basically had
things in mind like astrology, spiritism, palm reading etc.
We should be aware that the time he lived in was also the heyday of Theosophy, Anthroposophy
and British occultists like Aleister Crowley or Dion Fortune even before WWII, and in the 1960s
the New Age movement was born in the US. We do not know how much these developments
had been on Adornos mind but it is quite likely that he knew about Julius Evola’s influence on
Italian fascism, Theosophy’s strong influence in the Indian independence movement, Rudolf
Steiner’s influence on German „alternative culture“ (and maybe even of his anti-Semitic
utterings), C.G. Jung’s theoretical and political evolution and Sigmund Freud’s warnings against
it, and definitively of the fascination for the occult among some of the leading figures of the Nazi
regime and consequent reverberations within Nazi mythology and propaganda.
According to him, occultism is dangerous, because it is a primitive belief system that veils, and at
the same time cope with, the horrors of late capitalism. For the Frankfurt School intellectuals
these horrors consist of a life as mere extensions of machines in an entirely administered social
world. These social conditions are perceived by individuals as natural conditions, not as
conditions made by people, that appear to be powerful like the mystical gods and other super-
natural beings our ancestors had been worshiping in order to create the illusion of control. In
general, he shares the Hegelian and Marxian idea of a progressing historical development and
considers the abolishment of superstitious beliefs of any kind since the European Enlightenment
as steps towards more freedom of human reason, and by this means, of humanity itself.
Of course, since the publication of Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor Adornos „Dialectics of
Enlightenment“ (Horkheimer 2003) the critical theory’s understanding of the scientific
„demystification“ (Weber 1919) of modernity is much more skeptical and restrained, in contrast
to the typical liberal and Marxist historical optimism. The dialectics of Enlightenment is the
interplay of progressive and regressive aspects. The freedom from religious authorities and
religious beliefs came along with a meaning crisis, and with the re-mystification of scientific
methodology and its findings. People became reduced to mere soulless numbers without any
objective innate value but at the same time the freedom to enable reason to move forward to
further liberation was given. Adorno did probably not believe in God or salvation by the arrival
of a Messiah sometime in the future but he wrote that we should try to observe society from the
perspective of a hypothetical time when the Messiah had arrived, when people were conciliated
(Türcke 2019). He did not believe that the negative tendencies of society could be overcome but
he suggested a critical theorist‘s perspective should be from such an imaginative viewpoint in
order to understand the regressive trends in the progressing society. Contrary to the prevalent
Atheism of much of psychoanalysis and Marxism during his times he still saw the critical
potential of religion. Just like Karl Marx, he understood the religious sentiments of people as an
outcry against unjust and ethically wrong social conditions. The human desire for a conciliated
world was just expressed in distorted and unconscious ways, when it appeared as religion.
Religion, from this perspective, is rebellious and deluding at the same time. A primitive rebellion
that shows how much socio-economic conditions are oppressive against innate human needs.
For Adorno occultism or superstition is very similar but even more primitive than religion. The
relapse to occult beliefs and practices was like a relapse to a more barbaric form of religion,
something that in the past had been overcome by religion already. Adorno calls occultism the
„metaphysics of dunces“ (Adorno 1969) rephrasing a phrase that allegedly the German socialist
August Bebel once uttered: „Antisemitism is the socialism of dunces“. It is the coping strategy of
the powerless individual that has no clue that it is over-powered by societal forces. It tries to gain
a little bit of autonomy, and by doing this it simply adds to its own deception about the society it
lives in. The (proletarian) anti-Semite imagines that his painful plight is excogitated by an all-
powerfull Jewish elite and does not see the systematic workings of exploitation in a capitalist
economy. These systemic mechanisms are hard to grasp and theoretical knowledge is required to
unveil them. It is much easier to personalize the problem with a minority of culturally
marginalized, stigmatized and oppressed people that in Europe for centuries had served as
scapegoats for all kinds of troubles, like the Plague, draughts or the disappearance of children. It
is a twisted and barbarous form of anti-capitalist sentiments that can easily be controlled by
populist norm entrepreneurs. Adorno’s understanding of occultism compared to monotheistic
religion is quite similar. And this is probably the reason why he rephrased “Bebel”2. While
monotheism is at least an expression of the genuine desire to be free with a very far-reaching all-
encompassing vision of an ideal world, occultism does not look for the complete opposite of the
wrong life but tries to manipulate certain aspects within the world to meet personal desires. This
is at least what fortune tellers and magicians claim to offer. Additionally, for Adorno, monotheist
theology is an interesting metaphysics and occultism is philosophically inferior. According from
what we can delineate from his texts he was concerned with „folk superstition” and not with
„esoteric“ and „non-western“ metaphysics and philosophy. Interestingly, like Freud he was in
contact with a religious man he held in highest admiration, one of the most important modern
scholars of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem.
