A Composite of King Kong and the Suburban Barber

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(Revisiting Adorno’s “Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda” in an Era of Resurgent Populism)

In this paper, I revisit Adorno's account of Freud's social psychology as way of understanding the mechanisms of idealization of, and identification with, "great little men," by which "people become a mass." I conclude with some thoughts about how Adorno helps us to understand the appeal of authoritarian populists in our own age.