| Excerpt from The Roots of Authoritarianism copyright 1990,1991 by Lundy Bancroft This article is a brief introduction to how authoritarian systems work and what leads us to collude with them. By authoritarianism I mean the oppression that grows out of abuses of a certain type of power: the power that certain groups and individuals gain because they have authority due to: 1) their position in an organization, particularly the government or the military but also many others 2) their actual or supposed expertise in an area 3) their personal power and charisma --------------- Finally, I want to look at authoritarianism as it operates in a large voluntary organization that is neither religious nor governmental. I do this in hopes of connecting some of the larger-scale issues to more day-to-day types of interactions. Because so many of us have experience with it, I want to discuss Reevaluation Counseling (RC). This is an organization that purports to be on the cutting edge of human liberation and where the leader, Harvey Jackins, has seduced hundreds of women at workshops and at his office in Seattle over the past two or three decades. His sexual exploitation has been the subject of numerous articles and investigations, including testimony before the Washington state legislature by a woman who had been 15 years old when Jackins first seduced her in his office. Sexual exploitation by high male leadership is also not restricted to Jackins, although he is the primary offender. The RC hierarchy prevents the details of Jackins' behavior, and that of other men in leadership, from becoming widely known among participants in RC; nonetheless many people in RC have heard reports which they choose not to believe or pursue. A large proportion of the RC leadership knows the truth of the charges, and chooses to participate in excusing and covering up what Jackins and others have been doing. The leadership uses a variety of means to silence co-counselors who take a stand against the exploitation, including ultimately expelling them from the organization. People dismissed from RC in this way include women who have been abused themselves, and also include RC leaders who have been purged from within the hierarchy when they challenged the exploitation. Leaders who have resigned or been kicked out over the sexual exploitation by Jackins and other abuses of authority include Mary McCabe, Margaret Vasington, and Nancy Kline. The tactics for silencing a person whom draws attention to the problem typically focus on making the person feel that they are being bad. These include comments such as 'You are dramatizing your distress" (about other issues) "You are acting out of feelings of powerlessness," or 'You are acting like a victim." "You are attacking Harvey.' "You are trying to destroy something that's very important," (meaning RC itself). Statements also focus commonly on 'reminding" the person that the organization does not 'belong to them." People are also told that the allegations regarding the seductions are "just rumor" and that we shouldn't discuss anything we don't know first-hand Analyzing RC's Dynamics Although sexism plays an important role in the functioning of RC, I believe that the overriding dynamic that holds this authoritarian system in place is adultism and internalized adultism. Once again, I want to parallel the previous paragraphs about RC and link them to adultism. I want to look first at RC's reliance on making us feel that we are being naughty if we discuss Jackins' sexual behavior or share our concerns about it with other people. involves efforts to restimulate our internalized adultism. The point here is that we all have a deep reservoir of feelings of being very naughty and being about to get caught. We carry these feelings because of the dramatic overreactions that we get from adults when we are children and they catch us (or think they catch us) disobeying them or doing something careless. These experiences frighten us (sometimes badly), confuse us, and leaves us feeling bad about ourselves. People in positions of authority then have tremendous ability to restimulate these "bad" feelings in us, deliberately or not, especially if they use scolding, ridiculing, or condescending tones of voice. RC also relies on our sense, internalized from childhood, that the key possessions and resources in the world do not belong to us. We are constantly reminded as children that we have no say over the possessions and resources that matter the most in life, such as the food in the house, for example, or the house itself. Adults then turn around and call us "selfish", because we become, understandably, very attached to and jealously possessive of the few minor possessions that we're allowed some control over. I recently got a call from an ARP in the Boston area, warning me not to use the Re-evaluation Counseling (no problem there), nor to use any of the terms from RC, including "co-counseling" and "discharge", claiming that RC has legal control over these terms. The is legally preposterous for a number of reasons that I won't go into here, but more importantly it tries to tell us that RCs authoritarian leadership has a right to own the organization. We would never buy into this disenfranchisement without confusion coming from internalized adultism. Adults also tell children almost constantly, directly and indirectly, that they don't know enough to have valid opinions and that they need more experience. Again, RC and other authoritarian leaders know how to tap into our hurt in this area (the message is, "leave it to the experts, they know better"). One of the frequent comments in RC of this type is: "You should only discuss first-hand knowledge." This is