InĀ Authentocrats: Culture, Politics and the New SeriousnessĀ (2018), Kennedy defines authentocracy as āa laundered, centrist populism that seeks to wield power with reference to an authenticity that is always ājust over thereāā.Ā It fetishises an imagined provincial English working class that is socially conservative, poorly educated, allergic to Bohemian lifestyles, and far too preoccupied by the grind of work to concern itself with anything that smacks of metropolitan liberalism. āImputationā, Kennedy continues, āis central to [authentocracyās] workings: itās rarely the commentator themselves that wants less immigration, or, letās face it, more racism, but someone more allegedly authentic who is, weāre told, not being given the opportunity to speak for themselves.āĀ The practitioner of authentocratic imputation will claim to be acting as a conduit through which the silent majority can finally speak, but in practice this amounts to the laundering of ideas, a way to frame oneās unsavoury beliefs as those of authentic others, who are a population of innocent ordinaries that is thought to be beyond serious scrutiny.
Rebecca Jane Morgan, Gender Heretics: Evangelicals, Feminists, and the Alliance against Trans Liberation
