I am a very very lazy person. I like to pride myself on being in the running with Lebowski. And to me hate takes way way to much energy. Having even the simple idea of killing has to take some effort. Kind of seems like he just set out on a life not worth living IMO
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.
To add on there is a documentary on Netflix called the circle of evil that dramatically shows the way hitler came to power. It’s not just antisemitism in Europe it’s a party of echo chambers with anti semitism and Hitler was the one most radical in his speeches while being highly influential. You don’t convince a country without a good indoctrinating speech about how the Jewish population is ruining everything. Germany just came off WW1 and a lot of bullshit stigma was thrown at the Jewish population because the war torn population stereotyped them as “helping both sides”. A lot of factors that nobody will be capable of recognizing are crucial to Hitlers power.
You should listen to the English translations of the speeches. History doesn’t repeat but it sure as fuck rhymes.
Also if you’re wondering why any person turned out the way they are, looking at their childhood explains a lot. Hitler, in this case, had a violently abusive father and IIRC a few of his siblings died (I think from unrelated causes?) when he was a child.
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.
Hitler’s antisemitism was shaped by the widespread anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe, particularly in Vienna, where he lived as a young man. He capitalized on these prejudices, blaming Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I, economic hardships, and other societal issues. By using Jews and other minorities as scapegoats, he was able to unite and mobilize his followers.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler described history as a racial struggle, promoting the idea of Aryan superiority while portraying Jews, Slavs, Roma, disabled individuals, and others as threats to his vision of a “pure” German society. His ideology was influenced by pseudoscientific racism and eugenics, which he used to justify policies of persecution and genocide.
Nazi propaganda reinforced and amplified these ideas, systematically dehumanizing targeted groups. This allowed for widespread discrimination, persecution, and ultimately, the Holocaust. Hitler’s actions were not impulsive; they were deeply rooted in his ideology and strategically used to gain and maintain power.
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.
Respectfully, do some reading of even middleschool level history books. He didn’t personally decide to “be mean” to particular groups. His worldview was shaped by the post WWI dynamics in Europe, latent stereotypes and domestic problems within Germany, and a whole lot of misapplied emerging science. He literally believed in racial supremecy and was trying to build an ethnostate. This motivated him to define groups of ethnic “undesirables” and also to lump in other groups that he found politically inconvenient. Read about the scapegoating of Jews circa that time. He likely believed his cruelty towards them was somehow justified because he laid all of Germany’s problems (economic issues, humiliation of the country and loss of territory post-WWI) at their feet.
TL; DR - Bad actors believe their evil behavior is justified.
You’re trying to find a rationale for some thing (xenophobia) that is utterly irrational. Some people are just shit humans.
He was a shit human, but he was also a politician. His political message had two parts: 1. Jews are responsible for all our problems 2. We need to conquer more lands.
He said this was the only alternative to handing the country to communists.
The simple xenophobic message appealed to the common people, fear of communism bought the elites in-line.
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
Dont forget about the insane shit the Japanese did too. This dives into the reasons they did Mark Felton documentary: WW2 Japanese Military Brutality
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Don’t forget that for centuries Christianity considered lending with interest to be a sin and so delegated it to Jews so they came to dominate banking and finance. By the 1100’s Jews were considered the ‘property of the king of England’ and we’re granted special rights such as free travel and having their legal testimony given more weight than Christians because they represented the king in financial matters.
Elevate an already hated minority to wealth and privilege as special servants of feudal power? What could go wrong?
It’s a trick the English repeated centuries later by establishing minorities as administrative castes in their colonies (i.e. Indians in Uganda)
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.
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.
You’re finally in your element, Donnie
The way i understood it was that at the time Jews did own a lot of wealth, much more than other people, and saw themselves as some kind of “better” or “elite” class. Many people did not like that, and that is the major reason why it was so easy for Hitler to find a lot of people to follow him.
No dude, please don’t spread the neo-nazi’s myths for them.
Your comment reeks of “they were snobby elites and are therefore partially at fault for their own persecution.”
Even if I accepted the first statement as true, your insinuation that jews in Weimar believed themselves to be of a superior class after they have already been the subject of discrimination for centuries is ridiculous. On top of that, your final statement that this is “the main reason” for the rise in antisemitism in the third reich is frankly disgusting.
I’m not spreading anyone’s propaganda, if that’s what you’re saying.
I never said they were at fault for their own prosecution. That would be stupid to think.
I don’t actually know, and maybe the Jews were the good guys and unfairly used as a scapegoat for the problems at the time, or maybe not, i was not there, i have no way to tell. I only mentioned that they did own a lot of wealth, which I think can be objectively verified. That does not make them in any way inferior people though, not at all. I am not one of the “eat the rich” people that despises people simply because they are rich. Not at all. In fact, i highly admire jewish culture. I was merely trying to lay out an explanation. There can be no discussion when there is no hypothesis. No need to react so butthurt. Now, cheers!
