Professors - mine are not monsters

[vicariously]

For the sake of truth, the INfamous Bell Curve has a very direct connection to Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement. The book "The Bell Curve," for instance, is perhaps one of the most controversial books of all time. Written by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the book uses empirical statistical analysis to reach conclusion of intelligence gap in American society. Two of the most controversial conclusions reached by the author are the relationships between low measured intelligence and anti-social behavior and the observed relationship between low African-American test scores, when compared to Asians or whites, and genetic factors in intelligence abilities.

Or in Stephen Jay Gould's words, "The Bell Curve" rests on two distinctly different but sequential arguments, which together encompass the classic corpus of biological determinism as a social philosophy - in other words, Social Darwinism.

Social Darwinism holds that Darwin's theory of evolution can be applied to the development of human social institutions. It first become popular in late 19th century and continued until end of World War II. The application of the term to 19th and 20th century modes of thought, however, generally did not occur until after the publication of American historian Richard Hofstadter's "Social Darwinism in American Thought" in 1944, which codified the concept in the sense it is generally used today.

Social Darwinism is often linked to eugenics, and is the backbone of Herrnstein & Murray's arguments, according to which humans are separated not only by race and class, but also by IQ - this being the central theme of the arguments brought forth by these authors. This argument may deviate from the original 19th century theory of Social Darwinism; however, its use of statistical analysis of IQ is the central thought of 20th century Social Darwinism. The conclusions of the authors suggest people who have high IQ would be more "successful in life" and people with low IQ will encounter more problems in life such as unemployment, divorce, crime, and poverty. Using Social Darwinism, survival of the fittest (or should we, more appropriately, say, survival of the unfittest, the fat lazy a s s e s?) and other laws of evolution can be applied to human society; hence, it can be understood, that the people with high IQ be successful in life therefore have a easier time passing on their "good" gene to the next generation because they have a easier time finding a partner. On other hand, the people with low IQ, often exert anti-social behavior, hence have problems finding and supporting a partner, therefore would have problem passing their gene to the next generation.

They maintain that

"It is time for America once again to try living with inequality, as life is lived: understanding that each human being has strengths and weaknesses, qualities we admire and qualities we do not admire, competencies and incompetencies, assets and debits; that the success of each human life is not measured externally but internally; that all of the rewards we can confer on each other, the most precious is a place as a valued fellow citizen."

This idea is the 20th century Social Darwinism. This idea is also the idea behind eugenic movements and research which was not unpopular during the time.


Hitler believed humans were animals to whom the genetics laws, learned from livestock breeding, could be applied. The Nazis believed that instead of permitting natural forces and chance to control evolution, they must direct the process to advance the human race. The first step to achieve this goal was to isolate the 'inferior races' in order to prevent them from further contaminating the ‘Aryan’ gene pool. The widespread public support for this policy was a result of the belief, common in the educated classes, in the conclusion that certain races were genetically inferior as was scientifically 'proven' by Darwinism. The Nazis believed that they were simply applying facts, proven by science, to produce a superior race of humans as part of their plan for a better world: 'The business of the corporate state was eugenics or artificial selection — politics as applied biology'.

Some may argue the connection between "The Bell Curve" and Social Darwinist eugenic movements of the time. But many facts show strong connection between the two. Firstly, as early as 1971, Herrnstein published an article in a prestigious US magazine, 'Atlantic Monthly', and can be quoted "the tendency to be unemployed may run in the genes of a family about as certainly as bad teeth do now.... As the wealth and complexity of human society grow, there will be precipitated out of the mass of humanity a low-capacity residue that may be unable to master the common occupations..." Secondly, Herrnstein's political stance is very conservative; "It is hard to argue that the "class struggle" can be resolved by a redistribution of wealth and capital, if it should turn out that something more than economics distinguishes the contending classes." Thirdly, quoted from an ABC New Report transcript, "Ever since 1937, the 'Pioneer Fund' has promoted the study of racial purity as a an ideal. Over the past 10 years, according to public documents, the 'Pioneer Fund' contributed $3.5 million to researchers cited in "The Bell Curve."

Finally, Herrnstein is found to be connected with the journal 'Mankind Quarterly', which is owned by Roger Pearson for the last 25 years. Pearson was a leader of the pro-fascist Northern League, which included a number of former Nazi SS officials, and a member of the World Anti-Communist League, described by former member Geoffrey Stewart-Smith as a collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, and vicious racists. These facts suggest strong ties between the authors and ideas of "The Bell Curve" with Social Darwinism movement of the time. "The Bell Curve" brought the theories of Social Darwinism into the public. It introduced the mass population to the idea IQ, something heritable, being the main determining factor for success in life, and it did it in a "scientific" way which help the idea to be accepted by the public.

Yea Right!

No kidding, Nazis were downright crazy when it comes to this eugenics thing and the like.

Nazis believed that the earth once, long ago had a race of beings, Übermench (supermen). These supermen ruled the ancient world, known as Atlantis. You will find that Atlantis and the myth that accompanies it is at the core of many occult religious systems. The Nazis believed that this race of beings was corrupted by intermixing with 'dark peoples'. Consequently they fell into racial and moral impurity. At the heart of this was the belief that the Jews were somehow the central point of this racial 'poison', and their removal from the earth would bring about, after careful selective breeding, the return of the Übermench. The only way this system could work, according to this philosophy, is the need remove the untermench (subhumans) from the earth, though some in the movement felt that it was acceptable to enslave them and not allow them to reproduce. To summarize, this is the real reason that places like Auschwitz and Buchenwald came into being.

We must understand this most important point when looking at the holocaust; that is the fact that these people were not exterminated because of some grave political domestic threat or because of civil unrest or even mildly subversive activity. They were killed for one reason and one reason alone, they were killed under the direction of the Nazis' occult ideology.

