The five-volume series “Studies in Prejudice,” published by Harper during the past year, won immediate recognition as a monumental contribution to our scientific knowledge of the subject. The entire series was reviewed by Nathan Glazer in this department (June 1950); here Paul Kecskemeti, in one of a series of discussion articles COMMENTARY plans to print on these volumes, gives his own views as to a much commented-upon finding presented in one of the five volumes, The Authoritarian Personality: namely, that there is an organic personality connection between anti-Semitic prejudice and “status quo” conservative views on the social and economic order.

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The logic of God, it may be said, is: to become actual, a thing must have been possible. While the logic of the devil is: to become possible, a thing must have been actual. To most people, the extermination of whole ethnic groups seemed inconceivable and impossible before it happened. Afterwards, it became a possibility to be reckoned with. From now on such a possibility hangs like a shadow over the world. It has become possible to ask: what if the same kind of people gained control elsewhere—perhaps here?

To most Americans, such a question, I think, will appear preposterous. If any American Jew is seriously concerned about such a possibility, they would say, this only shows that he is hysterical; irrationally fearful, unrealistic in his thinking. The United States is not Germany. Political reality here is solidly rooted in the Constitution rather than in a heritage of sanguinary militaristic myths. Some ethnic prejudice is quite prevalent, and one can find many individuals choking with vicious hate. But the trend goes against prejudice rather than towards more of it, and there is no real danger that it might subvert the whole legal order and brush aside all Constitutional restraints. The less said about such a danger the better. For cries of alarm, where the majority sees no reason for alarm, rebound against the crier. He makes himself obnoxious, his behavior seems libelous, and he lays himself open to the suspicion of crying menace and doom for ulterior motives.

But a contrary pattern of thinking also may claim to be “realistic.” To be realistic in the mid-20th century, this view holds, means above all that one must not deny the possibility of tragic crises and catastrophic changes in the political sphere. This is an age of revolution, and no established order, however venerable and seemingly solid, is forever safe from being overthrown. Whatever has happened in one place may happen elsewhere. In many instances it is the sounders of alarm who turn out to be right in the end.

Here, then, we have two types of realism at odds with each other. Which shall we follow? For immediate action, I have no doubt that the first type of realism, the “conservative” one, is the better guide. No action is needed to prevent an imminent outbreak of fascism, and shrill cries of alarm on that score are decidedly harmful. Thus, in combating prejudice, we should focus on the harm it actually does rather than on what it might do if the basic institutional order were to collapse. But all this does not mean that we can afford to neglect study of possible institutional crises and their totalitarian implications. We do need a theory of crises which will tell us under what circumstances a working democratic institutional order might break down; what forms of totalitarianism might then emerge; and what one can do to prevent such disasters. The second, “catastrophic” kind of realism, too, must have a place in our thinking.

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It may be said, I think, that the keynote sounding in most of the rich literature on prejudice in America is the “conservative” type of realism outlined above. That is, most of the American students of the problem envisage it as a defect within the existing order of things, rather than as a portent of the total overthrow of the democratic order.

In this respect, however, the monumental “Studies in Prejudice” series1 occupies a rather exceptional place, for its approach is characterized, to a considerable extent, by what I call the “catastrophic” type of realism. To be sure, in some of the volumes, particularly in Dynamics of Prejudice and Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder, the treatment of prejudice proceeds along the more familiar, conservative lines. But in The Authoritarian Personality, the huge key volume in the series, the problem is formulated as that of “potential fascism”; the volume is conceived not only as an empirical analysis of the psychological aberration of prejudice but also as a political tract for the times. I propose to examine, not the series as a whole, but only the political “crisis theory” underlying treatment of the problem of prejudice in this volume.

But first a few words about the other, psychological and empirical, dimensions of the entire undertaking. The series, sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, represents without doubt the most comprehensive and profound psychological analysis of anti-Semitism that exists. Every available tool of attitude observation and measurement has been brought into play: interview techniques and projective methods in The Authoritarian Personality, statistical analysis in it and in Dynamics of Prejudice, psychoanalytic data in Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder, content analysis in Prophets of Deceit. The conclusions reached by many researchers, using different techniques and basic theories, show a remarkable convergence, in itself an indication of the validity of the findings.

