Lessons to be Learned: Adornian Insights into the Persistent Appeal of Authoritarianism in the 21st Century

Education in the United States is under siege. The Trump administration and Make America Great Again (MAGA) are waging an aggressive war on academic freedom, democratic education, and, more broadly, truth itself, fighting against what it labels as discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and what it perceives as rampant antisemitism on college campuses. From traditional educational institutions like elementary schools and universities to cultural organizations like the Smithsonian Institution and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the right-wing war on education is highly organized, well-funded, and extremely popular across a wide sector of the U.S. population. What’s becoming clear is that many educators and members of the political class may have underestimated authoritarianism’s persistent and formidable hold on the West’s political imagination. As Theodor Adorno knew, the militaristic defeat of authoritarian ideology is not the same thing as dismantling the social structures that house its ideas, drive its educational agenda, normalize its lies, and rationalize its repressive function. From Adorno’s perspective, the move away from democracy is not a contradiction of capitalism, but a rational and inevitable outcome of its social architecture. In what follows, I will discuss a few central points that arise from Adorno’s key lectures about sociology, education, and research into how and why right-wing extremism continues to thrive in the 21st century.