Authoritarian Personalities and "Going Nazi"

Good post by Sara at Orcinus (http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/01/who-goes-nazi.html)
about what we would today call authoritarian personalities (and those who knuckle under to it), from an informed viewpoint of yesteryear (but from before it all played out).

Don't skip the original, either. Outstanding (and a reminder of a more literate era): (http://www.harpers.org/archive/1941/08/0020122)
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In 1939, Time magazine named Dorothy Thompson the second most influential woman in America after Eleanor Roosevelt. The first American journalist expelled from Nazi Germany -- and still then the wife of Sinclair Lewis -- she was one of the country's leading voices against fascism. She'd seen it up close in Europe, and was furiously outspoken about its creeping influence in America.

In the August 1941 issue of Harper's, Thompson wrote a short piece, based on her long European experience, outlining which Americans at any given dinner party might be expected to "go Nazi." It's still in Harper's archives, and it's as insightful and prescient now as it was on the eve of America's entry into World War II:
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.... Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes–you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success–they would all go Nazi in a crisis.

Believe me, nice people don’t go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them.

Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t-whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi. It’s an amusing game. Try it at the next big party you go to.
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a wonderful essay.

It seems to me there are always people capable of cruelty and evil, but it is the larger society that must restrain them. If people in government are amoral, or corporations are leading the way, then there is no restraints on the crueler types of people. Also I think of Albert Schweitzer who said that technology has developed faster than man's ability to keep a rein on the morality of it.

'Nazi' are the young people who grow up in a situation where each day is a little more totalitarian than the day before.

Young people in this country have had seven years of their minds being altered. Because of this influence, many of them may not be "Nazis' but their ability to understand what life involves in a country that is truly democratic has been lost, perhaps for good.


And now when our Democratic Presidential candidate might well be someone with a Nixonian philosophy - and young people don't understand what you are talking about - well, it goes to show that those wanting a totalitarian state were smart in cutting back all the programs except math, science and reading.

The arts programs and history classes help a yong person develop critical thinking skills. Add to the mix the tremendous numbers of people raising their children amidst Evangelical propaganda and we have a real recipe for disaster.

... have malformed, corrupted, or missing selves. Nazism appeals to the battered and the broken.

National Socialism bundles extreme hope with extreme fear, wrapping the image of superiority around a rotten core of inferiority. As a philosophy and an aesthetic, it appeals strongly to people whose psyche mirrors the philosophy.

Narcissists who have a damaged "real self" and live through a constructed, idealized "false self" see in it the ability to finally submerge and drown the "real self" for good, and become the ideal; they hear validation that the reasons for their lack of success do not rest within them, but without. National Socialism tells them, "it's not your fault, and never has been. You really are the hero you want to be."

People with sociopathic tendencies who are aware that they do not have the same kind of empathy and emotional response toward the suffering of others are relieved by being told that their weakness is their strength, and that the people needs people like them who can dispense with sentimentality and do the hard work that needs to be done. National Socialism tells them, "you are needed because of who you are and what you can do. You can see clearly."

People who tend toward paranoia, people who see patterns that do not exist and whose minds seek hidden explanations, feel relieved by the explanations Nazism offers of why things are as they are and by the plans offered for real action that can be taken to attack or build something in the visible world that will change the hidden world. The hidden world such people really want to change is the world inside them, but Nazism offers a proxy for the war within. National Socialism tells them, "you were right all along. You really can understand this mad world, and you are not alone in it."

People who feel invisible, forgotten, who feel so ordinary as to be completely replaceable, who feel that their lives do not matter, find a place where ordinariness is elevated to heroism. The myth of the common people, the man and woman and child of the true people and the good soil, embraces them. National Socialism tells them, "you are what we are working to save. You are the king and the queen, the real self of the nation. You, exactly as you are, are important."

These are the kind of people who are susceptible to becoming true believers and party activists. Narcissists make good political speakers; wind them up and they'll go all night. The social rejects will be so happy to be needed and wanted that they'll stuff envelopes and slap up posters until their hands fall off. The salt-of-the-earth type will save the world through their neighborhood watch, and watch they will; they are the "boots on the ground".

Who votes Nazi is a different question, as people have and will vote Nazi without necessarily being Nazi themselves. Mainly, they'll vote Nazi as a way to vote against something else. With rather reasonable, ordinary, well-put-together people, their fears will get them into the ballot box. Frankly, the common voter might believe that the Nazis and the Communists are both rotten to the core, but if they believe that the Communists will take their little businesses and their scraps of savings and the Nazis will let them keep it, they'll vote Nazi to save their butter and egg money from the clutches of the Reds! Even those who are frightened by the thuggishness of the SA will choose the Nazi list to get that power on their side if they are more frightened by the thugs on the other side. This works better in districts with fewer parties, but even where there are many parties, the thing is to convince people that nothing between the Nazis on one side and the Communists on the other side actually exists in any meaningful or effective way.

