Why would people want to live under an authoritarian’s thumb? It’s rooted, experts say, in a psychological need for security—real or perceived—and a desire for conformity, a goal that becomes even more acute as the country undergoes dramatic demographic and social changes. People also like to obey a strong leader who will protect the group—especially if it is the “right” group whose interests will be protected. Recall the Trump supporter who, during the 2019 government shutdown, complained, “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
“For those of us who value representative democracy, the fact that some of our fellow citizens might prefer authoritarianism can be surprising or even unfathomable,” Joe Pierre, health sciences clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco’s Weill Institute for Neurosciences, told me. But, he said, when people feel threatened—either by a lack of order or a challenge by people who think differently—a controlling leader looks like a savior.
“Authoritarianism and a ‘strongman’ leader who’s willing to trample over civil rights can sound like a very appealing solution,” Pierre said. “In turn, democracy—which tells us that our ideological opposites deserve to be heard or should be given equal voice—can sound like the root of the problem.” People who favor an authoritarian regime, notably, don’t think it will be used against them, he noted, but “to subjugate others and have their freedoms taken away.”