The main lesson derived may perhaps be stated as follows: ethnic prejudice in general, and anti-Semitic prejudice in particular, is a symptom of deep, unresolved conflicts within the personality of the prejudiced subject. It is not a kind of hostility which might be explained “rationally” in terms of, say, economic competition or fear of deprivation as based upon experience. It is a hatred that is self-hatred as much as hatred of the other; the prejudiced subject seeks to annihilate the object which is in a way a hated and feared part of the subject himself. This is why prejudice is so stubborn; rational persuasion cannot silence the furies within one’s own breast. Since this is so, not only Jews and other targets of prejudice should be disturbed about it, but also the prejudiced subjects themselves, and society as a whole.

Another important insight which receives considerable emphasis, especially in The Authoritarian Personality, is that the views people hold on various subjects are not combined at random but form “clusters,” so that a person who on one topic has an opinion belonging to one of those clusters is likely to have opinions belonging to the same cluster concerning many other topics. One of the objectives the authors sought to achieve was the identification of the array of opinions making up the “cluster” to which racial prejudice belongs. The material presented, concerning statistical correlations between “prejudice” and other attitudes, is impressive. Yet, such statistical material alone does not justify very far-reaching and decisive conclusions. We must not forget that no response to a questionnaire shows a real-life attitude “in the raw”; hence, an aggregate of such responses can, at best, be taken as only a rough indication of what the “real” profile of attitudes might be like. The authors themselves were fully aware of this; it is the reason why they supplemented the questionnaire method by more intensive methods of probing and analysis. This combination of “macroscopic” statistical methods with “microscopic” methods of individual interviews and tests is one of the most distinctive features of the work.

The subject of the present article, however, is not the contribution the series has made to attitude analysis, but the underlying theory of social stress and social crisis that is elaborated by the authors of The Authoritarian Personality. It is a theory based upon “catastrophic realism,” a difficult approach beset with many pitfalls. To what extent did the authors avoid them?

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“Catastrophic realism” can be useful, I think, either for analysis or for action, only if it is made clear that it does not concern itself with the situation as it is today in a democratic society, or with anything that may develop spontaneously any day, but with a set of circumstances that might emerge under hypothetical, radically altered conditions. Thus, if we want to study ethnic prejudice as a “potentially fascist” pattern, we have to ask not only in what way the thinking of the hater parallels the dominant social theory and practices of, say, Nazism, but also what conditions other than the existence of prejudice must be present before prejudice can play in society at large the role it played in Nazi Germany. The authors do ask this question, and though they, understandably, do not put forward a reasoned theory of fascism, they give a clear enough indication of what they conceive its essence to be.

The basic idea is put forcefully in the introduction to The Authoritarian Personality. Fascism is essentially and closely correlated with the efforts of the “dominant economic interests” to preserve their privileged status.

“It seems well understood today that whether or not antidemocratic propaganda is to become a dominant force in this country depends primarily upon the situation of the most powerful economic interests, upon whether they, by conscious design or not, make use of this device for maintaining their dominant status. This is a matter about which the great majority of people would have little to say.” (Page 7.)

A change in the dominant status of the most powerful economic interests, the argument continues, would be inherently beneficial to all sectors of the majority. If the masses could be expected to act in accordance with their own interests, the necessary change would be effected in a democratic fashion. But it is possible for the small circle of economic power-holders to induce the vast majority to act against its own interests. All they need to bring this about is to divert the strivings of the majority towards abnormal, irrational, emotional goals:

“Since by its very nature it [fascism] favors the few at the expense of the many, it cannot possibly demonstrate that it will so improve the situation of most people that their real interests will be served. It must therefore make its major appeal, not to self-interest, but to emotional needs—often the most primitive and irrational wishes and fears. If it be argued that fascist propaganda fools people into believing that their lot will be improved, then the question arises: Why are they so easily fooled? Because, it may be supposed, of their personality structure.” (Page 10.)