The difference between Adorno, and also Horkheimer, to today’s authoritarianism researchers in
the critical theory tradition is that even though he uses strong language (“dunces”; “asocial”3)
believe in the supernatural is not entirely debunked as “superstition” but only certain aspects of
it. If they appear within metaphysical and theological considerations Adorno and Horkheimer see
their value for humans.
Modern esotericism is a vast eclectic body of beliefs and practices which includes all kinds of
religious and spiritual traditions, including its manifold heretic branches, mystical schools and
individual mystics from all traditions, natural and energetic healing techniques, psychedelics etc.

2
The famous quote is actually not from Bebel himself. He uttered it in an interview where he quoted Ferdinand
Kronawetter, a former member of parliament in Vienna, who said it in a speech in 1889.
3
The German “asozial” is pejorative and had been used by the Nazis to express their contempt for the Romani,
Sinti and Yenish people. Regarding that astrology and fortune telling are part of the stereotype image of
“gypsies” it is quite disturbing that Adorno uses this words in this context.
and all of it from all around the world. Astrology, Tarot, palm reading and magic rituals, things
that Adorno might have had in mind, are just some aspects of it. This is why some progressive
and some conservative critiques like to call it a “spiritual supermarket”.
Amlinger and Nachtwey (2022) are aware of this. They write that for the esoterists in their
sample:
“the suppression of institutions and authorities, the informalization of everyday manners,
meditative self-care and spiritual techniques are also important to the interviewees and are
syncretically combined with New Age and anthroposophy. Again and again there is talk of
meditation, yoga and mental and physical healing, i.e. practices that aim for unity and balance
with nature. It may seem paradoxical at this point in the analysis, but such elements will turn out
to be core components of libertarian authoritarianism.” (Amlinger/Nachtwey, 2022, Gekränkte
Freiheit, p. 268, translation by the author)
Even though Adorno did not deal with all of this, younger representatives of critical theory tend
to apply Adorno’s criticism to all of it. Heinz Gess is expressing the main problem with
esotericism from a critical perspective:
„the function of occultism and esotericism is clearly defined as a means of a conformist
overcoming the crisis of capitalist society. They make deaf and indifferent to the cries of pain and
suffering of all those who are being annihilated by domination, thus enabling enjoyment, joie de
vivre and cheerfulness in the midst of increasing barbarism.“ (Gess, 2006, translation by the
author)
For Gess it is the old opium-of-(or for)-the-masses-problem, that Marx and Lenin had assigned
to religion. Esotericism seems to be even worse, because it makes people joyfully walk towards
the coming catastrophe. Esotericists do not even feel bad and fearful, like the Christian sinners
do who are awaiting the Apocalypse. This is not the place to discuss this further, but if we are all
participants in the doomed developments of late capitalism, like a pessimistic interpretation of
the Dialectics of Enlightenment can be, I would prefer to be naively happy than enlightened
unhappy. The attitude to joy expressed in the quotation resembles very strongly the apocalyptic
views of conspiracy believers who claim to be “awakened” or “red-pilled”, who exclusively see
the horrors of reality, while the masses are drugged by education, media and substances. Anyway,
even if I disagree with the all-round esotericism-bashing, I have no doubt that Gess’ warnings are
relevant today as well, and his writing about the right-wing aspects of esoteric teachings.

