I became a Nazi.
Why is authoritarianism so easy?
It wasn’t hard to become a Nazi. From my short lifetime of experience, I pulled together unresolved bitterness, feelings of unjust treatment and social slights, all of which I put into a resentments pouch. I drew inspiration from the chip on my shoulder from experiences that made me feel inferior, angered me, and inflated my ego in self-protection.
As a Nazi, I let my ego turn me into a tool of revenge against the threat of more mistreatment. It was time to stand up for me, and I had the backup to do so, by a mass of locked egos with the same grounding, authorized by leadership to be ruthless. I did not feel alone as when I had been bullied. No, we had all been victimized and now we could do something about it. Our leaders would reward us for our flinty behavior. In fact, it's expected if you are a loyal follower. The radio and papers and pulpits kept pointing to impending threats. It was only logical to act in solidarity with others against the people named as threats.
I was playing the role of a German madam, the head of a brothel filled with Jewish women forced into prostitution. It was a play with short scenarios based on events that occurred during the Hitler regime in Germany. I spoke with contempt and acted despicably towards the Jews in my pretend role, treating them as if they were worthless vermin.
Upon reflection, after the rush of preparing for the role and delivering it, I was shocked at how easy it was to play a Nazi, to be cold and cruel, obedient and robotic, to downshift into the flow of primate aggression.
I learned later that the Nazi’s cruelty machine learned its ways from the USA’s genocidal treatment of Natives, Jim Crow laws against its kidnapped Africans, and from the 19th century British and French genocidal campaigns in Africa. The German Holocaust was not the first of its kind (e.g., Lindqvist, 1996).
The ease of my Nazi role play, for which I was complimented, made me realize that we all carry grievances that can be called up like evil spirits. Scary.
What is the source of these grievances?
Across the last couple thousands of years, early life undercare became more and more common with the shifts in social life to hierarchy, patriarchy, and capitalism (Narvaez, 2024). Babies no longer receive species-expectant care, undermining their holistic development. As a result, narcissistic ego defenses are built from the lack of loving presence of multiple nurturers providing our species-normal nest of care. The self does not mature beyond its starvation for basic needs of security and love that should have saturated the baby self.
Without adequate nestedness, one’s views of the world—cognitive, social and moral orientations—become misshapen. They tend toward all the characteristics we attribute to historical western European culture: individualism, separation from and denigration of Nature, emphasis on detached intellect with its categorization of the world, and so on (Narvaez, 2014). Without healing, the resulting beliefs include:
‘There is not enough (love) to go around.’ [I didn’t get enough.]
‘I have to grab what I can.’ [I can’t share!]
‘I/we deserve more because I/we am/are special.’ [Tell me I am!]
The USA is filled with these distortions. (In case you think these are species-normal, check out the differences in manifestations of the species-normal worldview (i.e., kinship or Indigenous worldview) and the dominant worldview (based in the historical western European elite orientation).
At the same time, the USA compounds the trauma of early life undercare with extreme stress for most un-rich adults. Even when they ‘do things right’ and work hard, the efforts don’t necessarily bring success. In fact, some 60% of adults live paycheck to paycheck, on the verge of bankruptcy from a health catastrophe or job disruption. Many don’t get enough to eat. Many are homeless. No wonder there is so much grievance in the country.
Like the pamphlets from the early days of the European printing press, media makes money when passions are aroused. Attention is one of the precious resources that we have choices about, since much of who we are is shaped by the experiences we have in our families and communities that guide our future trajectories. The media today demand our attention. Our attention is automatically drawn to violations—of sound (loud noise), sight (sudden change, like monoform), of social rules (crime)—a trait that television has long used to keep our attention on a two-dimensional, otherwise boring tele-screen (Mander, 1978). Today, social media highlights violations of equanimity—it grabs our attention with outrage or fear of missing out (FOMO).
As a result, we’re raised to be triggered neurobiologically, and then the media triggers us with fear, from movies to shows to news to shares. Such a media world and the way we are treated make us think the world is a dangerous place, normalizing violence as part of human nature and behavior. But it is not (Fry, 2006; 2013, Fry & Souillac, 2017).
Fear shuts down the imagination, closes the heart. We turn away from victims. And we ourselves become aggressive and ruthless. See a summary of media effects before social media.
The drumbeat from the overall culture is ‘there is no other way; this is the best there is; if you disagree, the problem is with you.’ So you internalize and get depressed, anxious, ill. Have a pill. Or the problem is with ‘them. You are encouraged to target others with your fear-based anger, justifying it like a spouse beater:
You made me do it.
You violated the rules of order so what do you expect?
You deserve to be ignored/beaten/tortured/deported.
Authoritarianism has been normalized in the USA, rooted in fear and abuse and in made-up stories about threats (Snyder, 2024). And so it becomes easy to sidle up to the authoritarian bar, trust the bartender to offer some relief from insecurity, and chug a mug of resentment with a side of contempt. It’s easy to become an ‘us-supremacist,” and support strongmen who carry out cruelty, family separation, police beatings, and disappearance.
While the underloved inner child is scared, desperate, and hardly breathes, the outer authoritarian actor becomes ever more cruel, cheered on by likewise peers.
And here we are.
REFERENCES
Fry, D. P. (2006). The human potential for peace: An anthropological challenge to assumptions about war and violence. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fry, D. (Ed.) (2013). War, peace and human nature. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Fry, D. P., & Souillac, G. (2017). The original partnership societies: Evolved propensities for equality, prosociality, and peace. Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, 4 (1), Article 4
Lindqvist, S. (1996). Exterminate all the Brutes (transl. by J. Tate). Granta.
Mander, J. (1978). Four arguments for the elimination of television. New York: William Morrow Publishing.
Narvaez, D. (2014). Neurobiology and the development of human morality: Evolution, culture and wisdom. New York: Norton.
Narvaez, D. (2024). Returning to evolved nestedness, wellbeing, and mature human nature, an ecological imperative. Review of General Psychology, 28(2), 83-105. https://doi.org/10.1177/1089268023122403
Snyder, T. (2024). On freedom. Crown.