Page - 2 - in Rebels without a cause? - ‘Criminals’ and fascism in The Authoritarian Personality

2 Journal of Classical Sociology 00(0) Neumann to critical theorists of later generations like Heinz Steinert, ‘criminality’ was a side issue for many critical theorists, including Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, who, for example, took note of Rusche and Kirchheimer’s supposedly empiri- cist work without paying it great attention (cf. Wiggershaus, 1988: 263–265). Accordingly, both worked with ascriptive ad-hoc-terms of ‘the criminal‘, rather jauntily comparing Nazi elites to Mafia-like ‘rackets’ in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1969: 162 and 182) – a theory developed as quickly as it was abandoned (cf. Ziege, 2009: 125f.; Wiggershaus, 1988: 356f.). This intellectual tension between social theory and criminology or ‘criminality’ as a research topic can also be found in The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al., 1950). The study, organised and funded by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) from 1944 to 1949, was conducted by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford. It was a remarkable manifestation of ‘transatlantic enrichment’ (Fleck, 2007), a cooperation between émigré and American social scientists that combined a wide variety of influences: not only the Marxist paradigm of critical theory but also Frenkel-Brunswik’s interest in the psychology of the Viennese ‘Bühler School’, the Vienna Circle’s positivism, together with Levinson’s and Sanford’s meth- odological knowledge of American social research and an interest in Freudian psychoa- nalysis shared by all. In this respect, the study is an impressive amalgamation of psychology, psychoanalysis and sociology, characterised by a high degree of self-reflex- ivity (cf. also Horkheimer and Adorno, 1975). It stimulated thousands of follow-up stud- ies (for overviews, see Altemeyer, 1996; Stone et al., 1993). Today, as authoritarian politicians and regimes are on the rise in Europe, North and Latin America, the study is being re-discovered (Adorno, 2019; Gordon, 2018, 2019; Marasco, 2018; Ziege, 2009). Using both questionnaires and in-depth interviews, the authors examined the socio- psychological susceptibility to and readiness for a potential fascism among America’s post-war population, studying the fertile ground formed by the ‘authoritarian personal- ity’ outside Europe in which fascist propaganda could possibly take root after 1945. The questionnaires were initially given only to college students. Since their general middle-class background meant a bias in terms of social class, the authors began to consider sampling methods and decided to interview ‘key groups’ whom they consid- ered particularly sensitive or dangerous in relation to a potential American fascism: upper class men in service clubs, patients of psychiatric clinics, and last but not least prisoners in San Quentin, California’s oldest prison. From the very beginning, the basic assumption was that there was a ‘psychological affinity between criminality and fascism’ (Adorno et al., 1950: 136). For the authors, the direction of this affinity was clear: definitely not all authoritarian personalities were ‘criminals’, but criminals clearly tended to be authoritarian. ‘Crime’ and ‘criminals’ do not play a central role in The Authoritarian Personality. But the San Quentin interviews are more than mere illustrations of a theory allegedly developed elsewhere in the study. The group was considered to be of ‘key importance for understanding fascism’ (Adorno et al., 1950: 822). Indeed, a definition of fascism is provided only in the chapter Criminality and Antidemocratic Trends: A Study of Prison Inmates, written by William R. Morrow, and it is only in this chapter that there is an open