> Indeed, anti-authoritarianism has not always been progressive in nature. Patriotic,
> reactionary rioters, demonstrating in Birmingham in 1791 against those radicals who
> sympathised with the French Revolution, destroyed the laboratory and library of the
> intellectual Joseph Priestley.
>
>
The analysis of authoritarianism the Frankfurt School put forward would call this kind of
thing a manifestation of authoritarianism itself -- specifically, of authoritarian
rebellion. It remains within a sado-masochistically oedipal characterological framework,
and is not anti-authoritarian. Usually, it appeals to another idealized authority. If I
recall the rioters against Priestley were a so-called "church and king mob," and loyal to
conservative, mystically constituted authorities. Wasn't Priestley a Dissenter?
Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema