alt Hacker NewsIn my opinion its: Village life. Germany is a state of small villages/towns/cities/city-states, interconnected with fairly productive lines of communication - but it is very easy to live ones entire life in a German village and never leave.
At village scales, authoritarianism is given more credence by the individual because ones life boundaries are reduced to the immediate environment, which is not really sustainable without structured hierarchy.
Incidentally, this is also a factor in why American’s adopt authoritarianism so rapidly as well - spending 3 hours of ones life in a bubble, on the freeway, commuting, is extremely damaging to ones psyche. Road-rage and neighbor hatred abound in such circumstances.
The solution to authoritarianism is travel beyond ones bounds. The roots of totalitarian-authoritarianism grow deeply in the desire to be free of the ‘filth of others’ - once you expand your horizons to embrace that ‘filth of others’, through travel and cultural interaction, that ‘filth of others’ becomes ‘the flavor of others’ instead.
This is easily demonstrated: talk to a German who has never left their home town/talk to a German who regularly visits vastly different parts of the world. You will see the authoritarian in the former, but the libertarian in the latter.
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Libertarian is not always better. A Goldilocks position is the best. Change is okay but you must first understand why boundaries and norms were created (Chesterton's fence). Extremely tolerant people also allow authoritarian cultures to settle, create enclaves and outnumber their own culture which is a bit of an own goal.
This seems a bit incoherent, there must be a real reason for them to start thinking the “filth of others” has some basis in reality…
It couldn’t have arisen just randomly or on a lark.