Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers by John W. Dean

Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers

by John W. Dean

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Politics & Power

Why would evangelicals stay with Trump through sexual misconduct allegations, or working-class voters back policies that may hurt them? Dean and Altemeyer answer with authoritarianism, using Altemeyer's own Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale and Monmouth polling research to describe supporters who feel their world destabilizing and want a strong leader to protect them.

Core ideas
  • Double standards come easy: High scorers struggle to tell fact from falsehood, hold contradictory beliefs comfortably, and judge allies and opponents by different rules.
  • Cohn, then Nixon: Trump's tactics trace to Roy Cohn and to Nixon, and Dean judges him more ruthless and more ignorant of democratic norms than the president he served.
  • Bigger than one election: Whatever the 2020 result, a base that large means you should expect the polarization to last.
Published2020
Pages368
ISBN9781612199061
ReadNov 2025

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