Strength Without Authoritarianism: What the Left Needs to Reclaim
A Bodymind perspective on security, belonging, identity, and leadership
Politics is not only about policies, numbers, and arguments. It also speaks to fundamental human needs: security, belonging, orientation, recognition, identity, and the sense that we can have some influence over our own future.
This article therefore approaches politics not primarily as a matter of party affiliation, but as a psychological field. It asks why words such as strength, security, order, protection, boundaries, belonging, and responsibility are now so often associated with the political right — and what progressive politics loses when it leaves this language to others.
The argument is not that individual words decide elections, or that social change can be reduced to psychology. The crisis facing social democratic and progressive parties has economic, social, organisational, institutional, and cultural causes.
But language structures perception. It shapes who appears to offer protection, who seems willing to take responsibility, who belongs, and what kind of future can even be imagined.
Strength Was Never Inherently Right-Wing
Historically, progressive politics had no fundamental difficulty with ideas such as strength, solidarity, discipline, or collective power.
The labour movement spoke of the strength of organised workers. Social democratic politics promised security through pensions, housing, healthcare, education, and workers’ rights. Solidarity meant not only empathy, but also the ability to defend shared interests together.
As society changed, however, this political language changed with it. Industrial labour and trade-union ties declined. Globalisation, digitalisation, automation, ecological transformation, and now artificial intelligence are changing professions, social status, and our sense of orientation. Technology does not automatically produce political extremism.
Research does suggest, however, that in certain European contexts greater exposure to automation may be associated with increased support for nationalist and radical-right parties — partly through economic expectations, dissatisfaction, and a reduced sense of political efficacy.
And this is not only about income. People can be materially relatively secure and still feel socially devalued. A profession loses prestige. A familiar way of life begins to seem culturally outdated. The language one has always used suddenly feels inappropriate. One’s social group no longer feels represented.
Research on subjective social status suggests that this sense of recognition matters politically and can connect economic and cultural experiences.
Politics then becomes not only a question of distribution, but also one of dignity and belonging.
A Bodymind Perspective: Security, Belonging, and Direction
In the language of Bodymind Therapy, we can look at this dynamic through three symbolic functions.
The inner animal represents fundamental questions of security, protection, position, and control: Am I safe? Who will protect me? Who has the situation under control?
The inner child seeks belonging: Where is my place? Who is with me? Am I part of a “we”?
The adult part asks about identity, choice, direction, and responsibility: Who am I? What can I influence? Where are we going?
This is not a neurological theory or a political diagnosis. It is a heuristic Bodymind model intended to make different human needs more visible.
The connection to models of human needs such as Maslow’s should also be understood metaphorically. Maslow distinguished, among other things, physiological needs, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation; the idea of a rigidly sequential hierarchy of needs is not sufficiently supported by empirical evidence.
Political communication becomes especially powerful when it reaches several of these levels at the same time.
Why Authoritarian Language Can Be So Effective
Radical-right communication is often very effective at giving simple answers to these three questions.
To the need for security, it says: I will protect you.
To the need for belonging: You belong with us.
To the need for orientation: I know where we need to go.
It uses words that immediately create a scene: strength, security, order, borders, homeland, family, identity, sovereignty, control. There is a threat. There is a “we.” There is a boundary. And someone promises to decide.
Parts of progressive culture, by contrast, more often use terms such as problematising, deconstructing, raising awareness, privilege, inclusivity, vulnerability, complexity, or plurality. Many of these concepts are necessary. They help make injustice, abuses of power, and exclusion visible.
The problem begins when critique becomes almost the only political register.
Deconstruction can show what is wrong, but it does not automatically tell us what should be built in its place. Inclusion tells us who should not be excluded, but it does not always answer what connects the people who belong. Critiques of power explain how power can be abused, but they do not replace the question of how legitimate power should be organised.
Whoever Names the Need Often Defines the Political Terrain
When one side speaks about security, boundaries, identity, and belonging, while the other mainly explains why these concepts can be dangerous, a structural problem emerges. The first side names the need. The second reacts to its definition of that need.
Progressive politics may then spend its time explaining why security must not mean repression, boundaries must not mean exclusion, and identity must not mean nationalism — while its political opponent has already determined the subject of the conversation and the emotional meaning attached to it.
Research on political communication suggests that actors on the far right can indeed influence which issues mainstream parties take up in their communication, particularly around migration and Islam.
The democratic task is therefore not to deny these needs. It is to answer them differently.
