The Authoritarian Personality (Studies in Prejudice) Paperback – Abridged, November 1, 1993

Exactly as expected

An outstanding example of “projection” by the far left. Basically it’s just fine for Jews to exhibit The Authoritarian Personality to advance their own agenda, but it’s not acceptable for white Christians to exhibit similar group identity and values. It’s the divide and conquer strategy the Jews in the MSM, academia, and Hollywood have pursued.

Their primary strategy is pushing mass immigration of poor, unskilled, and uneducated immigrants from third world countries so as to weaken and eventually replace the Europeans who built America. Kevin MacDonald examines this terrible book in depth in his book "The Culture of Critique"

This is hypocrisy in the extreme. For example, it’s perfectly acceptable in the authors’ world for Jewish parents to do everything in their power to “encourage” their own children to marry another Jew. On the other hand, if white Christian parents object to their children marrying a black, they are evil. They are Nazis!

very much up to date

The index of names on page 990 is only a page, but few people in the list would become more famous than Freud and F.D.R., one of whom was dead when a conference of American scholars in May, 1944, set out to seek solutions to crucial problems of religious and racial prejudice. The book praises those that it can describe as liberal in their attitudes:
"An extreme example of fully conscious anti-stereotypy is 5046, an executive secretary in the movie industry, in her late thirties, actively engaged in the labor movement. . . . When given the check list, she laughed and said: `Of course, one can't generalize . . . these are the stereotypes used by the anti-Semites to blame the Jews for certain faults . . . I don't think one should label any group like this . . . it is dangerous, especially in regard to the Jews,' " (p. 646).
Examples of the checklist items begin to appear on page 63, in Table I (III) Anti-Semitism Subscale "Offensive." Table 3 (III) Anti-Semitism Subscale "Attitudes" even has the suggestion, "II-24. It would be to the best interests of all if the Jews would form their own nation and keep more to themselves." (p. 65). Then there were wars in 1948, 1967, 1973, and an occupation in Lebanon in the 1980s or 1990s that begin to look like Israel and the United States were not seeing this situation in the same way as the rest of the world. Opinions are not totally antagonistic to some form of sanity throughout the entire book. Part IV, Qualitative Studies in Ideology, starting on page 601, includes Chapter XVI, Prejudice in the Interview Material, in which subjects of this study had the opportunity to express themselves in whatever manner best accentuates their own characters. Though this book was published in 1950, it has some comments that seem perfectly capable of looking ahead to the kind of policy that America is pursuing today.
"Sending them to Palestine is silly because it is not big enough. A good idea to have a country of their own, but big enough so that they can go ahead with their pursuits in a normal way, but the Jews would not be happy. They are only happy to have others work for them." (p. 631).
The first suggestion on page 631 was called "mental perversion," and the authors are quick to label "this subject's pseudorational statement on Palestine: while apparently willing to `give Jews a chance,' he simultaneously excludes any prospect of success by referring to the Jews supposedly unchangeably bad nature:" (p. 631). This seems to be particularly cruel to Jewish anti-Semites, who treat being Jewish as a family imperative which individuals attempt to escape:
"I have a cousin who was in love with me and wanted to marry me. He was more Jewish than I. I loved him, but wouldn't marry him. I told him why--because he's Jewish. He is now married to a Gentile with two children. He's more anti-Semitic than I. That's true of so many Jews--like they were lame or hunchback. They hate it or resent it." (p. 639).
I wouldn't have picked this book up if I didn't expect to find a lot of perverse mentality relating to authoritarianism. As you might expect, the authors of this book had a fit or funk whenever they had to write about anyone who expressed sympathy for Hitler in this book for being able to discipline most of Europe in a manner that might be considered punitive by people who did not share his ideals. Scoring of their psychological tests was most concerned with identifying people who were high in ethnocentricity and fascism. The references on pages 977-982 has 121 numbered items, mostly used as they were intended, as:
"83. Morgan, C.D., and Murray, H.A.: A method for investigating fantasies: the Thematic Apperception Test. `Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry' 34:289-306, 1935." (p. 981).
Psychological testing does not have the same reputation in the 21st century that it was trying to project in 1950. The Unabomber might be the most famous example of someone whose views were shaped by being involved in psychological experiments as an undergraduate at Harvard University, possibly for secret research being conducted for the CIA, though without LSD. The book HARVARD AND THE UNABOMBER by Alston Chase has an attitude about some professor Murray and the undergraduate curriculum in disillusionment that is quite a contrast to the presentation contained in THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY. Mainly due to television, I'm afraid that social scientists failed to achieve a humane society, and the greatest mental perversion maintains its hold on public opinion in spite of those who planned to work with humanities viewpoints to educate Americans out of their attitudes, like "57. Most people don't realize how much our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret by politicians." (p. 250). Having access to actual information about how often the system has been abused has fostered an anti-political attitude that rigidly associates politics with bloodshed, particularly in and around Palestine, that may ultimately be more likely to bring out the worst nature in peoples than American missiles being able to put a thermonuclear weapon into the men's room at the Kremlin.
For people who are interested in what scales particular psychological questions are graded on, there are a number of examples given in this book, which are now considered merely prejudices of the bigoted:
"I-12. The Jewish problem . . ." (p. 65).
"II-20. Jewish millionaires . . ." (p. 66).
"5. The Negroes . . ." (pp. 105, 110).
"8. Negro musicians . . ." (pp. 105, 110).
"31. Homosexuality is a particularly rotten form of . . ." (p. 226).
"46. The . . . of the old Greeks and Romans are nursery school stuff . . ." (pp. 226, 239, 240 and no. 52 on p. 250).
"75. Sex crimes . . ." (pp. 227, 240).

Don�t be thrown of by some of the other reviews. If you start of by stating that Adorno is a Marxist and therefore must have had an agenda, your doing exactly what you have accused Adorno of. Furthermore this book wasn�t single-handedly written by Adorno, far from it, and whether or not Adorno realy was a Marxist is irellevant since Adorno�s latter ideas have little or nothing to do with this book. The Authoritarian Personality remains a very interesting study in human behaviour and nature. It has clearly been written as a reaction to the horrors of what was happening then in Nazi Germany and the authors tried to come up with a full explanation. Although I don�t doubt the integrity of authors� motives, they did obviously not succeed in there goal to come up with an extensive theory for the existence of Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich, because the focussed almost entirely on the personality of the individual and disregarded the unique social en economical circumstances in Germany after WWI, that have undoubtedly played an important role as well. The fact that, in hindsight, it has become apparent that the authors have not succeeded to live up to the overambitious conclusions does, however, certainly not make The Authoritarian Personality any less interesting. A lot can still be learned about the causes of ethnocentrism from this book. It is unique in it�s scale and historical value and should not be disregarded by anyone who wants to learn more about ethnocentrism as long as you keep the books apparent short comings in mind. You should, however, also keep in mind that the criticism this book has received is certainly not allways justified at all, but caused by the fact that a lot of it's conclusions still remain valid, but these are not always pleasant for everyone.

In retrospect, and given history of the past 65 years since it appeared, "The Authoritarian Personality" remains the Left's most indomitable if inadvertent autobiography.