Rise of the Liberal Authoritarians - What a FASCINATING new study reveals about the psychology of the “liberal” elite class

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Here’s a question. What do people like LBC commentator James O’Brien, Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, supposedly impartial journalists like Emily Maitlis, Lewis Goodall, Jon Sopel, and David Aaronovitch, BBC commentator Gary Lineker, and former radio presenter Caroline Vorderman all have in common?

They represent, some might say, a small but influential tribe of self-described “liberal progressives”, who share several characteristics.

They struggle to tolerate any challenge, however slight, to their narrow groupthink. They use their enormous platforms or taxpayer-funded positions in public institutions to dogmatically impose their beliefs on everybody else in society. They often insult, undermine, stigmatise and seek to silence people who hold different views —casually deriding them as “far-right”, “fascists”, “populists”, and “bigots”, while struggling to hide their thinly-disguised contempt toward these perceived dissenters. They show remarkably little, if any, serious interest in evidence or arguments that run counter to their own, dogmatic, and rigid worldview, reflected in how their podcasts and shows usually only feature guests who reinforce rather than challenge their views. And, deep down, I suspect that many of them think that society would just be better off if all those irritating and ignorant conservatives, Brexit voters, and Trump voters would just shut up and accept they’re inferior to this morally righteous, enlightened group.

Naturally, many of the people I just mentioned will scoff at this, much like they scoff at anybody and everybody who dares challenge their radically progressive beliefs. I’ve no doubt they’ll soon be on Twitter/X, denouncing me and this article. But as Luke Conway, a distinguished Professor of psychology and author of a fascinating new study makes clear, in reality all these things are the hallmarks of a clearly identifiable group of people in Western democracies who not only exist as a distinctive political tribe but are exerting growing influence over the direction of our societies and fuelling more of the polarisation and division in our world than right-wingers.

Who they are? They are the Liberal Authoritarians. And in this exclusive post I tell you everything you need to know about them. What do they believe? What defines this powerful group? How can you spot them? What’s been my own experience with more than a few liberal authoritarians on university campus? And can it really be true that liberals are more prone to authoritarian beliefs than conservatives?

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