No Stupid Questions

When a child first hears an adult express a racist attitude they are confused and don’t know what to think. They may not even understand who is in the group being maligned or even have a concept of groups. And even if they do, they may think “huh? I didn’t realize they were all bad.” But like a lot of things you hear as a kid, it just kind of sinks in.

And that seed has been planted. From there, confirmation bias does the rest. Anytime that growing person sees a member of that other group doing something wrong, they notice it and think “hey that’s what Dad was talking about.” Any such missteps from a member of that group get assigned to the whole group. Of course, people not in that group are judged as individuals. Classic in-group / out-group thinking, which is universal.

By the time the person is grown up enough to think properly, they may have accumulated lots of these moments of confirmation bias. By then it’s likely that they start assigning blame to this group by default. Litter on the ground? Probably one of them. Something got stolen? Probably one of them. And of course if race relations are inflamed in general there may be plenty of active fuel for the fire. A gang of “them” beat up one of “us.” Now it’s basically war, and the person we’re talking about didn’t have to do anything or be a direct victim of anything. It’s all just socially transmitted and then reinforced through observation with cognitive bias. Incidentally, this is why we should never stop talking about racism openly, because that’s the only way to interrupt this process going on in the back of peoples minds. Yeah, sorry, Morgan Freeman.

I am with you as a fellow lazy person who can’t spare the energy. But I can see how easily others slip into it. Hitler of course used it to galvanize people and turn that in-group / out-group energy into a political force.

I think nobody mentioned this simple fact: the guy was pretty much mad

The Dude abides. ✌️

Much like the Dude himself, who is surrounded by people who are way too wound up in the world around him, you gotta remember. Sometimes, there's a lot of weird ones, like sexy feminists who swing naked from ceilings to paint, or your whacked-out 'Nam vet buddy who's just never moved on. And then there are assholes who piss on your rug, toe-severing German Nihilists, and rich old geezers who concoct kidnapping schemes to hide that he's been stealing from impoverished kids. And, of course, fascists. Lots and lots of fascists.

Remember, the enemy of Dudeism is Nihilism. And fascists are, usually, either Nihilists, scammers, rug-pissers, or other zealots.

Fascism needs a minority group to oppress, someone else to blame for all the issues makes everything easier. A common enemy also helps unite the others. Look up Umberto Eco, he wrote an essay on how to spot a fascist.

The cult of tradition. “One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements.”

The rejection of modernism. “The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.”

The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

Disagreement is treason. “The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge.”

Fear of difference. “The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Fascism is racist by definition.”

Appeal to social frustration. “One of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups.”

The obsession with a plot. “Thus at the root of Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged.”

The enemy is both strong and weak. “By a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”

Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. “For Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle.”

Contempt for the weak. “Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology.”

Everybody is educated to become a hero. “In Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death.”

Machismo and weaponry. “Machismo implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality.”

Selective populism. “There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.”

Fascism speaks Newspeak. “All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.”

Did nobody mention Nietzsche? Nazi worldview was largely inspired by twisting out cherry picking concepts from his works. The criticism of Christian religions idealizing the meek and looking back towards ancient Rome and Greece for strong, powerful, heroic characters and gods. The ideas of existence of superior and inferior humans. Etc.

Scapegoating minorities was a tool for him to use to get into power, given that most people in Germany distrusted Jewish people at the time and coming off of the great war with massive dept and a broken country, someone would've taken advantage of the situation.

I recall he blamed the original surrender of Germany in WW1 on the Jewish people because the main signatory was Gustav Bauer, the chancellor of Germany who was Jewish.

You're trying to find a rationale for some thing (xenophobia) that is utterly irrational. Some people are just shit humans.

