The following was written by N. L. Brisson on her blog The Armchair Observer in 2018 and published on Amazon in her book Loving America to Death in 2023 (cover needs to be revised):
Do We Want to Escape from Freedom?
August 5, 2018
Erich Fromm, a social psychologist of some renown, researched and wrote his book, Escape from Freedom, in the years between WWI and WWII. He was watching the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany, and he was shocked and puzzled by what he was seeing. He was seeing people who had fought a consuming and destructive war being swept up in fury of national fervor and ready to go to war again. The first war lasted four years and was seemingly triggered by the assassination of an Archduke but was most likely caused by simmering resentments about national borders and national slights among powerful nations. World War I changed the configuration of European and Middle Eastern states forever. People had difficulty adjusting loyalties to nations that had no history in their hearts. Many people were liberated from Empires that had governed their lives for decades or even centuries, but they were not prepared for the political changes that resulted from the war.
In his book, Fromm explores the conundrum that, although people long for freedom in the abstract, they often feel more secure under authoritarian rule by one person or one ruling party. When the leader is benign people tolerate authoritarianism well, but we know that power corrupts. Leaders find it difficult to remain benign. They get greedy and their people become more critical and must be squelched to justify the power of the leader. When people cannot speak freely, freedom is gone and rebellion grumbles in the villages, town, and cities.
By the time Erich Fromm wrote his book, which was published in 1941, the same people who had lost so much in World War I were tuning in to the voice of a new, arousing madman who offered the German people a restoration of national pride and the boundaries of the old Germanic Empire, shrunken by the Versailles Treaty and the end of World War I. (National boundaries and national pride cause most wars, both large and small.) Hitler was also tapping into the jealousy and hatred people felt towards "others", non-Arians, and he was beginning his campaign that would eventually lead to the murder of 6 million Jewish people and the eviction of many more.
From a Google Image Search - Arts by Dylan
In the second Forward to his newest edition of Escape from Freedom, Fromm writes:
"After centuries of struggles, man succeeded in building an undreamed-of wealth of material goods; he built democratic societies in parts of the world, and recently was victorious in defending himself against new totalitarian scheme; yet as the analysis in Escape from Freedom attempts to show, modern man is still anxious and tempted to surrender the freedom to dictators of all kinds, or to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine, well fed, and well clothed, yet not a free man but an automaton."
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So here we are 73 years after World War II and the man who almost succeeded in turning Europe into an empire ruled by the most dangerous dictator the modern world has seen so far, yet we are once again seeing people vote for a dictator to head their nation and then reelecting them again, even after they have proven to be suppressive. We see a Chinese dictator getting his people to make him President for Life. We see Duterte more popular than when he became the leader in the Philippines. We see Erdogan reelected by a big margin because he promises to keep Muslims from a Middle East in disarray out of Turkey. We see a significant group of Americans treating our President like the authoritarian leader of a cult of loyalty and backing his most undemocratic policies with a mysterious fervor.
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So, a book that seemed passé might offer insight into current events. What social psychological research backs up Fromm's claims? His premises strike a chord with us, and this very inexpensive book may provide some answers that will have relevance here at our current moment when we are experiencing our own "fear of freedom."
From a Google Image Search - The Citizen
The article from which these quotes were taken was published on March 23, 2024, in the Washington Post (link below):
Here are some the sentiments of Fareed Zakaria from his book Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, W. W. Norton Co, 2024 which echo things argued in 2018.
"Bishop Desmond Tutu who played a pivotal role in guiding South Africa from apartheid to democracy, once wrote, “To be human is to be free.” We all want to be free. We want choice, autonomy, control of our lives. And yet, we also know that when human beings embrace freedom, they can end up feeling profoundly ill at ease. Freedom and autonomy often come at the expense of authority and tradition. As the binding forces of religion and custom fade, the individual gains, but communities often lose. The result is that we might be richer and freer but also lonelier. We search for something, somewhere, that will fill that sense of loss, the emptiness that the French philosopher Blaise Pascal called “the infinite abyss.”
"Throughout history, governments have defined what makes a meaningful life, directing people to serve God, the fatherland, or the communist cause. The results were usually disastrous. The liberal state, by contrast, does not tell its citizens what makes a good life; it leaves that to the individual. It puts in place a set of procedures — elections, free speech, courts — to help secure liberty, fair play, and equality of opportunity. Modern societies protect your life and liberty so that you may individually pursue happiness and fulfillment, defining it as you please so long as you do not impinge on anyone else’s ability to do the same."
"But constructing one’s own meaning of life is not easy; it is much simpler to consult the Bible or the Quran. Many see the rational project of liberalism as a poor substitute for the awesome faith in God that once moved men to build cathedrals and write symphonies."
When describing the triumph of liberal democracy in the book-length version of his famous essay, The End of History, Francis Fukuyama added to his trademark phrase so that the title read, “The End of History and the Last Man.” Fukuyama’s worry was that although victory over communism would leave Western societies rich and tranquil, it would also make everyone passive. The image Fukuyama conjured after the victory over communism was of people with no great ideological cause to defend, who would spend their days pursuing their material needs and wants — and feeling empty, alone and depressed."
"Into this void stepped populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism. They offer people what the German American scholar Erich Fromm called an “escape from freedom.” A distinguished psychologist who studied the rise of fascism, Fromm argued that once human beings live through the chaos of freedom, they get scared. “The frightened individual seeks for somebody or something to tie his self to; he cannot bear to be his own individual self any longer, and he tries frantically to get rid of it and to feel security again by the elimination of this burden: the self,” he wrote."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/03/22/zakaria-age-of-revolutions-liberalism/
"Populist strongmen around the world often claim that the values of an open society — pluralism, tolerance, secularism — are a Western import. They say they are building an authentic national political culture that is distinct from Western liberalism. And it is possible that the erosion of cosmopolitan and liberal ideas in these societies will reveal that they rested on an elite that was educated or inspired by the West, that underneath a less tolerant nationalism lay in wait."
"But by far the greatest danger we face is that in the heart of the West itself, there are people who reject the Enlightenment project. Many voters in the United States, Britain and France are opting for populists who present themselves as being in total opposition to the established order and its embedded values. Populists speak of the paramount importance of God, country, and tradition. These ideas have powerful resonance."
"We live in a revolutionary age. With all the change and transformation that has occurred, people are overwhelmed, anxious and fearful of a future that could mean more disruption, dislocation, and the loss of the world that they grew up in. Some in the West are ready for radicalism. Some outside see this as the moment to break the long dominance of the West and its ideas. But if we tear down liberalism at home, if we allow it to be eroded abroad, we will find that the edifice of ideas and practices that liberalism and democracy have built will also crumble. And we will return to a world that is more impoverished, tense, and conflict-ridden than the one we have known for generations.
You should go read Zakaria's article in the Washington Post.