Thanks for the clarification. It's been a long time since I read the book, so I'm not really informed enough to have a good discussion on the specifics of it. I do remember feeling that it seemed somewhat politicized, possibly compromising the "science" (social science lol), and that surely there must exist left-wing authoritarians as well.

This is interesting, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality:

The research on ideology, politics, and racist prejudice, by John Duckitt and Chris Sibley, identified two types of authoritarian worldview: (i) that the social world is dangerous, which leads to right-wing authoritarianism; and (ii) that the world is a ruthlessly competitive jungle, which leads to social dominance orientation. In a meta-analysis of the research, Sibley and Duckitt explained that the social-dominance orientation scale helps to measure the generalization of prejudice and other authoritarian attitudes that can exist within social groups. Although both the right-wing authoritarianism scale and the social-dominance orientation scale can accurately measure authoritarian personalities, the scales usually are not correlated.

"Social dominance orientation" sounds similar to the implicit goals of many in the social justice movement. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation:

Individuals who score high in SDO desire to maintain and, in many cases, increase the differences between social statuses of different groups, as well as individual group members. Typically, they are dominant, driven, tough, and seekers of power. People high in SDO also prefer hierarchical group orientations. Often, people who score high in SDO adhere strongly to belief in a "dog-eat-dog" world.

See the "anti-egalitarian" scale specifically. Counter-intuitively, seeking "equality" is a no-no among social justice types. The theory is flawed because once again "authoritarian" is implicitly coupled to "right-wing", but there may be a grain of truth somewhere in there.

It is possible that during the Obama era, many of the "social dominance" authoritarians saw which way the wind was blowing and switched sides to maintain their position on the top of the social pyramid. This would explain why their general behaviors are the same, but the specifics are different. It would also explain why so many who supported Bush and his wars have now aligned themselves with the socjus cult and superficial "woke" progressivism.