> I have a totally unsupported hunch that "antiauthoritarianism" in its
> various senses is so deeply ingrained in our worldview (so that calling
> Chavez or whoever an "authoritarian" is an insult for some reason) that it
> is hard for us to accept that many many people in Europe in the first half
> of the 20th century perceived a totally authoritarian state as a good thing.
Throughout her pre-collegiate education an American is likely to have read the Sparknotes for: the Giver, Anthem, 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, the Lottery... In high school we were taught "Harrison Bergeron" as an example, rather than parody, of the genre.
> Therefore, the notion is dropping out of our understanding of the period
> and its movements (including our understanding of Stalinism, in which people
> tend to forget, or not know in the first place, that it was supported by the
> majority of the Soviet population), sort of like how many people treat the
> ancient belief in polytheism as a mere epiphenomenon.
I feel that you may be conflating different levels of explanation, here, but I'm too lazy to put forth an argument.