Lumping together opposites and its unintended consequences

Dilling et al. (2022) explain in the last Leipzig Studies that conspiracy mentality and superstition
are very similar, therefore they belong both to the projective subdimension of authoritarianism.
They argue that in both cases people believe in higher invisible powers that control human life.
Obviously, they implicitly rank religions also as superstition. The difference between conspiracy
mentality and superstition, we learn, is that conspiracy believers assume the existence of
oppressive and exploitative evil powers that rule the world, human or non-human (but physically
manifest I guess), and superstitious people’s belief in mystical and fantastic determinants of fate.
Both groups share a common binary good vs. evil worldview, and see causalities where there are
none (214f.). “Good” is the ingroup, “bad” is the outgroup. And both do not want to stabilize
the “I” anymore but want to merge with a larger entity like nature fate or a group (215). Two
problems are related to this categorization:
First. The “mystical and fantastic determinants of fate” (Adorno in ibid.) that superstitious
people believe in are usually benevolent good non-material beings or powers in modern
esotericism. Even though ideas of malevolent beings, like demons, exist, the focus of the most
common teachings in modern esotericism is on all kinds of forces and energies of an entirely
blissful reality. Actually, this focus on the pleasant sides of spirituality is one of the reasons why
people from traditional religions consider these teachings superficial and untrue. You do not have
to be a psychologist to understand that a person who believes that everything is ultimately good
and love, that all is in the hands of a loving God or Mother Earth, or that people are protected by
guardian angels etc. will approach the world and other people very differently than those people
who are in a constant state of paranoia and fear because they believe that a cruel and cold cabal
of humans or aliens is enslaving humanity in the most vicious and deceitful ways. The first one
will be in general a person that tries to behave in ways that all religious traditions in its ethical
core teach: be good to others. It can even be assumed that a person who deliberately chose to
adopt a spiritual life style will give even more effort to be positive, nice and loving to other
people than those religious people that just follow an inherited tradition. The second one, the
conspiracy believer, will be anxious, suspicious and arrogant and probably hateful, towards other
people. It is not surprising at all that this second person in many respects meets the
characteristics of the typical Right-Wing-Authoritarian.
Second. It is true that conspiracy narratives typically divide the world into good and evil, and it is
also a fact that many religious traditions provide a dualistic story about the world, Zoroastrianism
and Abrahamic religions to different degrees in particular. Especially since Saint Augustin
Christianity underwent a radicalization in this respect throughout the centuries which shapes
strongly the perception of religions and spirituality in the “West”. In rare cases religious systems
can even believe that the world is run by a demon, like in historic Gnosticism. But contrary to
conspiracy believers, the Gnostics believed that a good force, the real God, is “behind” the mean
delusions of the evil Demiurge. Regarding esotericism the case is much more diverse. Some
schools and systems promote dualism, many of them coming from Indian traditions, but rarely in
a strictly exclusive and binary way. What is quite common in “western” traditions such radicalism
is the absolute exemption in the “eastern” ones, where much of modern esotericism has been
inspired by. To the contrary, an emphasis on “oneness” and “non-duality” of existence is a very
popular idea among “spiritual” people. Daoism, Advaita-Vedanta and Buddhism have their part
in this as well as (neo-)shamanism and of course all the Jewish, Christian and Muslim branches
that were affected by Neo-Platonism. For many people in the “West” turning towards esoteric
spirituality is a reaction against the harsh black-and-white division of Christianity and Islam, the
traditions they were raised in.
In this respect the analysis of the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study is correct, many esotericists aim
at fusing with “the One” (Plotin), they wish to overcome all separation, which in many of these
traditions is regarded as a delusion. Obviously, this is not excluding an outgroup, quite contrary,
an out-group does not exist anymore.
