我将用一个问题来回答这个问题，这个问题的开头是:“人类的心理……，尽量保持主题的简单和/或优雅。答案是肯定的。关于人类心理有几个“东西”。威权主义领导人(以及那些可能如此的人)利用人类的弱点，比如:恐惧;不确定性;不宽容;无法独立思考——回想一下朱利安·杰恩斯(Julian Jaynes)在上个世纪所写的两院制思维。我们中的许多人从未听说过詹尼斯，但那些仍然认为他是对的人。所有形式的心智弱点都会使人们容易受到专制主义者及其同类的影响。当一无所有的人看到别人在一个或多个层面上拥有更多时，嫉妒也是有罪的。 We all want our societies to excel, and authoritarians are good at selling snake oil and short-cuts. People are, in the last analysis, gullible---not all, mind you, but at least a charming plurality. There would likely be some mathematical formula for this, if anyone cared to explore it---maybe someone has, I do not know. Finally, people are predictable when it comes to leaders and leadership: that which is too good to be true achieves approval, in spite of itself. You don't have to take my word for this: examine the evidence and think for yourself.

The best tools to resist authority are easy to find. You just have to find what's not taught in any public school anywhere. What's that? Lists of common fallacies. You dont have to teach children what's a lie and what isnt. You just have to teach them how to recognize a lie.

1984 was a history book, not a prophecy

Oh sure, maybe they need to be taught how to be innanely literal and have their minds funneled into our perfect little avenue of controlled self serving biased lies while completely forgetting (yet again) to teach them about fallacies?

Or maybe thats just sarcasm?

You sure you ever read it?

“任何人的灵魂都可以被爱摧毁”~另一个母亲(科罗琳)。

Was Animal Farm a "fiction?"

Everything ever written was a fiction.

I just posted this to the blog as well. I'm not sure I can offer much more.

Authoritarianism is an -ism like all others, and I can't separate it from facts on the ground, history, or economy. Some situations call for this -ism, some call for its abolition. Sometimes it is best to leave authoritarian leaders to their worlds, and most of the time to leave authority to its path leads back to our own door.

This show took place in the Trump presidency, to which it references and alludes. Now we face an Olympics in China to which they sold no tickets, and ratings in the West, at least, were poor at best. Now we face the loss of Ukraine to the democratic world, and now the message of the show is much harsher than three years ago.

There is no way to deal with the forces at work in our world other than to gird the consequences of dealing with dictators. There will be a great deal of suffering to right this ship, and it's not human nature to choose suffering over scapegoating. We have too strong an us/them model for dealing with authoritarian regimes in real-time.

Technology and economics might address what politics and philosophy cannot, but not without some sacrifice. We have to find fellowship with the citizens of authoritarian regimes. We need to share learning and technology that allows them to liberate their lives. Allowing Russia and China to own social media, steal technology and wantonly threaten Europe (Ukraine and others) and Southeast Asia (Taiwan and others) will limit us in short order if we don’t take action to stop it now. We need to push technology to everyone and eliminate poverty without scapegoating a them that sooner or later will be an us if we don't push now and with unanimity.

It is more than coincidental, I think, that egregious motives and behaviors reflect similar allure(s). This post expounds upon authoritarianism and those who pursue and embrace such power. An article received from a source this morning talks about faculty at a prestigious university supporting a colleague accused of sexual harassment: the exercise of a different kind of power. That being what it is, power is power, no matter the stripe. Motive tends to make people resistant to those 'better angels of our nature'. Power polishes the ego. There was a sizable number of persons attached to the defense of the man mentioned in this comment. Common knowledge and experience show he will likely be cleared---correctly, or not.

First it's important to distinguish between authority and authoritarianism. There are two kinds of authority: justified, as for example a geologist would have over the study of rocks, and unjustified, as for instance someone might claim to have over how someone should dress or wear their hair. But "authoritarianism" refers to only one kind thing: a general recourse in the treatment of any social issue or problem to some kind of authority over its constituents, whether as a genuine belief in its existence or as a manufactured claim for particular purposes. As most claims of authority in social contexts are usually unjustified, they tend to be found at the manufactured end of the scale; and because inventions are rarely produced without some specific reason or need that they fulfill, the supposition can safely be made that almost all authoritarianism is reactionary in character.

那么，探究这种反应的原因是有意义的。这种反应的基础是什么?实现这种反应的手段是什么?借用另一个参与者前段时间所作的区分，它的产生的原因必须有一个实质性的原因，它的偶然和适当的形式必须有一个偶然的原因。如果可以假定非公平生产剩余分配的先决条件，即社会上层和社会下层的基本区别，那么专制反应只能发生在上层。其原因在于担心下层阶级在充分组织的条件下会篡夺上层阶级所享有的优越地位;正如亚里士多德在《修辞学》第二卷中指出的那样，恐惧并不是一种抽象的恐惧，因为没有什么比知道一个人过去对他做了很大的错事，而现在却有足够的力量对他做同样的错事更能激起真正的、具体的恐惧了。因此，一个强大的中央集权国家被认为是必要的，以保护社会特权阶层不被他们所压迫的人废黜。因此，恐惧构成了威权主义反应的实质原因。

And what then about the means of achieving this? What is the accidental and occasional form or forms by which elite reaction can be said to be successful? The most common is clearly what is called "populism", the exploitation of traditional animosity between distinct groups of the same class. Customary hatreds, suspicions, prejudices, can all be exploited for the purpose of diffusing social organization. Because these are produced by very different substantial causes, however, they should not be considered as characteristics of authoritarianism itself.

因此，在我看来，这是对威权主义的恰当描述:基于对革命的恐惧的精英反应;以及实现这一目标的典型手段:利用惯常的和供给的仇恨。

Returning to ideology for a moment. "Stands apart from objective truth". Does that sound so different from authoritarianism? I don't think so. Got into a tiff with some Vedic radicals today. At first, their response to my comments was measured and according to doctrine, near as I could discern. Then another response came to my email. This was disjointed, accusatory and almost wholly stochastic. Someone there got really riled and shaken. I responded in a measured half-dozen words.
从那以后就再也没有他们的消息了。所有的好。意识形态是不可靠的，使它们变得危险。像独裁主义。