coldhearted scientist وداد

This is what I wrote on these matters in a post yesterday:

What is it about the Freyre apologists?

1. Arrogance: they are an enlightened elite and everyone else is unsubtle.
2. Argument by authority: because of their identity they have special knowledge nobody else can have.
3. Apologetics: they have excuses for everything; only they know what just happened before both of your eyes.
4. Projection, projective identification, or something like these: “You are an X, therefore you must think Y, and I know this to be true.”
5. They refuse rational conversation and instead attempt to manipulate their interlocutors; communication is not the goal and disorientation is.

These are all hallmarks of authoritarian behavior. Notice the invasiveness, the streaks of verbal abuse, and the focus on maintaining discursive power and diminishing the interlocutor.

Here is my question: name some instances of authoritarian discourse not related to or somehow engaging an idea of nation. How does one establish power over another in and through language?

This question has occurred to me because, running through my mental Rolodex of verbal abusers I have known (and as you can tell by now I have known all too many), every one of them had an identity as an excuse for their behavior (“I know things you can never understand…”).

Axé.