Almost finished with a book of the same name by this author.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-nazi-and-the-psychiatrist/

The biggest takeaway was this - these men were completely under the spell of their leader and their own derived authority.

In prison many of these men dropped some of their idealism and realized that they were clueless to the reality of other world views. Prison had a clarifying effect.

Funny thing about ideologies. Absolute power can kill much easier than religious power comparing the Nazis with Mormon leaders. Maybe Mormon leader's ideologies aren't as dangerous? At any rate, I think there is a commonality in the stories I read about these men through the notes and stories of those who evaluated their sanity.

Groups of men around a supreme leader can be very intelligent but just acting for their own attempts at power and influence with the leader. These Nazis struggled with blaming Hitler and still idealizing him. Makes mem wonder what The Big 15 would do if they were all rounded up for crimes against humanity and their prophet offed himself before capture?

I think much the same would happen.

One poignant part was the descriptions of Holocaust footage less than a year old being shown to their prisoners at their trial. Many of them were in denial and the footage shocked them out of their denial. They didn't want to be confronted by the consequences of their actions. It ruined their day.

Maybe my comparison is apples to oranges. The nature of the crimes of the two groups is. The insight though was especially productive to me recovery. It was like a window into what kind of men push this kind of deluded ideological absolute hogwash on their world. Once their authority vanishes they are seen for what they truly are - men who would place authority and ideologies above all else. Intellects sharpened and honed to their party lines intent on restructuring everything they can to reflect their sense of absolute righteous subjection of others to their collective worship of power.

I don't think your comparison is apples to oranges. In my view it's a mistake to focus on the "fruit" rather than on the commonalities shared by the trees.

What I mean is that there is an area in which religions and mass political movements overlap, and that is in emotional manipulation. Anyone who observed the Nazi rallies, or the cults of personality in Italy or the USSR or China or North Korea, would have seen all sorts of "religious" techniques: lectures and socially-imposed guilt and public confessions, mass rallies that stoked intense emotions, periodic rituals celebrating the state/church and its leaders, constant reaffirmation of the need to sacrifice individual judgment to the greater movement, a desire to be led. Functionally, charismatic politics and charismatic religion are quite similar.

Mormonism isn't the most extreme such movement; and doctrines like "free agency" and "individual judgement" were at times strong counterbalancing forces. But there were also periods--the violence in Missouri, Mountain Meadows during the Mormon Reformation--when the church behaved in a manner consistent with the totalitarian movements of the 20th century.

In general, I agree, that the LDS church didn't exploit the potential for authoritarian rule as aggressively as did the more infamous political movements. But short of that, there were many instances in which people surrendered their moral autonomy and committed sins/crimes comparable to what see-no-evil Nazis did. I'm thinking of the Danite violence, Mountain Meadows and, more recently, the treatment of gay people. There is also an echo of individual Nazis' belated recognition, partial recognition, of what they had done in the stories recounted by Juanita Brooks, in which the perpetrators of MMM, decades after the fact, awoke screaming at night in guilt for what they had done at the behest of their leaders. I believe Nephi Johnson was one man so tormented.

So I reckon your analysis is spot on. People are vulnerable to emotional manipulation by groups to which they want to belong, and charismatic leaders can use that vulnerability to get people to commit truly evil acts. This dynamic is indeed shared by both religions and political movements.

Your comparison is apples to apples.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> People are
> vulnerable to emotional manipulation by groups to
> which they want to belong, and charismatic leaders
> can use that vulnerability to get people to commit
> truly evil acts. This dynamic is indeed shared by
> both religions and political movements.

But do Mormons have "charismatic leaders?" In this book the fact that most of these men weren't charismatic leaders shown through profoundly.

There are more than one form of "charisma." Stalin, for instance, was a faceless bureaucrat whom Trotsky and many others overlooked because he was such a non-entity. Kim Jung Un is likewise devoid of personal charisma.

How did they develop cults of personality of such magnitude? Three ways. First, they "inherited" the charisma of their predecessors--Lenin, respectively, and Kim Il-Sung. Second, they borrow the prestige of the state. Stalin didn't need to go out in public and give crowd-rousing speeches, nor Mao, nor Kim Jung Un, because they were the bosses of what had become charismatic states. Third, they used their governmental resources to produce propaganda films, etc., that made them look relatively charismatic even though they were not.

The church's leaders use those forms of prestige. They claim the mantle of JS and BY; they claim that God has chosen them to lead God's church; and they constantly produce propaganda that makes Russ, for example, impressive and progressive. So no, they are not "charismatic leaders" in the classical sense although they are "charismatic" like Stalin was.

“wonder what The Big 15 would do if they were all rounded up for crimes against humanity and their prophet offed himself before capture?”

You’re just trying to make me feel good.

... Exmo porn!

babyloncansuckit Wrote:
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> You’re just trying to make me feel good.

