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A comment on They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer, an Excerpt. Parent comment

Re:They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer, an Excerpt by Waterluvian on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @04:25AM (#42946085)
> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work.

I have absolutely no evidence to support this (but I would welcome any for or against it), but I have a loose theory that there is pretty much always a subset of people who are physiologically predisposed to be driven by a fear response more than the average person, and over time they congregate, possibly as a safety mechanism.

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Re:They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer, an Excerpt by soco on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @04:40AM (#42946189)
And with the social media of today, they also got a performant platform for wider and broader congregation, with the effects that we see.
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Re:They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer, an Excerpt by pushcx on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @08:52AM (#42948483)
This is pretty much the premise of Bob Altemeyer's work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer His book The Authoritarians is the one that most elaborates on it, so works that cite or respond to it would probably be exactly what you're looking for.
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Re:They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer, an Excerpt by Waterluvian on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:19AM (#42948793)
Thank you! This really helps to have an initial breadcrumb into the idea. I can scrutinize it further.
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