I think I have finally figured out something basic about human nature, something that has long puzzled me. I have gone from shaking my head in disbelief to maybe understanding.
Here is the most extreme example:
Why are the people who strenuously argue Hitler’s death camps never existed, also seem to argue they should have existed?
They are attracted to Hitler, Hitler is most infamous for his genocidal murder, there is clearly something attractive in that fact, but as they are attracted by infamy, they also go to great efforts to deny it! I mean, they are already going to a very taboo place, why not really go there and MGMGA? (Make Genocidal Mass-murder Great Again!).
Why this strange split?
This doesn’t only happen in the extreme: There is a resurgence of a kinder, gentler (than Nazis), racism these days…but as these newly outed racists gleefully promote their racism, they also say that they are not racist? They insist! Why?
To get all Star Wars here, I think it is a basic property of “the dark side”. Those who resist it see it as dark and repulsive. But my realization is that for those who embrace “the dark side” it is still dark and repulsive. Being dark and repulsive is somehow part of the appeal.
So in the case of neo-Nazis I think it is also the point, but in this case taken to its logical extreme.
And I think that extreme–of murder on an industrial scale, in a network of slave labor camps–is enough to make even Nazis queasy. So they lie. They lie to all of us, as hard as they can, because that is the best way to lie to themselves.
In some extremely dark corner of their already dark souls, they know it is true that it happened, and in some still darker corner they sort of wish to see it again. But first they want to be part of a rampaging mob, they want to be drunk on the high they get in abusing their choice of “the other”, to have violent power over others, laughing with their fellows, being goaded on by their fellows, goading on the others, spreading responsibility. Because they know it is wrong.
It is bad stuff. Few have the stomach to really go there, to go there alone, so they lie to themselves and look for support in others.
A silver lining: There is still some good in most of these people, maybe not much good, but some. (No, Donald Trump that doesn’t make them “good people”, not on balance.) If they are still capable of being revolted, there is still some good in there.
No, don’t think I am going so far as to assert that sociopaths don’t exist, they do, but most Nazis are not sociopaths, and I suspect most sociopaths are not attracted to Nazis.
My thesis here is that–excepting some pathological, diseased minds–there is good in everyone. Look for it. Try to draw it out. Try to tempt them away from the repulsive “dark side”, for they find it repulsive, too.
-kb
©2019 Kent Borg
P.S. Comments are broken and have been for sometime. Sorry.
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