It would be hard to imagine a more perfect specimen of the “devil theory” of social catastrophe. Everything is here: the tiny, selfish, powerful minority whose interests are radically opposed to those of the people at large, and which nevertheless is able to mislead the majority, to make it act against its own interests. The masses, indeed, play in this picture exactly the role which, according to Prophets of Deceit, the fascist “agitators” assign them: that of “dupes and suckers” (p. 21). It is somewhat strange that the authors, with their profound insight into the psychology of prejudice, have never stopped to ask themselves whether they might not have fallen victim to that same insidious psychological mechanism. Do they actually believe that the type of theory the “agitators” use, with its “conspiracy complex” and its “contempt for the masses,” becomes pure science when the “most powerful economic interests” are substituted for the Jews or the Communists? Bebel once said that anti-Semitism is the socialism of the ignorant. Is socialism to become the anti-Semitism, so to speak, of the learned?

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To be sure, some elements of this picture of the genesis of fascist totalitarianism are true to fact. The Nazi movement certainly was spearheaded by pathological personalities, and its triumph could not be explained without assuming that the entire cultural situation was such as to increase the influence of pathological individuals. It is also true that the Nazis were opposed to the democratic “welfare state” and that their rise was desired by, and profitable to, dominant economic groups. But the connection between these facts and the role they played in the genesis of fascism seems radically misconstrued by the theory. The explanation falls down for two reasons. First, in the crisis which gave rise to Nazism there was no clear-cut cleavage of the “true” interests of the plutocracy on the one hand and those of everybody else on the other. Second, we cannot assume that seduction by irrational propaganda was the main obstacle in the way of united action to defend popular against plutocratic interests.

We have to remember, first, that Nazism rose up as a political force during an economic crisis. As long as times were normal the influence of its pathological propaganda was small. When, in the crisis, its influence became great, its function was not that of inhibiting an otherwise possible resolution of the crisis by which all popular groups would have profited at the sole expense of the plutocrats. For such a solution did not exist. Actually, both “rational” economic interests and “pathological” propagandistic influences in the German crisis present a far more chaotic picture. The interests of some of the large popular groups (workers, unemployed, fanners, small bourgeoisie) were in part mutually antagonistic, but in some respects the interests of popular groups converged with those of some economically leading groups. A “rational” and democratic solution would have involved sacrifices by all groups and gains shared among all groups. But such a sober program could get no hearing, mainly because, under the impact of panic, too many people came to believe that only spectacular and extraordinary measures could help, and at the same time were mortally afraid that someone might apply such measures against them. As this mood became dominant, opposite extremisms—of the Nazi and Communist brand—fed each other, so that the prospects of a democratic, non-extremist solution became dimmer and dimmer.

It is not true to say that extremists on either side neglected to focus attention on immediate bread-and-butter interests. Promises of prosperity for all played a tremendous role in Nazi propaganda. Much of this was hokum, but not all. The masses who followed the Nazis did not consist only of suckers. It would be wrong to see solely the illusions and myths which induced lower-class Germans to support the Nazis, and overlook the hard-headed calculations of some of the lower-class Germans. The farmers were the most hard-headed of all: they bid for heavy state support, and they got it. The Nazis also promised a glittering prize to labor: the end of unemployment. Labor did not follow them, but became largely reconciled once unemployment was in fact ended by Hitler’s regime. (This, of course, involved rearmament, which became the germ pf tremendous later disasters. My thesis is not that the Nazis’ solution was a blessing to the “many” in the long run, but merely that in order to win support they had to offer substantial material benefits as well as emotional orgies to the mass of Germans.)

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I think, then, that we must reject the theory of crisis in terms of which the authors envisage the problem of potential fascism. It is true that in a long and severe crisis the influence of the pathological sector of our population would grow and that of the fair-minded and moderate wane. But we cannot solve this problem by a competition in scapegoating. The real problem is how to maintain the influence of sane and democratic counsels in spite of a crisis. This is a task for all groups and classes. The more people engage in preaching doom for one group as the condition of salvation of everybody else, the less probable it is that the crisis will be resolved in democratic fashion. To end a crisis in a democratic way, the theme to propagate is that everybody is in the same boat rather than that the boat will sink unless a guilty member of the crew is thrown overboard.