The understanding of the “superstitious” in contemporary authoritarianism is incomplete to a
degree that puts their whole argument at risk.
The authors write, that we have to study the projective aspect of the authoritarian syndrome
because the aspects of authoritarianism that until very recently had been considered the most
important ones (authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission and conventionalism) are not
obvious in their study subjects. Instead of concluding that the authoritarian syndrome is not a
sufficient explanation for the social phenomenon they observe, they reconstructed the concept,
in order to find authoritarianism.
Lumping together conspiracy believers and believers in supernatural phenomena as a single main
subdimension (next to sado-masochism) of authoritarianism is only possible if the differences
between these two groups of people are being ignored. The differences are striking with respect
to the perception of the world. A conspiracy believer perceives to be living in a dangerous world,
which according to Altemeyer (2006) correlates strongly with RWA. An esotericist is perceiving a
world that is run by basically good forces or a single divinity, ideas like “every being is a spark of
God” or “all is God” are typical among these believers.
Therefore, as long as “superstition” is included in the projectivity subdimension it cannot tell us
anything about authoritarianism. The reason that it appears to do so is merely the assumption of
the authors of these studies that all believe in powerful forces that cannot be controlled but
influence our lives are the same thing.
If this were true a person who “believes” (because she is not an expert on these subjects) in the
natural proceedings of nature, the understanding of the human metabolism, its development
from birth to death and so on could be labeled a projective authoritarian. Especially if she would
attempt to control the largely uncontrollable nature, by a healthy and happy life-style and taking
precautions against all sorts of risks. This is in a way delusionary behavior, people cannot escape
nature. This is exactly what authoritarianism researchers inspired by psychoanalysis accuse
conspiracy believers and esotericists of. All are driven by the paradoxical hope to manipulate the
overwhelming power they perceive to be real: Going to the gym and eating healthy food;
practicing meditation, praying and putting precious stones on altars; researching deeper and
deeper in the tunnels of the conspiracy rabbit holes of the internet. I would argue the first two
are not authoritarians, but the last one is.
As a justification, they refer to the ponderings of Marcuse (1963) that abstract things like religious
teachings and political ideologies can serve, and do serve, as substitutes for personal authority.
The idea of e.g. “God”, “freedom”, “communism” or “public health” can become an authority
that individuals submit themselves to. This might be true, but it matters what the content of the
abstract authority is. In the famous obedience experiment of Stanley Milgram (1974) there were
cases of people who scored comparatively low in obedience because they were strong religious
believers. They were authoritarians who disrespected the scientific authority, the experimenter
with the academic title and the grey coat, because they were obedient to what they perceived to
be a higher authority, their religious ethics. In the post-experiment interviews they said that they
did not want to harm or even risk the life of someone. They could not do so because God had
forbidden it. They were struggling, because they wanted to obey the scientists, they wanted to be
good citizens, that help science to move forward, but the inner conflict during the experiment
was solved by dropping out and being disobedient. They had to decide which authority has to be
respected, and they decided for the one they considered to be more powerful. From our
commonly shared normative order they did the right thing, they were the heroes among the
participants. At the same time, they were submissive followers of a religious abstract authority.
Others, who were obedient only to the scientist, straightforwardly went on to electrocute other
participants in the experiment. They also showed high degrees of stress, indicating that their
value system (super-ego if you like) also conflicted with their actions. But they were not strong
believers in the supernatural. To be sure, religious believers have caused a lot of human suffering
in the name of their religions throughout history, but it all depends on the actual content of the
beliefs. When a religious authority reinterprets a religious teaching and allows the killing or
subjugation of people of other beliefs we can definitively expect a less loving behavior of the
authoritarian follower.
