In the West, "authoritarianism" is one of the many increasingly popular buzzwords used to describe particular styles of governance. It often invokes imaginary of jackbooted thugs beating up defenceless citizens and political opponents alike in the streets in 1930s European settings - or fascism, in other words. However, authoritarianism as a concept has inherently very little to do with fascism, aggressively top-down rule or even policy-making in general. It is, rather, a description of one's preference to conformity and willingness to defend it at any costs.

You might have read the article on authoritarianism on RationalWiki. In it, an authoritarian is described as one that prefers the "honoring of power over reason", "loves rules, and loves to apply them". However, it also offers a description of what is considered a "true authoritarian", who values power over rules. This is when the article starts making a turn for the weird and serving up chest-thumping statements about the Wiki being "anarcho-syndicalist" and upholder of the "spirit" of the rule and some such. The thing is, conformity is not about adherence to rules, but norms and normalcy, and "spirit" of the rule is exactly both of those things. At this point, it is important to question if the mental association between an authoritarian and a person that seeks and exerts power over others is inherently faulty, because this is what people tend to focus on when discussing authoritarianism, and because this is often what anarchists point to when justifying their particular arrangement of deckchairs.

So, who are the real authoritarians? An authoritarian, in a nutshell, is one that prioritises hierarchy, moral clarity and unity above other societal values. In other words, an authoritarian is not obligatorily one that seeks power, but one that rejects differences and discords and craves for strong leadership to set the matter straight, or, as one WaPo article puts it, "Authoritarians obey".

Applying this understanding of authoritarianism to otherwise well-meaning, (hypothetical) political systems, it is clear that they themselves are not sufficient to halt the rise of oppressive regimes. A political system is worthwhile only if its participants are willing to uphold it. When people are frustrated with seemingly irreconcilable splits in consensus or the apparent lack of reaction to external threats (including natural and man-made disasters), those with authoritarian tendencies will be the among the first to lose faith in the system and begin searching for quicker, more forceful solutions to the perceived problems. As long as there is someone willing to offer such solutions, authoritarians will begin offering their support to this someone even if that means abandoning the current political structure and its underlying values. Thus, unless you can somehow convince everyone that why those underlying values are worth upholding, the authoritarians can and will prevail no matter how flawless you believe your preferred system is.