Greg, Thank you. I think of three things: Environment, training and trigger... (1) How was the monster brought up, e.g. Saddam Husein in poverty and brutal life on the streets, (2) how were they treated and trained, especially in their late childhood and teen years e.g. Hitler with monster father and doting mother as counter influences, and (3) what incident(s) triggered the hatred and cruelty that felt so good to them, along their path to becoming fully fledged monsters. I am sure some historian will find that Hitler was deeply insulted or humiliated by someone or some class of people, and carried that shame and anger his whole life.
Wow! Really interesting subject!!! I hope everyone I shared this with listens to it. Thank your introducing Brandon to my radar, I will certainly follow him.
The other day I was thinking that maybe we need to stop demonizing people altogether. We still need to call out the evil, but I wonder if labeling these evildoers as "demons" gives them more of the power that they crave. Many GOP pols seem to deliberately speak and act in ways that beg for us to call them assholes. They're actually just children who deserve our pity (and justice!).
I found Mary Trump's book "Too Much and Never Enough" to be an eye-opening reveal of the younger version of tfg. It wasn't enough to make one feel sorry for the guy, but it was enough to help one understand how he went down the path his life has been.
What each of these men lack is the capacity for empathy. In my experience working in domestic violence and as a psychotherapist, their early years are marked by ongoing abuse, ridicule or neglect and NO ONE RECTIFIES THE SITUATION (key point). Mom might be “loving”, but she does not protect. These children, then, come to believe that they are inherently flawed and therefore unlovable, which is the basis of the personality disorder. Now, with an existential imperative to prove their worth to themselves and others, their empathy is overwhelmed by the need to attain power over others, as if to say, “See, not only am I equal to you, I am better”, no matter the consequences. The more resources they have, the greater their capacity for criminal acts and cruelty, but the man who kicks his dog has the same psychological profile as the man who, with greater resources and more power, does evil on a grand scale.
Apr 29, 2022·edited Apr 29, 2022Liked by Greg Olear
Yes, I remember posting about this phenomenon here and on Heather sometime in 2021 or 2020 or both. I studied Hitler in my early 30s because I had to, because of my all-German heritage. All of my relatives from my parents’ generation lived in Germany during the inter-war years and the Nazi years. I just had to understand: my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles. They all lived that era.
The common factor that I discovered between Hitler, DJT, and the few others I studied is a super permissive mother. Greg uses the word “doting,“ and that is correct.
Curiously, I also had a doting mother. Having a loving and attentive and highly permissive mother makes for an awful lot of privilege. And arrogance. You have to learn humility, because humility doesn’t come naturally to a white male who is fawned on and praised extensively.
Interesting to find Greg doing a piece on this subject.
An anecdotal aside to my earlier comments - a jailer once told me that the first, and often only, call a criminal made from jail was to his mother. And who did OJ call from the Bronco? His mother! These “loving” mothers and sons have unhealthy attachments, at best!
In 1931, my grandmother had some pics of my uncle Johnny taken by a professional photographer. Johnny’s photo was re-touched (by someone whose identity remains a mystery) to create an image of a quite grotesque-looking baby. The photo was sent off to Austria, where it was circulated on the newswires as a photo of “Baby Adolf”. The photo “went viral,” or as viral as was possible back then, eventually landing on the pages of newspapers across all of Europe and the U.S.
Hitler was enraged … ordered retractions and apologies everywhere … and demanded that his propagandists circulate his real, and not so evil-looking, photo.
I know this is off-topic, but to me the story is a fascinating example of how messaging, imagery and authoritarianism are intertwined.
I wrote a little piece about it in Atlas Obscura if anyone is interested.