Many people, Altemeyer would say most people, are authoritarians. The ideological content of
the authority matters. Authoritarians of any kind, followers of governments or particular policies,
of religious leaders and/or ideas or of opposition movements will try to ruin the live and
happiness of the non-conformists who do not submit to these respective authorities. That is what
authoritarians do. Anyway, what a particular authority actually stands for matters in actual
political behavior and ethical consequences. If we do not make this distinction we would have to
agree with those confused or vicious individuals who during the pandemic said that people who
supported the state measures against the spread of the virus are exactly the same like those
Germans and Austrians who willingly helped to kill their Jewish neighbors during Nazi times.
Projectivity is neither helping us to understand authoritarianism nor to politically inhibit group
related misanthropy.
Nonetheless, the people who can be labeled “conspiritualists” exist. I agree with the
contemporary authoritarianism researchers from Germany and Switzerland that their ideas might
pose a threat to democracy in some cases. They believe in esoteric and conspiracy narratives at
the same time and probably perceive this as a coherent world-view. Conspiritualists feel cheated
all the time in any respect, except by those who share their opinions and believes. These are the
people who search for the “red pill” or who claim to have taken it already. This is a popular
reference to the Hollywood blockbuster “The Matrix” where taking the red pill allows you to see
the “true reality”, even though it might be horrible. Many esotericists hold the idea of the
existence of something like the Hindu concept of Maya, a goddess that holds people in an
illusion about the world, or more abstract, the great veil itself, that separates individuals from a
divine reality as part of the divine play (lila). This is in different variants a common topic also in
other religions, including Christianity. When this metaphysical idea is combined with a conspiracy
mentality, people believe that this veil has been put on by evil humans or aliens, pretty similar to
the Matrix story. People start to believe that spiritual techniques are ridiculed or culturally
marginalized and psychedelics are prohibited because “they” do not want “us” to see reality.
Well…here our colleagues from Leipzig and Basel have a point. But researchers should not buy
into it and clearly separate the esoteric from the conspiracy believes for analysis. Billions of
people in the world belief in a spiritual reality “behind” a physical reality and do not pose any
threat to democracy. Problematic are those who understand all commonly agreed on reality as a
plot of a tiny group of sinister elites to deceive and exploit humanity. The problem is conspiracy
beliefs not esotericism.
A worldview like that does not just pop-up overnight. It is a process of radicalization, and I am
sure that many of the factors the Leipzig Authoritarianism Studies (2020, 2022) and
Amlinger/Nachtwey (2022) describe in the biographies of the “Querdenker” and
“Coronarebellen” are analyzed very well. A highly competitive capitalist society with its systemic
inequalities, its losers and winners, that promotes at the same time the dominant narrative of
meritocracy and individual responsibility for social and economic success or failure can lead many
to a constant experience of anxiety and some to very strange interpretations of the world. If an
event like a pandemic or any other situation of collective uncertainty and fear brings a person
interested in esoteric teachings and naturopathy into contact with people who share her
opposition against an infringement of freedom by the state they create a shared identity. If among
these new ingroup members people spread conspiracy beliefs that are compatible with her belief,
for example in Maya, she might after a while adopt some of these beliefs. During Corona times a
common enemy of left-wing anti-capitalist activists, Ayurveda and TCM fans and right-wing
conspiracy believers or racist German neo-pagans was the pharma industries. Common enemies
lead to strong ingroup cohesion. If the outgroup continues to depict her in the public and
research as an anti-Semite, a Nazi and a conspiracy believer even though she might never have
had any such sentiments or ideas – because so far she believed in “love, peace and unity” and
that all people are children of Pachamama – she might go a step further and listen to the real anti-
Semite etc. that belong to her new ingroup. This shall suffice as an illustration that
authoritarianism researchers have a political responsibility. They have to decide if they want to
support a narrative that drives esotericists into the clutch of right-wing conspiracy believers or
not. Do we want to call anti-authoritarian believers in supernatural phenomena “fascists” or
“Nazis” and turn them into anti-Semitic conspiracy believers or do we want to respect the
democratic freedom of religion and belief? In 1925 Gershom Scholem wrote in a letter to Franz
Rosenzweig that is instructive for authoritarianism researchers’ use of the term “authoritarian”:
“We live in our language like blind men walking on the edge of an abyss. This language is laden
with future catastrophes. The day will come when it will turn against those who speak it.”
