WHAT MAKES A FASCIST?
ADORNO, Theodor W., Else FRENKEL-BRUNSWIK, Daniel J. LEVINSON, and R. Nevitt SANFORD
The Authoritarian Personality.
New York, Harper Brothers, 1950.
8vo, pp. [iv]-xxxiv, 990; internally clean and faultless; bound in the original blue cloth, spine lettered directly in gilt; in the original dust-jacket; some wear to corners and edges of dust-jacket and bumping to the top corner of the back cover.
First edition of this groundbreaking work of social psychology on the development of prejudice by Theodor Adorno and the psychologists Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, written in the aftermath of the Holocaust.
The work was as part of the ‘Studies in Prejudice’ series sponsored by the American Jewish Committee’s Department of Scientific Research, and assessed antisemitism, ethnocentrism, and political and economic conservatism amongst white, non-Jewish, US-born, middle-class Americans. Particularly notable is the ‘F Scale’ (the ‘F’ standing for ‘Fascist), in which high scores indicate a tendency toward authoritarianism and an increased susceptibility to Fascist propaganda.
Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) is well known as having been a leading light of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Antisemitism made a significant mark on the lives of two of its authors: both Adorno and Frenkel-Brunswik were made refugees by the Nazi regime.
