#literally Hitler

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Bernstein and April Bleske-Rechek

Published: Apr 17, 2023

This is a guest post by Michael Bernstein (Brown University) & April Bleske-Rechek (University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire). Michael Bernstein is an experimental psychologist and an Assistant Professor at Brown University. His research focuses on: cognitive biases, the placebo effect, pain, and substance use. He is an editor of the forthcoming book, The nocebo effect: When words make you sick.

April Bleske-Rechek is a differential and evolutionary psychologist. She is a full professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where she invests in mentoring undergraduate scholars and engaging students with viewpoints and data they are unlikely to be exposed to elsewhere. Her recent publications and presentations can be found on her personal website: bleske-rechek.com.

--

Let’s play a game. It’s called “Who said it: Robin DiAngelo or Adolf Hitler?” DiAngelo, in case you don’t know, is author of the NYT best-seller book, White Fragility.  We’ll give you a couple quotes and you think about whether it’s from DiAngelo or Hitler. Ready, go.

1)    Did Hitler say: “Not having a group consciousness, Jews often respond defensively when grouped with other Jews.” Or did DiAngelo say: “Not having a group consciousness, Whites often respond defensively when grouped with other Whites.”

2)    Did Hitler say: “Jews… creep up on the workers in order to win their confidence, pretending to have compassion.” Or did DiAngelo say: “Whites… creep up on the workers in order to win their confidence, pretending to have compassion.”

For the record, the first quote is from DiAngelo and the second quote is from Hitler. Though whether you were right isn’t exactly the point, as an astute reader would probably know Hitler is likely to use the language of “workers” and DiAngelo is likely to use the language of “group consciousness”. The point is that DiAngelo and Hitler are both advocating an approach that reduces behavior to group membership. They describe the behavior of all Whites or all Jews in highly critical terms and conclude that this is the nature of Whiteness or Jewishness. 

We know from decades of psychological research that people hold prejudices. But which groups in today’s society are more likely to be the target of expressions of prejudicial attitudes? And who is more likely to express them?

We decided to examine this empirically. Would agreement with the same statement, whether it be anti-White, anti-Black, or anti-Jew, vary depending on which group it referenced? And would political affiliation moderate attitudes?

We took 3 real anti-Jew quotes from Adolf Hitler, 3 real anti-White quotes from Robin DiAngelo, and 3 real anti-Black quotes from Stephen Douglas. (Douglas was a 19th century American politician who debated Abraham Lincoln). Then, we created anti-Jew, anti-White, and anti-Black variations of each quote, and showed it to 428 college graduates or college students (72% White). This means that 1/3 of participants saw the real quote verbatim, whereas the other 2/3 saw a version of the quote that was manipulated by changing the original (e.g., replace “Jew” with “White” or “Black”, or any other combination thereof). This is shown in the Table below. For each quote, participants were asked to imagine that an intellectual or political leader uttered the statement. They then indicated whether they agreed with the statement by selecting: “definitely no,” “probably no,” “probably yes,” or “definitely yes.” Participants answered this question for all nine quotes, and all were in the same frame (anti-Jew, anti-White, or anti-Black).

Table 1:

[ Red font is used to indicate the words that were manipulated across conditions. Quotes were identical otherwise. All quotes were altered to refer to either Jews, Blacks, or Whites for 1/3 of the sample. ]

The results were surprising. For 7 of the 9 quotes, agreement differed according to target group. On each of these, agreement was highest in the anti-White condition versus the anti-Jew and anti-Black condition. The figures below show the percentage of college graduates (left) and college students (right) who either “probably” or “definitely” agreed with at least one statement, broken down by target group and the original author of the quote (Hitler vs. DiAngelo vs. Douglas). You can see that agreement with both Hitler and DiAngelo is much higher in the anti-White condition versus the other two conditions. Hardly anyone agreed with the Douglas quotes regardless of target group.

For the Hitler and DiAngelo quotes we analyzed the interaction between target group and political ideology.1 This was significant for all quotes, and we once again looked at the percentage of people who agreed with at least one of the statements, shown below. Anti-White sentiment was highest across the board – for liberals, moderates, and conservatives alike. Anti-White sentiment was the highest for liberals compared to other political groups; anti-Jew and anti-Black sentiment was highest for conservatives compared to other political groups.

In a sense, our results are nothing new. We simply observed what has existed for millennia: People treat some groups preferentially to others. In the Bible, the Egyptian Pharoah enslaved the people of Israel. And interestingly, even God responded to this tribally by establishing Passover which “The whole community of Israel is to be included on the meal,” but “no foreigners are to eat it.”2  

Sweeping claims about all members of certain demographic groups seem to be on the rise in some circles. But unless you’re tuned into a relatively small number of heterodox writers like Bari Weiss or Coleman Hughes, you will rarely hear someone speculate about the counter-factual (e.g. Bob said all Whites do X vs. Imagine if he instead said all Blacks do X).

Coleman Hughes: “It [cops killing unarmed people] only gets pumped into the media when its a Black person, which gives the false impression that it only happens to Black people.” See also this survey finding that people in general, but especially liberals, massively overestimate the number of unarmed Black people killed by police.

