AUT: Authoritarian Personality research: In defence of the status quo...?

[Michael Handelman <mhandelman1@xxxxxxxxx>]

Has "Authoritarian Personality" research (eg Adorno et
al's work) been co-opted by the ruling class? I've
seen it be used, by radicals, and those in defence of
the status quo. I was reading that many of the cold
war liberals, who developed (a lousy) social
scientific model in understanding the "Radical Right"
adopted many of the ideas of the social psychology in
"Authoritarian Personality":

http://www.publiceye.org/research/concepts/Frameworks-01.htm#P46_5080

"The first foray into establishing a broad social
science outline for studying the political right was
centrist/extremist theory which arrived with the 1955
publication of a collection of essays titled The New
American Right edited by Daniel Bell. Eight years
later The New American Right collection was expanded
and republished under the title, The Radical Right.
Contributors to the expanded volume included Bell,
Alan F. Westin, Richard Hofstadter, Seymour Martin
Lipset, Earl Raab, Peter Viereck, Herbert H. Hyman,
Talcott Parsons, David Riesman, and Nathan Glazer. Not
all of the authors shared all of the analytical views
outlined in the volume, but since 1955 a number of
books appeared that either elaborated on or paralleled
the general themes of centrist/extremist theory first
sketched in The New American Right.7

Post WWII social science, with the memory of European
fascist movements fresh in the public mind, had
already mapped out a framework for studying collective
behavior that stressed the irrational and destructive
nature of popular mobilizations. Centrist/extremist
theory, especially as outlined by Lipset, Raab,
Viereck, and Bell, merged collective behavior theory
with emerging theories about social psychology and
authoritarian personality types. The assumption was
that socially-constructive "pluralists" who were
tolerant of different political ideas always
gravitated toward the center of the political system.
This is why centrist/extremist theory is sometimes
called the pluralist school of social science...."

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