And if they were ever in legal trouble like their first two prophets they would show themselves for who they really are - propped up prophet puppets with high I.Q.s, anti-social tendencies, ideological inconsistencies, and deviant personalities.

Without a strong leader they are merely a collection of deluded ideologues and demagogues with not a lot of character to recommend themselves to inspiring followers.

Holland is a Goebbels among them.

This guy is the psychiatrist in the book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz8kkHwWT0I

"It was like a window into what kind of men push this kind of deluded ideological absolute hogwash on their world. Once their authority vanishes they are seen for what they truly are - men who would place authority and ideologies above all else. Intellects sharpened and honed to their party lines intent on restructuring everything they can to reflect their sense of absolute righteous subjection of others to their collective worship of power."

COMMENT: I actually think the take-a-way is every stronger. One of the psychiatrists interviewing Goering concluded that Nazi leaders (including Goering) were "ordinary men" who got caught up in ideology and power. So, I am not sure there is a "kind of men" that inherently (genetically or neurologically) explains why Nazi leaders ended up engaging in such evil. This applies as well to the rank and file Nazis following the orders of their leaders. To quote another post, "People are People." No doubt the social, cultural, and individual facts are complicated, but it seems naïve to insist, as we often do, that "we would have acted differently," which is a kind of necessary position to take when ascribing moral blame to others.

The question, then, is if these were just ordinary folks psychologically caught up in the moment, and NOT necessarily the product of their individual nature or nurture, then perhaps "but for the grace of God go I."

I actually have been haunted by such a personal assessment as I have studied the Holocaust in some detail. From my Mormon background and such comparisons, I have an arguably over-obsessive distain for ideologies of any stripe--even Humanist ideologies--because by their nature they redirect individual thinking and suppress personal freewill, including one's moral reasoning and sense. This distain on my part sometimes translates to an intolerance to the followers of such ideologies who "recite the mantras" and "perform the genuflections" while insisting that they nonetheless retain their individual judgment in matters of moral conscience.

Notwithstanding, when one loses one's individual judgment as to whether Joseph Smith was a prophet, for example, they lose their individual judgment about the morality of what he did, believed, and taught. The same could be said about other ideologies and their "prophets" -- even when such criticism might be politically incorrect.

"The banality of evil." Hannah Arendt

Yes. Thanks for that reminder:

"Arendt found Eichmann an ordinary, rather bland, bureaucrat, who in her words, was ‘neither perverted nor sadistic’, but ‘terrifyingly normal’. He acted without any motive other than to diligently advance his career in the Nazi bureaucracy. Eichmann was not an amoral monster, she concluded in her study of the case, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)."

https://aeon.co/ideas/what-did-hannah-arendt-really-mean-by-the-banality-of-evil

It all starts with a "normal" person looking for identification, or some psychologically based personal or religious fulfillment. So they join some group that offers as much; with the group often seeming quite innocuous. Soon they find themselves fitting in, and taking on the groupthink. Then, they define themselves as a member of the group. (as my TBM sister said to me once when I confronted her with the truth of Mormonism, saying "It is just who I am!")

Then we are surprised when people fly airplanes into buildings, and/or do other such deeds. And then, in order to protect the "normality" and innocence of our genuinely kind and loving neighbors, we define such people as outliers, misfits, and extremists, when the reality is that they are (like Eichmann) "terrifyingly normal," and their acts are the reflection of a worldview that is encompassed by the groupthink embraced by your neighbor. But, don't let it bother you. After all, people are people! What people think and believe really doesn't matter so long as they're good neighbors.

Henry Bemis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What people think
> and believe really doesn't matter so long as
> they're good neighbors.

What people think and believe is rarely reflected in what they do. Mormons are no different than anyone else.

The quoted comment was meant to be sarcastic!

What people think and believe *does* matter, and *is* reflected in what they do, even if only subtly; as in how and what they teach their kids, or how they vote.

Remember the line, "As a man thinketh, so is he." How about this, "As a man thinketh, sooner or later someone doeth."

"I actually have been haunted by such a personal assessment as I have studied the Holocaust in some detail. From my Mormon background and such comparisons, I have an arguably over-obsessive distain for ideologies of any stripe--even Humanist ideologies--because by their nature they redirect individual thinking and suppress personal freewill, including one's moral reasoning and sense."

Goering is said to have saved a Jewish nurse who helped him when he was wounded.

He sounds like he had no personal disdain for Jewish peoples. He was it seems attracted to other aspects of the Nazi Regime and only espoused the party line in other aspects. Ironically, he was shown to have signed off on some of the horrors of "The Final Solution" so I don't know if he was truly honest to his lack of hatred.

And LDS Leadership might harbor a few who truly believe inclusion of women and homosexuals in higher leadership and esteem as good thing. Strange things leadership and regimes.