In the language of Richard Dawkins, tribalism and prejudice may be memes. Memes, in this context, are ideas that “propagate themselves… by leaping from brain to brain” (Dawkins, 2016; p. 249). It is easy to see how tribal loyalties evolved evolutionarily (see Clark & Winegard, 2020), though finding that a mostly White sample had anti-White sentiment cannot be attributed to in-group preferences. Indeed, 55% of college students agreed with at least one Hitler quote applied to White people. Still, there is a historical precedent for people acting negatively towards their own group. In Nazi Germany, Kapos, who were prisoners but also functioned as SS guards, were often crueler towards their fellow prisoners (and frequently fellow Jews) than the Nazis themselves. 

This type of tribalism never seems to go well. Why would we expect it to benefit us now?

-

An incomplete list of disclaimers that should go without saying:

1)      Nothing in our essay is meant as an argument that DiAngelo is as evil a person as Hitler, or for that matter, evil at all. Hitler is responsible for the murder of 11 million people and the death toll from just the European theater of World War II was at least 40 million. DiAngelo is not responsible for the death of anyone. But we can recognize this fact while still pointing to similarities in their thinking.

2)      Just because a person agrees with a quote from Hitler does not mean that person agrees with Hitler’s genocide.

==

Never forget that the Grievance Studies probe rewrote a section of "Mein Kampf" as intersectional feminist "scholarship" and it was accepted and published.

[holyvirgilscriptures]

What are your thoughts on Finn and Millie’s fans dropping them for going to Starbucks? Personally I support organic boycotts when I can-and when the reasons for them make sense to me-but I’ve never cared which celebrities join me in doing that. I’ve never been in a fandom this parasocial, and I kind of want to get out. I feel like the focus is always on the younger cast too, when the Duffers could and have done worse without getting cancelled. Some of these same fans are still begging strangerwriters to come back to twitter! You can’t ‘boycott’ the show or its cast and still hang on their every post imo.

that's all i have to say about that tbh

[mbat]

you know, i just wanna say that if were gonna put any word up on the high shelf, 'nazi' should probably be one of them. very heavy word that people throw around way too lightly, i think

[arctic-hands]

This isn't an attempt at a flex I swear and I recognize people can have different learning experience and still be intelligent even if they don't/can't read, but given my abysmal education growing up I have to wonder what would have happened to my brain if I wasn't such a voracious reader as a kid

[katebihshop]

there is a world of difference between "this person was fired for supporting palestine" and "this person was fired for being a raging antisemite" and you do in fact need to actually look at what that person said to determine which it is. it sets a dangerous precedent to consider any support of palestine inherently antisemitic but it is just as dangerous to excuse antisemitism under the guise of supporting palestine.

[ryuutchi]

I NEED anti-fascists/anti-racists to understand that "degenerate art" and "degeneracy" are literal Nazi shit, and to stop using the terminology of social degeneration to describe thinking kinky art of anime 14 yos is gross and immoral.

[elecebra]

well that's fucking depressing

[bucksangel]

idk i just think that everyone who supports israel deserves to die a slow and painful death. yall are literally condoning murder, rape, starvation, torture, and many other atrocities. if you believe in any higher power then i promise you you’re not top on their list to get into heaven

[cockworkangels]

he smoked the pages

[jewreallythinkthat]

Ok look now I'm thinking about it, the only thing I can think of which has come even close to the fervour that the progressive left - a movement I used to think I was apart of- have for hunting down "Zionists" (or as they seem to actually be doing, anyone Jewish) is the bloody McCarthy Witch Hunts against so called communists in America...

[sarroora]

Coz I ain’t putting up with the pieces of garbage trying to say ‘not all Zionists are bad’

[lobotomizedlady]

imagine thinking that someone knowing the physiological difference between males and females & refusing to pretend otherwise is the equivalent to being a phrenologist aka a nazi race science proponent. these people are so fucking racist lol

[raziraphale]

I'm not calling the game "unproblematic" bc it's not but I've been continuously surprised by the lack of the same bullshit I hate in later persona games while I play through P2:IS. Why is this game from 1999 more normal about women and gay people

[peculiar--princess]

Okay not to be negative but some of y’all clearly dislike POC, plus size, etc and it shows..

[androgynousblackbox]

Seeing as his little get rich scheme profitting off leftist viewers got find out, how long do you all think it will take before Jamesy tries to pander to right wingers in order to have any kind of career? Right wingers don't care if you plagiarize. In fact, they don't give a fuck at all how unethical you are while doing content, as long the content agrees with them and promotes their views. Matt Walsh is plenty of an example of it. Blaire White was lied and misrepresented easily googeable information more times than I can count, and they very much still followed her. Jamesy can be all the racist and misogynistic he wants only to get even more praise for it. Frankly, that is the only outcome for him, once it fully sink in for him that his career as a queer positive (for cis gay men at least) youtuber is just over. There's no getting back to regain that trust. So if he ever wants to try the influencer life again (which he will, once the money stops coming in), that is the only crowd that will take him.

[selftrepanning]

trying to save my mental health by refusing to read goodreads reviews