All this has nothing to do with a general denial of the class tensions and antagonisms in our society. I am not saying that all the interests of capital and labor are always parallel, and that labor should never antagonize capital. I am suggesting that a crisis is the worst possible time in which to try to benefit labor at the expense of capital. Redistribution can be successful only if there is something to redistribute; and extremist controls are not likely to set the machinery rolling.

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The basic question is, however, not what to do when a crisis comes, but how to prevent a crisis, how to build a better society. This is a matter of social ideals as well as of social techniques. Commitment to a set of social ideals runs through the entire discussion in The Authoritarian Personality and animates the whole treatment of the material. The key values are: militant liberalism, defined by the authors so as to imply not only a pro-labor stand but also an orientation in favor of basic socialist reforms; and pro-democracy, defined as implying rejection of all anti-minority prejudice. The main things to be opposed are: the status quo, the “existent,” the powers that be, and anti-democracy, which is defined as fascism; poverty, exploitation, inhumanity, prejudice.

The authors’ ideal social personality is the “prototypic liberal” (Authoritarian Personality, p. 176). But they do not suggest that all conservatives are to be considered equally “potential fascists.” On the contrary, they distinguish between “genuine conservatives” and “pseudo-conservatives,” of whom only the latter are “potential fascists.” As to the “genuine” conservatives, they support “not only capitalism in its liberal, individualistic form but also those tenets of traditional Americanism which are definitely anti-repressive and sincerely democratic, as indicated by an unqualified rejection of anti-minority prejudices” Çp. 675). Thus what the authors say is not that all “liberalism” is good and all “conservatism” is bad. Conservatism, if “genuine,” is also good—but this conservatism is presented as a relic of the past, when American capitalism was individualistic and progressive (p. 662). As to the conservatives who would preserve things as they are now, they are clearly “pseudo” rather than “genuine”; they are linked to fascism and threaten to destroy the basically liberal American tradition, even though they pay lip-service to it (p. 676). The authors’ own liberalism is plainly conservative insofar as the American Constitutional tradition is concerned. They call for “progressive change” in the present socio-economic order because they think this order is inherently antithetical to, and destructive of, the liberal Constitutional tradition. It is not stated explicitly, but implied in the whole argument, that the “genuine” conservatives cannot offer a workable program for a good society. That can come only from the “militant” liberals.

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What are the basic assumptions and principles characterizing the militant liberal position? We may mention the following:

  1. The liberal is resolutely Utopian. To him, the view that the ideally just and happy society cannot be built is a “lie” (p. 697).
  2. The liberal rejects the “profit system.” He wishes to replace “production for profit” by “an economic organization molded after the needs of the population” (p. 725).
  3. To the liberal, “the conviction that people would not work unless subject to pressure” is “a way of reasoning closely related to vilification of human nature and cynicism” Çp. 699).
  4. From the liberal point of view, “the causes of poverty are seen, not in the innate stupidity of the poor, but in the politico-economic organization of society which, by virtue of its concentration of economic power, creates poverty as a symptom” (p. 155).
  5. The liberal deplores the fact that “today’s labor movement, instead of aiming at a better society, is satisfied with securing certain advantages and privileges within the existing society” (p. 704).
  6. According to the liberal, skepticism about world government and permanent peace denotes “nationalism and cynicism” (p. 148).

It seems to me that a liberalism of this sort is characterized far more by highly charged emotional bias than by real insight into the workings of society. Dogmatic myths dating back to early popular socialist literature are taken over without the slightest critical examination, and those who oppose them are charged with moral shortcomings such as mendacity, contempt for man, and cynicism. A detailed examination of all six points would be instructive, but I think we can dispense with it; I shall make only a few remarks about points 3 Çwork under pressure) and 4 (the causes of poverty).

The assertion -that in a suitably organized society all biologically and culturally necessary work will be done without any “pressure” but solely on the basis of the attractiveness of the kind of work itself, is a pure myth. Of course, many kinds of work are in themselves not unpleasant and people will engage in them, among other things, because they like them. But, first, such satisfaction in work cannot as a rule develop without some sort of pressure: the individual must learn to like his work, and to learn ways of behavior always involves some pressure. Second, no society could survive without also providing incentives for those types of necessary work that are not attractive as such. And all incentive presupposes some pressure.

