#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.

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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?

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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.

[jtem]

Everyone I don't like is literally Hitler

[notaplaceofhonour]

that’s it no more Adidas—and I don’t trust any of you other shoe bitches neither! from now on I’m making my own shoes.

shoes: by jews, for jews.

jew shoes.

[redvelvetwishtree]

[nemurin-dreamy]

mami pmmm would NOT have missed that shot can we PLEASE start hiring magical girls to kill fascists

[fag-stuck]

wow holy shit guys Jane Cucker real??? umm deserved??? totally????

[liesmyth]

one of the reasons I choose not to wade into politics discourse on tumblr dot com is that if I started screaming I'll never stop

[squigglesquarepants]

It makes me so deeply upset that people don’t seem to be able to let two ideas coexist. Yeah, the US is an imperialistic state thats only interested on getting more power and will destroy any country from the inside just to get it. And Maduro’s also a horrible fucking dictator who doesn’t give a shit about his country or the people living it, an illegitimate figure and also a fucking lunatic. He did say free palestine, but let me ask you something: do you actually think he cares??? do you actually think he’s doing something??. Apparently fucking hitler could say free palestine and you fucking performative activists and pretend communists would run to his defense. and also:

YOUR VOICE DOESNT MATTER MORE THAN VENEZUELAN VOICES, SHUT THE FUCK UP

[torahtot]

i might just lay down and die just found out my ra for this year is someone my roommate used to be friends with til she posted a jews r the new nazis "becoming what you once hated- ironic" on her story and a whole thing supporting oct 7. like not even a post just her own heartfelt thoughts about how awesome it was.

[local-redhead-bookworm]

If you somehow managed to watch any of Mobile Suit Gundam and think it was apolitical, I am going to tape your eyes open and force you to rewatch it

[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

[asmileforyourscrapbooks]

just fyi, if trump is elected i'm either killing myself or somehow leaving the country, but wither way im OUT

[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.

[polyamorouspunk]

I’m glad that third party voters can pat themselves on the back about not contributing to the genocide in Gaza because guess what it did literally nothing and things are going to get worse and now you have the blood of your fellow Americans of color and queer Americans on your hands but hey whatever helps you sleep better at night besties.

[shiryawashere]

I'm sorry to my USAmerican moots but I lost every shred of hope I had for your people today