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Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to investigate and analyze the mass psychological base of anti-democratic ideology, by exploring the relationship between the authoritarian personality, the culture industry, and broadcasting and mass communication technologies in the context of our time.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to investigate and analyze the mass psychological base of anti-democratic ideology, and the psychosocial and psychocultural conditions that led to the observable rise and popularity of anti-democratic and neo-fascist ideology in the US and Brazil, by building on the studies conducted by the School of Frankfurt, namely Marcuse and Adorno, on the authoritarian personality, and the pattern of fascist propaganda. Marcuse's theory of "affirmative culture" and Adorno's definition of the culture industry as a form of "psychoanalysis in reverse" are essential to the understanding of this authoritarian personality and the gratification it gets out of participating and performing in the fascist ritual. Or in other words, these concepts are essential to understanding the psychological appeal of fascism in an attempt to demystify the Le Bonian cliché or reduction of the mass phenomenon to an inherent herd instinct that makes individuals susceptible to a leader's supposed enchantment when in a group, as Freud had already alerted in "Group Psychology and Analysis of the Ego". Furthermore, the concept of "ideological surplus value", coined by the Venezuelan, Ludovico Silva, becomes paramount in the critique of the culture industry and its role in the rise of anti-democratic ideology, also taking into consideration here the modes or vias of cultural dissemination, that is; broadcasting and mass communication technologies — that in Freud's time corresponded to the radio, in Ludovico's time: the TV, and in our time: the internet filtered through the smartphone, or social media to be exact.