a silencing tactic and is patent nonsense; almost everything that a person knows in modern society she or he knows second-hand. Do you, for example, have any first-hand knowledge about South Africa, or nuclear weapons, or the connection between cigarettes and cancer? Most likely you have little or none, relying almost entirely on what you have read or heard. Do you nevertheless have a right to have opinions on these issues, and to take strong moral stands? Of course you do - in fact you have a responsibility to do so. It's impossible in a global community such as the one we live in today (and RC is also a global community), to have all the necessary knowledge first-hand; our responsibility lies rather in making intelligent decisions about which sources of information to trust, and then taking principled stands. If we had to have first-hand information in order to take stands, we would sit idly by and do nothing about the bulk of the world's outrages. Again, without internalized adultism, we would recognize right away that we were getting a message of, "You're too little and uninformed to have a right to an opinion about this," and we wouldn't allow it to confuse us. Children's opinions, particularly their angry complaints, are often invalidated by saying that they're "too upset," or by saying that they are actually upset about something else, as in, "Oh, you're just getting sleepy. I think it's time for you to go to bed." The underlying notion here is that being upset proves that you are irrational and not thinking clearly. This is a crucial myth used against children by adults (and against women by men). RC has worked this notion into its theory, alas, which serves its authoritarian interests. (The truth is that people sometimes do their best thinking when they arc upset, and are often particularly articulate then.) RC leaders play into this aspect of adultism in a couple of ways. One is to turn people
into clients; in other words, when you raise an objection, you arc likely to be called up
in front of a class or workshop to "work on it." The leader then gets you to
expose your distress, demonstrating that your objection actually comes from confusion.
You'll notice in this process that leaders don't reveal where their distress may affect
their outlook. A second and related tactic is simply to violate the rules against
commenting on someone's material in order to shame them into stopping their dissent. An RC
leader in California once told me that the reason I was raising a particular concern,
"is because of that stuff about your father." , 4 RC As An Incest Family Sexual abuse is an important aspect of adultist oppression. Recent studies indicate that about 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys are targets of sexual abuse, and the statistics are still rising, especially for boys (as men gradually begin to disclose more). The profoundly damaging effects of sexual abuse, including incest, are central to keeping children and women in subordinate positions. Sexual abuse in some form or another is also commonly involved in authoritarian systems, cementing the relationship between adultism, sexism, and authoritarianism. Workplace sexual harassment is just one of the countless examples of this. Sadly, RC operates very much like an incest family. Members of an incest family have varying degrees of denial and rationalization about the sexual abuse. Because of our need to believe in the goodness of adults, family members tend to turn against the abused child and label her as Bad, which feels much safer; the alternative, which is to name and acknowledge the abuse, feels like it will blow the family apart. Any sibling of the victim who attempts to tell the truth about the sexual abuse or draws attention to it in any way is also deemed bad. The parallel to RC is striking, where people we have loved and felt close to suddenly abandon us and talk to us like we're Bad when we tell the truth about the sexual abuse, and accuse us of trying, to blow RC apart. None of this collusion would be possible without internalized adultism, including the effects of child sexual abuse. Adultism and Internalized Adultism in Leaders Authoritarian leaders are acting out of both adultism and internalized adultism. Leaders feel a strong addictive pull to be admired, to be influential, and to be powerful, because of how profoundly we get hurt in all these areas as children, and will engage in irrational or cruel behavior in order to avoid losing these privileges. So, for example, Area Reference People in RC will hold on tightly to their positions even after they claim that they're supporting a massive system of sexual abuse, because they finally feel some power in leading their community and feel like they're helping others to live better. So they move desperately to squelch dissent from below and hang onto their precious position in the organization without the internalized adultism, they would realize that they do not have to collude with oppression in order to be powerful. They would also see that no one need to grant them power to do good in the world, because that power is inherent within them, and they would refuse to continue sacrificing what we have to assume to be dozens of women each year to their cause. Another way to look at this dynamic is: Any authoritarian system works by granting fiefdoms (smaller areas Of control) to individual leaders, and getting those leaders invested in the power and benefits they get from having authority over that fiefdom. The leaders' internalized adultism will convince them that they would be nothing without that fiefdom, that they would return to being alone and inconsequential in the world if they lost it. They also