‘The Authoritarian Personality’ and the Attack on Catholic Masculinity 

Premiering in March of 2005, during the searing height of the Iraq War and the second term of George W. Bush's presidency, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of this television series in shaping the minds and hearts of young men and women who came of age during the post-9/11 era.

Grey's Anatomy showcases the emotionally distraught, sexually promiscuous but nonetheless powerful and deeply reflective Meredith Grey, a talented Seattle surgeon, as an archetype of the post-feminist American woman, who is adored and mimicked by women around the world.

Normalizing family trauma and mental illness and occasionally dipping into Sex and the City-tier female hedonism, Grey's Anatomy nonetheless markets itself as an advertisement for the now-clichéd "strong independent woman."

Although an emotional train wreck, Grey nonetheless presents herself as the ideal career woman who, powered by wine, Xanax and cats, negotiates tremendous power over her coworkers and in the various relationships she forms with submissive and effeminate beta males.

Grey stands in stark contrast to the well-known, ubiquitous "man-boy" or "dumb dad" archetype epitomized by figures like Homer Simpson from The Simpsons as well as Peter Griffin from the even cruder and scandalous series Family Guy.

This goofy, incompetent and ironically sexually degenerate as well as emotionally impotent TV dad, who has his roots in figures like Archie Bunker from All in the Family and Al Bundy from the late 80s–early 90s hit Married With Children, has become, along with the submissive beta male who "orbits" the social sphere of a powerful Wonder Woman like Meredith Grey, one of the key archetypes of the Western male.

Both forms of these archetypes are fundamentally crippled and inhibited from taking control of their lives and impacting their communities, let alone their own lives.

Rather than taking political action in his community and on the national level, the dumb dad and the beta orbiter both imbibe mass-produced news media and grumble (in the case of the dumb dad) or make ironic tweets (in the case of the beta male).

Whether commanding his Xbox or his Nintendo Switch, the post-millennial male derives an illusionary sense of satisfaction from playing "Call of Duty" or the latest incarnation of "The Legend of Zelda."

While his ancestors conquered entire continents and fought man, beast and nature to forge a civilization, the post-millennial male cheers on his favorite sports team — often composed of players and steered by team owners who by no means feel any sense of kinship or solidarity with their fans.

The post-millennial man, dominated by his wife and mocked by his children, is a spectator of life who dwells in a world of illusion in which he has as much freedom as a zoo animal but feels as though, because he has the ability to view any and every type of perversion on the internet, he is a master of the universe.

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This horrific slavery of which virtually every Western man (and, in fact, many men in countries such as South Korea and Japan) is trapped, however, is not simply an accidental phenomenon or merely an effect of living in the post-industrial, digital age.

The emasculation of post-millennial man is something that was deliberately planned out and crafted in the 20th century in the ruins of the Second World War.

There are many books in which the destruction of men of the world was chartered. However, no book more clearly depicts this diabolical plan than the 1950 work The Authoritarian Personality.

One of the classic works produced by the now-notorious Frankfurt School of social criticism, one of the poisonous wellsprings of the cultural Marxism that has now nearly destroyed much of the West, The Authoritarian Personality presents a blueprint for how the then-rising global elite would deconstruct Western man.

Piggybacking off the outrage and horror at the tremendous destruction wrought on the world by the rise and fall of German national socialism, Italian fascism and Japanese authoritarianism, The Authoritarian Personality presents itself as a solution to the toxic masculinity that allegedly had driven the rise of these early 20th-century authoritarian movements.

The Authoritarian Personality rightly condemns the fanaticism and cruelty that was present in fascism and justly denounces the racism and ethnic chauvinism that caused the death of so many people during the Second World War.

However, while presenting itself a justified critique of the evils of the neopagan fascism, The Authoritarian Personality further condemns many noble, virtuous and morally upright qualities present among the American men who tore down the ugly edifice of pagan fascism.

Not only does the book identify fascism with neurotic behavior, but it even condemns any form of patriotism or sense of ethnic solidarity as being a sign of mental illness.

Creating a trope that would be repeated ad nauseam after the Second World War, The Authoritarian Personality links strong religious devotion as being a sign, not only of mental illness, but as being a mark of fascism. Anyone who believes in divine providence or what the book's authors refer to as "mystical determinants of the individual's fate" are unbalanced lunatics who are to be identified with the same people who voted for Adolf Hitler.

Sexual continence and aversion to homosexuality is another sign of both mental instability as well as a proclivity to be fascist. The work identifies a mentally ill, potential fascist as someone who has an "[e]xaggerated concern with sexual 'goings on'" or someone who believes that "[h]omosexuality is a particularly rotten form of social delinquency."

Thus, those Christians who view fornication, adultery, or sodomy as immoral must, according to the experts who crafted The Authoritarian Personality, are potential fascists who must be "red flagged" and re-educated in the school of tolerance.

Furthermore, even an American who is especially virile and athletic and believes that "an active way of life" is noble and honorable or who emphasizes "competitiveness as a value" is a potential Nazi.

What is further interesting is that The Authoritarian Personality's authors target, with some degree of subtlety, American Christianity in general and American Catholic communities as being hotbeds of mental illness and fascists.

The authors write of religion in general as creating a climate of indoctrination into the authoritarian personality:

There is reason to believe that individuals, out of their needs to conform and to belong and to believe and through such devices as imitation and conditioning, often take over more or less ready-made the opinions, attitudes, and values that are characteristic of the groups in which they have membership. To the extent that the ideas which prevail in such a group are implicitly or explicitly antidemocratic, the individual group member might be expected to be receptive to propaganda having the same general direction.

Following this thinly veiled attack on Christianity, we can see that, to the authors of The Authoritarian Personality, religious enclaves need to be specifically targeted for infiltration and deconstruction in order to prevent the rise of the next Mussolini from an Italian-American Catholic parish.

As a solution to the potential fascist in America, The Authoritarian Personality presents a new model male who is tolerant, meek, self-indulgent. Driven by his passions and fears, this new post-modern man is pliant and malleable to the distorters of Western culture who were preparing a deluge of music, movies, television shows and other forms of entertainment to shape this new model male according to the whims of these people who proudly adopted the title of "cultural terrorists."

Catholic men are called to be heroes, to be lords not only of their own homes but of their own communities and, ultimately, their own countries.

In his letter to the king of Cyprus, commonly known as De Regno, St. Thomas Aquinas explains that one of the noble forms of government is that take the form of "governance by noble men" who are called "optimates" or the "best men."

Catholic men around the world must strive to be true men of excellence and virtue, not man-boys who are beta goofballs.

A truly great and glorious Catholic society will be built by great men guided by God, for, contrary to the belief of the authors of The Authoritarian Personality, evil arises not from strength and virtue but from the weakness of well-intentioned men.