PREVENTING THE FOURTH REICH: Is there a 'Nazi' lurking inside of YOU? [Prologue] human experiments

I'm contrary I never trust ,I guess that makes me something else ,but NOT a nazi.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Great topic. I think studying how the Nazis rose to power is very important. There is definitely something to be found here in how the German people gave their authoritarian leaders power. There are many people who are extremely resistant to authority. But there are also a group of people who love it. It's a very weird type of submission to authority.

I think successful authoritarian leaders know how to manipulate certain types of people. There are certain patterns of interactions that give the authoritarian leader his or her power (mostly his). I think it could be studied, understood, and probably defended against by having awareness of the manipulation techniques. I don't have it exactly understood, but it's based on documented propaganda techniques: google the video "Edward Bernays and the Art of Public Manipulation" for an introduction on how basic human instinct governed by emotions can be manipulated.

So here is what I think authoritarian leaders do to accumulate power. The authoritarian leader will make a statement creating an emotional response in their audience. The statement could just be an outright falsehood. What is important is that it draws out a strong emotional response from the audience. Many times the authoritarian leader will blame another group of people for all that is wrong in society. It doesn't matter. The important thing is to make a statement that gets the audience so mad they want to spit. Once in this heightened emotional state, the authoritarian leader then "programs" his audience to think in a way that authoritarian leader is solely representing. An audience desperate for social justice will grab onto the authoritarian leader's words in proportion to their desperation. The authoritarian leader presents a micro-Hegelian Dialectic dialog to accumulate power through emotional outrage.

It's just an observation for most part. I'm sure there are much smarter people who have spent much more time studying exactly how this works (maybe not always for the best of reasons!) I may be complete wrong an off here. But I really believe there's something to the way people get so emotional about politics nowadays that is not healthy for our democracy.

originally posted by: IgnoranceIsntBlisss
I realize it defies reason, but it happens.

Oh yes, the development of affection/admiration for kidnappers definitely happens all right, there's no denying that, but is it a 'syndrome', as in an illness? It's not an officially recognised psychiatric condition, which is a major blow to the idea that it is a syndrome at all. (By contrast, a clearly-related phenomenon, 'Battered Wife Syndrome', is an official diagnosis, but this syndrome is much more complex and is described solely in negative terms).

Anyway, I don't want to derail an interesting discussion so I'll shut up now.

originally posted by: audubon
(By contrast, a clearly-related phenomenon, 'Battered Wife Syndrome',

Hey great subject. I've got lists of materials in my palette here, but hadn't considered that one.