As to the “causes of poverty,” note that the thesis is put in the form of a loaded alternative: you believe either that poverty is due to the innate stupidity of the poor or that it is due to the high concentration of property. Actually, both explanations are myths. Dire poverty can exist in societies without any high concentration of property, and mass standards of living can be high in societies with highly developed and concentrated industrial capital. Of course, we see poverty even in countries where the standard of living is generally high; but we cannot assume that such poverty would disappear if the concentration of capital were reduced.

I think it would be highly desirable if social scientists in general showed less inclination to formulate the basic values of society in such naive terms. Not that they should cease to adhere to liberal values, but the basic values of liberalism are too often put in a crude and intolerant way—even though the degree of biased naivety shown in this volume is seldom equaled. This is a great pity. For social science has a supremely important contribution to make to the basic discussion of our time, that concerning the future of our society.

There is a long-range trend towards socialism, and important human values and aspirations are defended by both the forces that favor the trend and those that attack it. It should be the task of social science so to analyze the issue that the discussion could be conducted in terms of realities rather than myths. Social scientists should neither merely deplore, and strain against, the secular trend, nor push it forward by leaving the Utopian myths nourishing the socialist mystique unexamined. Science should tell us, as accurately as possible, what any proposed institutional change or absence of change would mean in terms of material satisfactions and good human relations. This calls for a critical indifference towards the interested arguments put forward by special pleaders on both sides in the form of either blanket promises of Utopia or wholesale prophecies of doom. If people can be educated to abandon mythical thinking on these subjects, one may perhaps hope to see a smooth, gradual transition towards new forms of social control wherever old ones become impracticable, but without damage to democratic values. On this score, much of the thinking in this volume represents regression to a more primitive level of discourse rather than progress towards realism and maturity.

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To all this, the authors might retort that their own value position, whether one agrees with it or not, is not germane to the issue. For the “militant liberal” ideology they have outlined is not merely something they espouse, rightly or wrongly. Rather, the cluster of attitudes which includes the positions on Utopia, the profit system, work, poverty, and world peace, is statistically most highly correlated with the absence of ethnic prejudice. That is, the evidence in this study shows that if one indeed believes that Utopia is possible, if one rejects the “profit system,” and so on, one will also be unprejudiced towards Jews and Negroes. This, the authors could argue, is simply an empirical, statistical fact which the student of prejudice has to record as he finds it. Whether this militant liberalism is reasonable and realistic or whether it is the opposite, it is at least the type of attitude towards which non-prejudiced thinking seems to tend. Although there are many complications in the picture, it appears, by and large, that it is the “conformists”—those who accept society as it is—who are most prejudiced towards minorities, and the “rebels” and “non-conformists” who are least so.

The finding itself may stand, I think, as a rough approximation. But the question is how we evaluate it. Two considerations arise in this connection. First, are we justified in idealizing that cluster of attitudes which seems most highly correlated with the one value we are interested in at the moment? That is, if we are interested in eliminating prejudice, are we right in completely approving the “militant liberalism” which is today associated with lack of it? And second, can we expect that this value of freedom from prejudice will reach its greatest strength in our society when, and only when, the cluster of liberal attitudes with which it is now most highly correlated reaches its greatest strength? I think the answer to both questions is no.

Absence of ethnic prejudice is certainly an important virtue. It is one of the necessary conditions for a truly democratic ordering of interpersonal and inter-group relations. But in itself it does not define the democratic attitude. A sub-group in our society may score very low on ethnic prejudice and yet fail to represent a pro-democratic social force. Examples are not hard to find. We know that the Communists combine advocacy of non-discrimination on ethnic matters with an insatiable greed for monopolizing the whole social decision process, and complete disregard for personal rights. But the authors’ method of assessing pro- and antidemocratic potentialities in sub-groups is such as to make it practically impossible to recognize, and to deal with, such combinations. The method throws all “low scorers” and all “high scorers” on ethnic prejudice together into two separate groups, as if these groups were sociological realities. The group of “low scorers,” however, has no actual, sociological existence; it is a pure artifact of statistical combination. To link the defense of democracy to such an artifact is a great mistake. The seriousness of this mistake becomes apparent in connection with the mostly very unsatisfactory way in which the authors deal with the problem of democracy and attitudes towards Communism.

