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Authoritarianism and Support for Israel in Jewish America
Tue, August 13, 2:30 to 4:10pm, Sheraton New York, Floor: Third Floor, Riverside BallroomAbstract
Ever since Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford published The Authoritarian Personality in 1950, authoritarianism has been widely theorized and operationalized as a predictor of right-wing nationalism. However, such research has generally ignored the case of Jewish diaspora Zionism, a troubling omission given the pivotal role of Jewish American Zionist organizations in contemporary policy toward Israel. Conversely, scholars of Jewish American support for Israel have largely overlooked the potential influence of psychosocial factors in general and authoritarianism in particular. The present study attempts to fill such gaps in the literature. Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2016 Time Series Study, this study regresses Jewish Americans’ support for the state of Israel on measures of authoritarian personality. Results of the bivariate OLS regression show a significant predictive effect of authoritarianism on support for Israel. The subsequent multivariate regressions find that authoritarianism retains statistical significance even after relevant demographic variables and measures of Jewish identification are introduced. Given this observed link between authoritarianism and Zionism, the following conclusions are drawn: (a) scholars of Zionism and Jewish America ought to take seriously the authoritarian personality and other psychosocial factors as potential determinants of support for Israel; (b) authoritarianism scholars should in turn devote more attention to Zionism, Israel, and the Jewish diaspora as objects of inquiry; and (c) Zionism and the state of Israel are not wholly unique among Western nationalist movements and should therefore be critically examined alongside these other nationalisms.