The Authoritarian, Weak, and Authoritative Father
Another Bodymind metaphor can be useful here: the symbolic function of the father. This does not refer to a biological father or to male gender. “Father” is used here to describe a psychological function: boundaries, orientation, protection, responsibility, decision-making, and the capacity to provide stability.
The terms authoritarian and authoritative draw on a distinction from developmental psychology. Diana Baumrind distinguished an authoritarian style, centred strongly on control and obedience, from an authoritative style that combines clear boundaries and expectations with responsiveness, relationship, and increasing autonomy.
Its application to politics here is metaphorical, not an empirically established political typology.
This symbolic function can take very different forms.
The authoritarian father says: You are afraid. I know who is to blame. Follow me, and I will protect you.
The weak father says: Your fear is irrational. You should not feel this way.
The authoritative father says: You are afraid. Let us look together at what we actually need protection from and what we can do.
The difference is crucial. Authoritarian leadership uses fear to create dependency. Weak leadership avoids responsibility or treats human needs for boundaries, security, and orientation as if they were themselves problematic. Authoritative leadership takes fear seriously without exploiting it. It offers direction without doing people’s thinking for them. It sets boundaries without turning them into enemy images.
When Criticism of Authoritarianism Becomes Distrust of Authority
Progressive movements have good reasons to be critical of hierarchy. Power can be abused. Authority can become oppressive. Boundaries can exclude. Identity can be instrumentalised in nationalist or racist ways.
But another confusion can emerge from these experiences: authority becomes equated with authoritarianism. Power with domination. Boundaries with exclusion. Discipline with oppression. Strength with aggression. Identity with nationalism.
Yet the human needs behind these concepts do not disappear. If progressive cultures stop talking about strength, belonging, boundaries, or power, those needs remain — and other political forces can take ownership of them.
Power does not automatically disappear in groups that reject formal hierarchy either. It may simply become informal, harder to see, and less accountable.
Horizontal structures can be valuable. Consensus can be valuable. Sensitivity can be valuable. But at some point, someone still has to take responsibility, make decisions, and live with the consequences.
Reclaiming Strength Does Not Mean Moving to the Right
The answer cannot be to imitate authoritarian politics. Nor should progressive values be weakened by trading minority rights, feminism, ecological responsibility, or pluralism for supposedly “tougher” politics.
Strategically, simply moving closer to radical-right positions is not a reliable solution either. Comparative research finds no general evidence that mainstream parties systematically take votes away from the radical right by adopting its positions.
The task is more demanding: strength must be separated from violence. Power from domination. Authority from authoritarianism. Boundaries from hostility. Identity from exclusion. Belonging from homogeneity.
A different political vocabulary might therefore include ideas such as democratic strength, shared power, solidaristic security, inclusive belonging, open identity, competent authority, responsible boundaries, and just order.
The moral direction changes without denying the underlying human need. Not strength or care, but strength that protects. Not identity or diversity, but an identity capable of holding difference. Not authority or autonomy, but authority that enables autonomy.
The Future Needs Orientation, Not Just Adaptation
This question becomes even more important in the face of automation, artificial intelligence, and economic transformation. Two simple political responses are tempting.
One says: The future is coming anyway. Adapt. That can feel like abandonment.
The other says: We need to bring the old world back. That can offer security through nostalgia.
An authoritative response would be more complex: change is happening. Some jobs will disappear or change dramatically. Status, income, and social security may be threatened.
That needs to be politically shaped. Such a politics could offer education and retraining, social protection, participation in productivity gains, and public investment — while also asking for learning, effort, and personal responsibility.
The previously mentioned relationship between robotisation and support for the radical right should not be interpreted deterministically. It describes average relationships in particular countries and periods. It does not mean that automation inevitably produces political radicalisation, nor that these findings can simply be transferred to every form of technological change.
Protection, then, does not mean shielding people from every challenge. It means creating conditions under which change can be managed.
Protection Without Infantilisation
This may be the most important distinction.
The authoritarian father says: You are afraid. I will tell you whom to hate.
The weak father says: Your fear is wrong.
The authoritative father says: You are afraid. Let us look at what is real, what is not, what we need protection from, and what we can build together.
The same applies to belonging. The authoritarian father says: You belong with us because the others do not. The weak father says: Identity should not matter. The authoritative father says: You are allowed to belong without us having to turn someone else into a necessary enemy.
A democratic society needs a “we.” The key question is not whether this “we” exists, but how it is defined. Is it so narrow that difference is experienced as a threat? Or is it strong enough to hold diversity without dissolving every form of shared identity?