'... “Should we humanize the inhumane?” asks the historian Brandon Gauthier, today’s guest on the PREVAIL podcast. His answer, emphatically, is yes. His fascinating new book, Before Evil, is a series of portraits of strongmen as young men: Kim, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler. ...'(article)
Greg, Thank you. I think of three things: Environment, training and trigger... (1) How was the monster brought up, e.g. Saddam Husein in poverty and brutal life on the streets, (2) how were they treated and trained, especially in their late childhood and teen years e.g. Hitler with monster father and doting mother as counter influences, and (3) what incident(s) triggered the hatred and cruelty that felt so good to them, along their path to becoming fully fledged monsters. I am sure some historian will find that Hitler was deeply insulted or humiliated by someone or some class of people, and carried that shame and anger his whole life.
Wow! Really interesting subject!!! I hope everyone I shared this with listens to it. Thank your introducing Brandon to my radar, I will certainly follow him.
The other day I was thinking that maybe we need to stop demonizing people altogether. We still need to call out the evil, but I wonder if labeling these evildoers as "demons" gives them more of the power that they crave. Many GOP pols seem to deliberately speak and act in ways that beg for us to call them assholes. They're actually just children who deserve our pity (and justice!).
I found Mary Trump's book "Too Much and Never Enough" to be an eye-opening reveal of the younger version of tfg. It wasn't enough to make one feel sorry for the guy, but it was enough to help one understand how he went down the path his life has been.
What each of these men lack is the capacity for empathy. In my experience working in domestic violence and as a psychotherapist, their early years are marked by ongoing abuse, ridicule or neglect and NO ONE RECTIFIES THE SITUATION (key point). Mom might be “loving”, but she does not protect. These children, then, come to believe that they are inherently flawed and therefore unlovable, which is the basis of the personality disorder. Now, with an existential imperative to prove their worth to themselves and others, their empathy is overwhelmed by the need to attain power over others, as if to say, “See, not only am I equal to you, I am better”, no matter the consequences. The more resources they have, the greater their capacity for criminal acts and cruelty, but the man who kicks his dog has the same psychological profile as the man who, with greater resources and more power, does evil on a grand scale.
Yes, I remember posting about this phenomenon here and on Heather sometime in 2021 or 2020 or both. I studied Hitler in my early 30s because I had to, because of my all-German heritage. All of my relatives from my parents’ generation lived in Germany during the inter-war years and the Nazi years. I just had to understand: my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles. They all lived that era.
The common factor that I discovered between Hitler, DJT, and the few others I studied is a super permissive mother. Greg uses the word “doting,“ and that is correct.
Curiously, I also had a doting mother. Having a loving and attentive and highly permissive mother makes for an awful lot of privilege. And arrogance. You have to learn humility, because humility doesn’t come naturally to a white male who is fawned on and praised extensively.
Interesting to find Greg doing a piece on this subject.
An anecdotal aside to my earlier comments - a jailer once told me that the first, and often only, call a criminal made from jail was to his mother. And who did OJ call from the Bronco? His mother! These “loving” mothers and sons have unhealthy attachments, at best!
Speaking of baby Hitler ...
In 1931, my grandmother had some pics of my uncle Johnny taken by a professional photographer. Johnny’s photo was re-touched (by someone whose identity remains a mystery) to create an image of a quite grotesque-looking baby. The photo was sent off to Austria, where it was circulated on the newswires as a photo of “Baby Adolf”. The photo “went viral,” or as viral as was possible back then, eventually landing on the pages of newspapers across all of Europe and the U.S.
Hitler was enraged … ordered retractions and apologies everywhere … and demanded that his propagandists circulate his real, and not so evil-looking, photo.
I know this is off-topic, but to me the story is a fascinating example of how messaging, imagery and authoritarianism are intertwined.
I wrote a little piece about it in Atlas Obscura if anyone is interested.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/hitler-baby-photo-fake
'... “Should we humanize the inhumane?” asks the historian Brandon Gauthier, today’s guest on the PREVAIL podcast. His answer, emphatically, is yes. His fascinating new book, Before Evil, is a series of portraits of strongmen as young men: Kim, Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler. ...'(article)