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This takes us to our second question. Can we expect that ethnic prejudice will tend to disappear as we find more and more people scoring “low” on ethnic prejudice but “high” on other types of group aggression? That is, will prejudice disappear as more and more people become “militant liberals”? The authors of The Authoritarian Personality seem to think so. But we cannot assume that the over-all incidence of a characteristic—in this case, freedom from prejudice—depends only on the relative size of the group in which it is statistically most prevalent—in this case, militant liberals. The growth of such a group may do something to the other groups in society; if it scores “high” on some types of aggression, its high aggressiveness breeds counter-aggression, and what we can expect is the strengthening and exacerbation of all aggressive patterns of behavior. In other words, if the “militant liberal” attitude becomes more widespread, the attitudes opposing it—including among them prejudice—may also become more widespread. Extremely aggressive “liberalism” can drive many of the latently prejudiced into aggressive race hatred.

All this is obscured by the main methodological device used in The Authoritarian Personality, which consists basically in the construction of a continuum of attitudes on ethnic prejudice, and the selection of those who score highest and those who score lowest for special analysis and close study. To be a useful tool in analyzing the factors theatening and supporting democracy, the analysis of these two groups scoring very high and very low in prejudice should have been supplemented by another analysis of the groups scoring “high” and “low” on group aggression in general. This, of course, would have transcended the task the authors set themselves, and nobody can blame them for having treated only one area of social aggression. The trouble with their approach is only that it tends to confuse those who wish to consider the entire field of threats to, and safeguards for, democracy.

To sum up: It is possible to study ethnic prejudice from a conservative viewpoint, as something unfortunate in itself and curable by itself, without considering its possible role in undermining our democratic system as a whole. This was done in Dynamics of Prejudice, in Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder, and in large parts of The Authoritarian Personality as well. It is also possible to examine the “catastrophic” implications of prejudice, to examine what role prejudice might play in destroying our democratic order and replacing it with fascism; this was attempted in part by The Authoritarian Personality and also, in a way, in Prophets of Deceit. The first job can be done either by intensive analysis of a small number of cases—as was superbly done in Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder—or by statistical analysis. But in order to do the second, it is not sufficient to simply determine who rejects ethnic prejudice in our society today, and then conclude that the attitudes of the groups most strongly rejecting prejudice represent the only possible hope for a liberal and democratic society. This approach cannot reveal to us how our democratic order may survive, for we must first see whether the attitudes associated with freedom from prejudice may not be dangerous to democracy in their own right and in other areas.

I do not deny that there is a considerable moral difference between an attitude aiming at “saving society” by crushing racial minorities, and one aiming at “improving society” by abolishing unjust privileges. But it is easy to fall into dangerous illusions by recognizing only the former attitude as a threat to democracy. The fight against “privileges,” while morally valuable in itself, may degenerate into putting a new privileged class in the place of an old one. And while old “privileges” are often attenuated by the bad conscience of their holders as well as by the presence of counter-forces and counter-pressures, the new privileges the “liberators” claim for themselves may become more oppressive than the old ones had been. This will happen if the “liberators” deny that their monopoly of social control represents any privilege at all; if they treat the new privileges as simply their due reward for social services rendered. Sometimes those who are most vocal against unjust privileges in existing society seem entirely unconcerned about the possible moral pitfalls inherent in their position. To treat all those who are privileged (to whatever extent) in an existing social order as criminals who must be crushed and punished is not a morally valid idea. If those who do the punishing become themselves privileged in the process, the idea becomes totally monstrous.

Hence, I cannot recognize that the only choice we have is between aggression against racial minorities, and aggression against privileged economic minorities. Both morally and materially, aggression, directed against whatever group, is a “catastrophic” solution indeed; and it is a serious error in this “catastrophic” analysis of prejudice to suggest that only aggression against the latter group can ward off aggression against the former.

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1 T. W. Adomo, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality; Bruno Bettelheim and Morris Janowitz, Dynamics of Prejudice; Nathan W. Ackerman and Marie Jahoda, Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder; Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman, Prophets of Deceit; Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction (this book was not available to, and is not considered by, the writer); Harper, 1950.

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