ABSTRACT
One particular agenda defines the authoritarian personality: the hate-and-punish agenda. Along with that agenda come three specific clusters of traits and qualities: an aggression cluster, an exploitation cluster, and a narcissism cluster. This chapter discusses the traits and qualities that make up the exploitation cluster. The 12 traits and qualities that make up the exploitation cluster are: intrusiveness; manipulation; shaming efforts, derision, and ridicule; religiosity and religious cover; anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism; hypocrisy; diminishment; prejudice and bigotry; preoccupation with sex and promiscuity; cynicism; love of chaos and disasters; and deception. The hatred-and-punishment authoritarian agenda produces a person who takes pleasure in cruelty and who regularly shames, derides, and ridicules his current targets. Authoritarians are immediately and virulently antagonistic to any rational argument and to anyone who thinks rationally, making communication with an authoritarian bewildering for someone who supposes that reasonable arguments ought to persuade and ought to matter.