This kind of black and white, left or right, polarized thinking works best with people who are insecure in their understanding and who want to know for certain what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is not true. In other words, it works with people who are smart enough to know that they're not all that smart, and who are heavily invested in being smart regardless. These are the petty tyrants and blowhards, the family dictator, middle managers, unhappy housewives, all those who shit and are shat upon, all those whose worst fear is being wrong. They can eventually be converted into true believers, because they lack the capacity to say "I was wrong." Once they go Nazi, they won't go back. If they begin to suspect they've made the wrong choice, their reaction will be to convince themselves and the others around them that they were right to begin with so that nobody knows they made a mistake. Those voters, people like that, are the Nazi bread and butter. Flood a market with information, overwhelm it with ideas, and these people will bob up to the surface, flailing for solid ground. Give them the simple ideas of National Socialism, repeated simply, and they will take them in as their own.

They cannot grasp the intricacies of Christian Theology, so they go for the "two legs good - four legs bad" thinking of Old Testament clobber passages.

You said:

"Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t have malformed, corrupted, or missing selves. Nazism appeals to the battered and the broken."

Umm excuse me, but alot of traumatized people are very aware of the dangers of abusive people in positions of power .
Nazi stuff appeals to frustrated narcissists,rabid bullies ,petty authoritarians,manipulative people and the people unaware of how trauma hurts a person fall into it.

I get really disgusted when people point their fingers at traumatized people, or people with mental illness as if it means we are nothing inside, and say WE will become the fascists, this is a popular lie and it irritates the crap out of me when people repeat it..

In reality its the "conservative" types,the 'players', the control freaks, the back wards romanticizing nostalgia types,the bully,the popular ones,the criminal, the greed heads, the hyper competitive, the vain, the abusers,the dominator's, the mean people that become tyrants under pressure.In other words the mainstreamers.

What that says about me, well... probably not what you think.

Nowhere did I say that all or even most people who have been victimized, battered, broken, who have low self-esteem or who are driven by fears will become fascists. The dynamics are similar to the dynamics of any other kind of abuse. Most people who become abusers were themselves abused. However, most people who are abused do not become abusers. Most A can be B without implying that most B are A. Of course it is true that "alot of traumatized people are very aware of the dangers of abusive people in positions of power". "A lot" is not "all", and awareness of danger does not always mean avoidance of dangerous behavior.

People who became Nazis are not so different from people you already know. I don't mean Republicans. I don't mean Bushies or conservatives or mainstreamers. I mean actual back in the day Nazis.

I get these people. I'm not saying what I'm saying to insult people who have experienced trauma or people who have mental illnesses, personality disorders, or wonky brain chemistry. I'm saying it because I have learned a few things about the Nazi mind that most people here probably haven't had the opportunity or desire to learn. When SS veterans with tears in their eyes pour you a drink and thank you for being the first person under eighty who could explain why they volunteered when they did, it's not because you don't understand. When a war widow asks you to repeat what you said to her friends because it expresses exactly what she felt at the time, it's not because you don't understand. When you get invited to the ninetieth birthday party of a woman you've been talking ancient politics on the train with and she tells you you'll fit right in, it's not because you don't understand.

You may have had different experiences with different people who were there then and who made that choice, experiences that led you to a different understanding. Your studies may have gone in a very different direction from where mine went, and may have used very different sources. I'd love to hear about them, if you're willing to share. I am fairly certain, though, that I have a pretty good insight on how Nazi propaganda works and why.

If you want to discuss it with me so that we both can learn more, I'd welcome the opportunity to learn more from your point of view. If you want to argue with me about it because what I've said is hurting you and you want me to stop saying it, frankly, I like you too much to have that argument. I won't apologize for what I wrote, because I think that what hurt your feelings is what you read into it, but I also don't want to hurt your feelings.

Come on, UP, it's me. Think about it. Do you really think I'm a they, and not a we?

I find it extremely interesting. Could you provide me sources for your information? I'm doing research for graduate school. I'm in poli-sci, but I feel I may need to expand to sociology/psychology to understand why politics works they way it does.

What you have written describes perfectly a person whom I have been acquainted with. He is my girlfriend's old flame, one she was with for ten years. (They've been separated over 20 years.) Recently, he called my girlfriend looking for advice. His current marriage of ten years has fallen apart, and his wife left with the kids. He wants to know what's wrong with him that drives people away. My girlfriend invited him to a clambake we were going to attend. I met him and quickly started talking politics with him. He turned out to be the most rabid kool-aid drinker I've ever met. He gets all his "news" from Bill O'Reilly, Glen Beck, et al. He watches the Military Channel with his kids and tells them, "Those soldiers are defendng us." He doesn't see anything wrong with the bush administration. He even approves of cheney! He's a full-blooded nine-percenter. It is quite obvious what drives people away from him: he is a Nazi.

".... Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi."

Problem is, plenty of kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people went Nazi. That's what's so insidious about fascism. It can happen anywhere.

If a person has these traits:

Authoritarian,narcissistic or psychopathic personality types,under pressure may go nazi because they get off on domination and power trips.

Certain personalities are not good or healthy for non bully people to be around.The abusive greedy mean people suck, and they seek power just to abuse it and that makes them dangerous to everyone else's sanity.

The way to detect these personality types to avoid is to observe them over time and note how they behave and what they say...and how they are liars and manipulators mean and callous,and try to cover up the abuses they do.
Than warn others that the person is an asshole and get away from them.