New Authoritarianism - New Subculture?

Abstract

The extremely radical (mostly youth) political organizations may be regarded as peculiar youth subcultures. We believe it is true not only for Hungary where relatively rich social scientific knowledge exists on the majority perception of such organizations. However, not many instances are found for the empirical sociological study of the organizations. The sample of the survey conducted in the autumn of 2010 by the Centre of Conflict Research at ELTE and the Sociology and Social Policy Department at the University of Debrecen consists of members of a right-wing paramilitary organization (The National Army of Guardsmen Heritage Protection and Civil Guard Organization) founded three years ago and, as control sample, the members of an environmental protection (non-radical, non-militant) organization (E-mission) operating in the same region (N=100-100 persons). The research focuses on new authoritarianism, which only partly rests on the “classical” authoritarianism, i.e. the socially determined pattern of the modern individual interiorized throughout socialization, as described by freudo-marxism in the beginning of the 20 th  century. In developing the theoretical background and the operationalization, besides traditional dimensions and socializational characteristics, we relied on theories (e. g. social dominance) and topics (e. g. conflict perception and reduction) which have not been applied in such studies before. Based on interpretational-statistical models, this paper analyses the socio-cultural factors that shape the social  dominance orientation characteristics for the two sub-samples.