Oversimplifications in authoritarianism research has the potential to turn a much-ridiculed group
of heretic believers in rational Germany into scapegoats for regressive tendencies. This itself
would be a case of a regressive tendency of Enlightenment itself, this very dialectics that critical
theorists always claim to be so tremendously aware of. Of course, conspirituality makes the task
tricky, but it is worth the effort to distinguish carefully if we do not want to stimulate extreme
right-wing ideas and if we do not want to destroy the instruments of authoritarianism research.
Developing a conspirituality scale that again mixes up esoteric and conspiracy believes would not
be a sufficient tool.

Conclusion and future research

The researchers argue that in late modernity many people experience social deprivation,
powerlessness and fear. They belief in an individualist narrative, and in being successful if you
work hard enough. Unfortunately, they do this in a social situation where the promise of this
narrative will always be disappointed. This is a hard to bear contradiction. Some may adopt
believes in conspiracies and superstition. But someone who experiences social deprivation and
powerlessness does not automatically become an anti-Semite. It takes people who offer an anti-
Semitic narrative to a desperate or confused individual. These narratives reduce the complexity of
the socio-economic reasons that are overwhelming the individual with her disappointment and
meaninglessness. I agree that someone experiencing this may be drawn to esotericism and
religion as a coping strategy. But it is important to understand that hopeful trust in the existence
of good superpowers in extra-material dimensions is in stark contrast to the fear and hate driven
trust in the existence of evil superpowers in this world. Putting them into the same category is
overly simplistic and may even be wishful thinking of researchers who may have lost their own
intra-ceptive capacities. The old Frankfurt School intellectuals were aware of the dialectics of the
progressive and regressive sides of religious beliefs. Today’s German authoritarianism researchers
have abandoned this knowledge and do only see a regressive trend in “superstition”, a
phenomenon just as dangerous like conspiracy beliefs.
Nonetheless, they are right that “conspiritualism” is an empirical fact that should raise concern
among all who do not wish that conspiracy beliefs undermine democracies. We have not yet
understood fully the emergence of conspirituality and further research is necessary. But it is
obvious that simple sociopsychological ingrouping and outgrouping mechanisms can explain why
someone who is continuously depicted in public as an anti-Semitic right-winger just because she
trusts in homeopathy, herbal medicine and Mother Nature might be inclined to gang up with
right-wing neo-pagan conspiracy believers who share her suspicion against the pharmaceutical
industries when put under too much scapegoating pressure by the majority of society.
Authoritarianism research is taking part within society and is responsible for the role it chooses to
play in making or unmaking people’s tendency to sympathize with neo-Nazis or not.
A suggestion for further research: Some of the studies from Leipzig show that members of
Christian religious communities in Eastern Germany do not belong to the problematic spectrum.
So, we have data of people who are “superstitious” – because they believe in the stories about a
Jewish miracle healer and exorcist of demons, who was a virgin-born god in a human body, who
is the Messiah for humanity, and who was killed, raised from the dead, and who one day will
return for the Apocalypse – who don't believe in conspiracy theories. Considering the very long
history of anti-Judaic narratives promoted by the major Christian churches this is even more
surprising. Making sense of conspirituality can probably benefit from better understanding this.
For a start, the psychological consequences of being socially accepted or not accepted with one’s
irrational beliefs might provide clues for the dynamics that lead to conspirituality.
In general authoritarianism researchers should take care to be aware of their own biases as much
as possible. We should not choose overcome concepts arbitrarily when these fit into our
worldview (superstition) and dismiss other if they don’t (anti-intraception). Authoritarianism still
has a pejorative connotation, and I suggest that we should keep up our attempts to promote a
neutral understanding of authoritarianism, especially in order to understand the behaviors of
majorities. The focus on majorities, the middle of the society, and not on fringe phenomena, used
to be the area where our colleagues from Leipzig and Basel excelled...

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