Some 1900 years earlier, the Roman Empire was having problems with the inhabitants of one of their recently conquered territories resisting their authority and decided to make an example of them by expelling them from their territory. They ended up scattered all over the Empire and beyond, whilst maintaining their language, religion and customs. A few hundred years after that, Rome adopted a new religion, worshipping a guy they had put to death a few hundred years earlier in that particular territory, and had to find someone else to blame, and the people they expelled were the most expedient candidate. And so, we had a millennium or two of European Christianity very unsubtly stating that the Jews were the killers of Christ, which got embellished, as urban legends do, with a number of other equally lurid myths about them poisoning wells with the Plague and abducting Christian babies for their blood. People generally (with exceptions) stopped believing in those myths, but the underlying attitudes of suspicion remained ingrained in culture.

Ingrained racist beliefs, as well as a pragmatic 'those are a group that can't fight back if pushed against. I will blame them because I want the majority on my side.'

However one cannot overstate the role cultural antisemitism played. Hitler didn't 'one day wake up.' Europe has had a long history of hating the jewish people. Scapegoating and Persicuting them. Blood liable for example was an accusation that popped up from time to time. Kidnapping people to mix their blood with matzah bread. Complete bunk, but the jewish people are a stateless people who do not share local traditions and norms nor do they worship at the same place. Plus they often found work doing the things that people either couldn't or wouldn't do, which lead to oft conspiricies of jewish money lenders puppeting from the background.

That is the sort of enviroment young Adolf grew up in. Same as how people in the modern US are essentially being taught to think of disadvantaged blacks and mexicans as a existenital threat sucking wealth away from them.

IIRC during the third Crusade, the Christians slaughtered 60,000 Jewish people before they even got out of Germany. The beef goes way back.

Some people will say the origin is Christ's death. But even reading that story it's clear that Europeans and Israelites weren't on good terms then either.

It's hard to find a "cause" for a belief that isn't rational.

There was a large economic element to him persecuting the Jews that gets ignored in normal discourse.

He wanted their assets to shore up German capital among other sources like slave labour at industrial facilities.

Nazi nepo babies are benefing from it to this day but everyone ignores that the same way they ignore how a lot of US capital was extracted from slavery.

Worked the same for Hitler as it does for Elon en Trump. The love for hate, the need to blame, the hunger for power.

Approaching this cynically, all right-wing politicians blame groups as others as being the cause of their country's societal ills. That's just how it works.

Jewish people were just one of the targeted groups, along with LGBT people, disabled people, and communists.

One universal truth throughout history is that it's hard to unite people behind a common goal, but it's easy to unite people against a common enemy.

Listen to any right wing politicians from around the world - their plans for making things better all start with getting rid of someone (be it a group of people or a governmental department).

Dont forget about the insane shit the Japanese did too. This dives into the reasons they did Mark Felton documentary: WW2 Japanese Military Brutality

If you have some time check out the Hardcore History Addendum episode "Superhumanly Inhuman" that delves into the nazis and the Holocaust. I just started it a few days ago

As an authoritarian with an economy and power based upon the willing participation of the people its necessary to have a group u can blame for when shit inevitably goes wrong.

Every politician blames a group (that isn't themselves) for their failings. Trump blames the immigrants the democrats blame racist voters.

Going to the level of mass killings that requires some seriously fucked up shit in ur childhood to permanently fuck u in the head.

woke up one day and said

LOL No. He built this up his whole life. Even wrote a detailed book about his ideas and plans 20 years or so in advance.

He wanted to be an artist, originally. His stepfather wasn't having it, he was rejected from art school, and his step harshly physically punished him while a sibling escaped that (I have a hypothesis on other abuse for that sibling but there are no known facts, so it's irrelevant). Women weren't valued either. I firmly believe a different childhood experience may have had a different outcome. Additionally, plenty of celebrated artists also broke rules of art. We won't ever know for sure.

I can't be arsed going into detail, but I'll give you a half-answer to get you started: "Negative integration". It basically means that ones identity is based on who you aren't as opposed to who you are. Ramp this up to 11, and you further this negative integration into defining who ones enemies are, and that's a core tenet of how fascism takes root.