would lose that special connection they feel to the high-up leaders. The leaders' self-image depends on holding on tightly to the belief that the system that has granted them this special status is Good and that its leadership is Good. The sad result is that leaders control their own fiefdoms in an authoritarian manner, while at the same time submitting to authoritarian rule themselves at the hands of leaders who are higher up than they are. This situation is present to some degree in every authoritarian system. This points out another connection: Because adultism convinces us as children that children don't really count, it becomes extremely important to us to have the approval of adults and be "in good' with them, even if it means betraying our fellow children. This aspect of Internalized adultism leads to such phenomena as tattling on our siblings or being the "teacher's pet," to name just two examples. As we carry this stuff into our adult life, it becomes very important to be "in good" with the powerful, influential, and charismatic leaders in our organizations, communities, and countries. This is our ticket to feeling approved of and noticed, and feeling like we count in the world. Unfortunately, the desire for status has such a strong addictive pull that we will allow ourselves, our morals, and our lives to get grossly distorted in our pursuit of it, or in our protection of it once we have it. Overcoming Authority I believe that we need to begin addressing the issue and dynamics of authoritarianism in our sessions, in our discussions, and in our lives. While it doesn't make much sense to blame ourselves and each other for our past collusion with oppressive authority, it's essential that we make a strong commitment to refuse to participate in it in the future, whether as perpetrator, as collaborator, or as victim. I also believe that part of taking apart this oppression on the large scale involves examining how it operates on the small scale. Authoritarianism is used in both subtle and overt ways by adults against each other in all kinds of situations, including between close friends and co-counselors. We adopt adultist tones of voice with each other, such as scolding; we point out the other person's lack of experience or expertise; we say that the other person is "acting like a child"; we tell them that we know what they need better than they do; and use various other tactics to make the person feel like a naughty, naive, or "presumptuous" child who is not keeping in the proper humble place. At the same time, we allow these things to be done to us by other people, because of the feelings of childhood inferiority that come pouring up in us as soon as someone starts to talk to us in adultist ways. Besides learning to recognize and avoid the negative, we need to develop the positive. Specifically, we need to begin rediscovering and reclaiming the person we were when we were children, and taking complete pride in that child's intelligence, humility, courage, vision, and rebellion. We need to reject all the lies that we were told about ourselves, and discharge the pain we accumulated from adultist oppression. This healing will have not only its obvious inherent benefits, but will also help us to become less and less subject to authoritarian manipulation, and help us stay clear enough to refuse to collude with such treatment of other people. As we stop being ashamed of the child within us, and begin to feel proud of her or him, we become harder and harder for authoritarian leaders to control. This in turn gives us hope of ultimately rescuing the authoritarians from their own distress, and welcoming them back into the strong, vibrant, and truly democratic communities that we will have created in the mean time. Once people manage to stop seeing themselves as inferior, dependent, and victimized, and begin to take pride in who they are and what they know, it becomes impossible for authoritarian leaders to keep them down. We can see this everywhere from El Salvador to Poland to the Occupied Territories. This rebellion, especially when it is accompanied by strong mutual support and discharge, then creates the potential for a healthy future. This future is based on each person leading in the areas of life that they are strongest in, with the final authority always resting in the entire community. FOOTNOTES 2 - It's no coincidence that RC, which has developed some very good theory on almost every area of oppression, has never addressed a word to the subject of authoritarianism. To do so would raise uncomfortable questions about the way RC itself operates. 3 - Some people in RC argue that Jackins has stopped his seductions. A woman I know well reported to me that Jackins propositioned her at a workshop in January of 1990, and then insulted her when she turned him down. We also know better because of the research on sexual offenders, all of which indicates that sexually abusive and exploitative behavior does not change in the absence of clear consequences and long-term counseling. 4 - Over the past decade, RC has developed something of an obsession with what it calls "attacks on leaders', including a steady stream of journal articles on the subject and policies designed to deal with the problem. 'You'll notice two things in these discussions: 1) Nowhere is 'attack" ever defined. This allows any dissenting opinion or criticism, no matter how carefully and thoughtfully stated, to be defined as an attack, and this is in fact what happens. 2) Nowhere is there any mention of attacks on non-leaders by leaders. This imbalance is remarkable in an organization supposedly committed to combat oppression.
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