A political theorist once envisioned the flawed machinery of our democracy giving rise to an authoritarian regime

After World War II, historians, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and other researchers tried to understand how the madness of Nazism infected and engulfed an entire country. Many of them also pondered the unimaginable: Could the type of authoritarianism and fascism that took hold in Germany also infect the United States, that was at the time, the world’s leading democracy?

In 1950, Daniel J. Levinson, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Nevitt Sanford and Theodor W. Adorno published the groundbreaking book “The Authoritarian Personality,” which featured one of the first — and still among the most rigorous — examinations of authoritarian behavior and values in American society. Experiments by Stanley Milgram and Phil Zimbardo in the 1960s and 1970s also showed that many Americans possess a high level of deference to authority, would go as far as hurting strangers if so ordered and in many ways could readily succumb to fascism and authoritarianism.

Recent work by Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler has documented a disturbing increase in authoritarian attitudes in the United States over the last generation, mostly among conservatives and right-leaning independents. Ever since Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 “It Can’t Happen Here,” the prospect of an America where democracy is replaced by fascism and authoritarianism has been a standard trope in literature, films, video games and television shows.

Of course, these examples are intellectual exercises, research projects and speculative works of fiction. By comparison, with the election of Donald Trump, Americans (and the world) are watching authoritarianism unfold in real time.

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