Identity Authoritarianism

when the adversary becomes an obstacle

Abstract

This article proposes the concept of identity authoritarianism to describe a specific form of contemporary political conflict. It argues that, as collective institutions of representation and belonging, such as political parties, trade unions, and associations, lose their capacity to mediate interests and identities, identity tends to occupy by itself the space previously divided between institutional mediation and personal belonging, becoming a direct criterion of political legitimacy. This shift has a specific consequence: because identity does not allow for negotiation in the same way as an interest, its politicization tends to turn disagreements into existential threats. The article distinguishes this dynamic from moralized political conflict in general through a precise feature: identity authoritarianism occurs when the adversary ceases to be perceived as a legitimate participant in the political contest and comes to be understood as an obstacle to the realization of one's own identity, making the restriction of their presence and participation in public debate not an exception, but a coherent consequence of this reasoning, occurring on both the right and the left. This is a theoretical formulation, developed through the articulation of traditions in social theory and political science, which seeks to offer an analytical framework for phenomena currently described, in overly generic terms, as polarization or populism.