From Critique to Construction
Progressive politics has become particularly good at making visible what must not happen: discrimination, exploitation, racism, sexism, abuses of power, ecological destruction, and authoritarian rule. That critique remains necessary.
But a political culture cannot consist only of prevention. It must also be able to say: What do we want to protect? What do we want to build? What is worth taking responsibility for? What kind of community do we want to create? What do we expect from one another?
An authoritative progressive politics would need to speak naturally again about security, dignity, community, competence, the future, work, protection, courage, and responsibility.
Not fewer rights, less ecology, or less protection for minorities, but a political language capable of expressing both care and agency.
From Either-Or to Both-And
Spiral Dynamics can serve as a metaphor here. The model developed from the work of Clare Graves and was later elaborated by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan. It describes different value systems that may become more prominent under different social and historical conditions.
For this article, the transition from Green to Yellow is particularly relevant. In the model, Green emphasises pluralism, equality, relationships, ecology, and criticism of unjust hierarchies.
Yellow is not meant to reject these values, but to integrate them more systemically: freedom and structure, care and competence, openness and boundaries, autonomy and responsibility.
Spiral Dynamics is not an empirically validated universal theory of political development. Terms such as “Green” or “Yellow” are used here solely as heuristic language. The so-called Mean Green Meme is likewise not an established psychological construct, but a later cultural metaphor within the Integral and Spiral Dynamics traditions.
As a metaphor, however, the model can express a useful idea: complex societies do not always need an either-or. They need the capacity to hold apparent opposites at the same time: authority and freedom, strength and care, identity and pluralism, boundaries and openness, innovation and protection, the individual and the community.
Not every problem can be solved with more freedom. Not every problem with more control. Not every problem with more care. Not every problem with more competition. Systems thinking instead asks: What combination does this particular situation require?
A Different Language of Political Strength
Such politics would also need simpler language without becoming simplistic.
For example: Strong because we stand together. Free because we are secure. Different, but part of the same “we.” Protect today so we can shape tomorrow. Power to change things. Rules so power cannot be abused.
This language can reach several human levels at once.
To the inner animal, it says: You are not alone. We take real dangers seriously.
To the inner child: You belong.
To the adult part: The future is not guaranteed. But we can help shape it.
That is what distinguishes democratic strength from authoritarian strength. Authoritarian politics says: Follow me. I will save you. A mature democratic politics might instead say: Let us build structures strong enough to protect us, intelligent enough to navigate complexity, and free enough to allow development.
The Good Father Is Not the Strongman
The alternative to the authoritarian father is not the absent father. Nor is it the “strongman” who claims to have all the answers.
The alternative is an authoritative function: capable of holding fear without exploiting it; capable of setting boundaries without creating enemies; capable of creating belonging without demanding homogeneity; capable of using power without confusing it with personal domination; capable of showing direction without abolishing critical thought.
Politically, this attitude might sound something like this:
The world is complex. The problems are real. Not everything will be easy. But we have knowledge, institutions, skills, and collective strength with which to face them.
We are here. We take responsibility. This is the direction. Now we move.
Sources and Further Reading
Bandau, F. (2023). What Explains the Electoral Crisis of Social Democracy? A Systematic Review of the Literature. Government and Opposition, 58(1), 183–205.
Anelli, M., Colantone, I., & Stanig, P. (2019). We Were the Robots: Automation and Voting Behavior in Western Europe. IZA Discussion Paper No. 12485.
Baumrind, D. (1966). Effects of Authoritative Parental Control on Child Behavior. Child Development, 37(4), 887–907.
Baumrind, D. (1967). Child Care Practices Anteceding Three Patterns of Preschool Behavior. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 75(1), 43–88.
Beck, D. E., & Cowan, C. C. (1996). Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change. Blackwell.
Gidron, N., & Hall, P. A. (2017). The Politics of Social Status: Economic and Cultural Roots of the Populist Right. British Journal of Sociology, 68(S1), S57–S84.
Graves, C. W. (1970). Levels of Existence: An Open System Theory of Values. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 10(2), 131–155.
Krause, W., Cohen, D., & Abou-Chadi, T. (2023). Does Accommodation Work? Mainstream Party Strategies and the Success of Radical Right Parties. Political Science Research and Methods, 11(1), 172–179.
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370–396.
Saldivia Gonzatti, D., & Völker, T. (2026). Far-right agenda setting: How the far right influences the political mainstream. European Journal of Political Research, 65(1), 101–123.
Wahba, M. A., & Bridwell, L. G. (1976). Maslow Reconsidered: A Review of Research on the Need Hierarchy Theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 15(2), 212–240.