The Holocuast (or final solution) was to bring about the occult world order that was envisioned by the Nazis. These 'supermen' were also referred to as Giants in their occult literature and were believed to inhabit the northern most parts of the Earth. They were, according to this occult tradition blond haired, blue-eyed and of course, white-skinned.

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/index.php?topic=3008253.msg5400368#msg5400368

Madame Blavatsky & the Theosophical Society

The Russian-born mystic Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) was the founder of the Theosophical Society. A world famous occultist, she founded the Theosophical Society in 1875 in New York, but soon moved her operation in India where she wrote an influential book called, "The Secret Doctrine," in 1888. In it, Blavatsky expounds the Theosophical theory of creation, a 7-step progression of human evolution in which successive races evolve from a lower to a higher form of life. She calls these stages 'root races' and identifies our current root race as the 5th of 7 - the Aryan race - which follows the 4th race, known as the Atlantean. She used a variety of esoteric symbols in the book, including triangles and swastikas. Blavatsky claimed to be the spokeperson for 2 exalted masters who communicated telepathically with her from their secret dwelling in Tibet.

Despite its ludicrous tenets, Theosophy became extremely popular in Germany and Austria. Its Aryan racist elitism appealed to the growing number of ethnic Germans whose voelkisch, or nationalist sentiments demanded a reunited Germany. According to Blavatsky, the Aryans were the most spiritually advanced people on earth, but the Jews had a religion of hate and malice toward everyone and everything outside itself. This was a message tailor-made for Nazism.

[vicariously]

Guido von List & the Armanen Order

List was the first to combine German nationalism with the occult teachings of Theosophy. A bitter critic of Christianity, especially Catholicism, List had converted to Wotansim as a young teenager. His associates included Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels and Harald Gravelle, 2 homosexual occultists. In 1908 List formed the Guido von List Society in part to promote his Ariosophist research and writings, which by this time had become viciously anti-semitic. List was an expert on the Rune alphabet and wrote several books on the subject; he was particularly infatuated with the dual lightening bolt symbol that would later become the SS designation. But he was also involved in Hindu Tantrism, a form of black magic that incorporated deviant sexual rituals (group sex, incest, and in the higher planes, intercourse with demons, with perfection being gained by satisfying all of one's desires).

In 1911he formed an elitist occult organization called the Hoeher Armanen-Orden (Higher Armanen Order), a hierarchical priesthood in which he was the Grand Master. This group was the source of List's greatest influence on the Nazis. List's blueprint for a new pan-German empire called for the ruthless subjugation of non-Aryans to Aryan masters in a highly structured hierarchical state. The qualifications of candidates for positions in the new social order rested solely on their racial purity. But List went further ahead, anticipating the mystical elitism of the SS in Nazi Germany; List's ideal was a male order with an occult chapter. Not only is List's design strikingly similar to the latter plans of Heinrich Himmler for the SS-controlled state, but it is also reminiscent of the Brand/Friedlander philosophy of militaristic male supremacy. One individual in particular would turn out to be very important to the rise of Nazism: Adolf Hitler himself.

Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels & Ariosophy

If any occultist can be said to have had more influence on Hitler and the Nazis than List, it would be Liebenfels. Lanz was a former Cistercian Monk who had been expelled from the order for carnal and worldly desires. It was through Lanz that Hitler would learn that many of his heroes were practicing homosexuals. He formed his own occultic order called the Ordo Novi Templi, or the Order of the New Temple (ONT) which was related to the Ordo Templi Orientis that practiced tantric sexual rituals. Both orders were modeled on the Teutonic Knights and Knights Templars, militaristic monastic orders found in 1118 A.D. to fight the Crusades. Knights Templars and Teutonic Knights are synonymous with homosexual occultism. Nazi leaders, especially Himmler, were fascinated with the Teutons and he saw his Black Guards [the SS] as an elite cadre of Teutonic warriors. Frederick the Great, Hitler's hero, revived the vices of the Teutonic Knights in his army. The journal of the ONT was called Ostara, named for the female counterpart to Wotan in the pagan German pantheon. Some of the titles of Ostara pamphlets included, "The Dangers of Women's Rights," "The Necessity of a Masculine Morality of Masters," Introduction to Sexual-Physics," or "Love as Odylic Energy." Lanz blamed Aryan racial impurities on promiscuous women who were copulating with men of lower races.   

Lanz's occult philosophies, which he dubbed Ariosophy (Aryan Theosophy) were an enlargement upon the ideas of Guido von List. Lanz added the theme of Social Darwinism, as prompted by Ernst Haeckl and the Monist League. In pre-Nazi Germany Haeckel was famous for his application of Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest to human society. Lanz fulminated against the false Christian tradition of compassion for the weak and inferior and demanded that the nation deal ruthlessly with the underprivileged. Lanz wrote, Hitler is one of our pupils ... you will one day experience that he, and through him we, will one day be victorious and develop a movement that makes the world tremble. This proclamation, however, did not sit well with the Fuehrer, and he had Lanz's writing banned in 1933. In Ostara, Lanz proposed that unsatisfactory racial types be eliminated by abortion, sterilization, starvation, forced labor and other means. He also recommended Aryan breeding farms where a master race, destined to control the world, could be hatched. Heinrich Himmler would later create such a breeding program (called Lebensborn) during the Third Reich.

[vicariously]

The Thule Society

in 1912 various followers of List and Lanz formed an organization called the Germanen Order. Diverging radically from the purely philosophical and spiritual focus of the groups that the two masters had formed, the Germanen Order was to take an active role in fulfilling the goals of Ariosophist teachings. The principle aim of the Order was the monitoring of the Jews and their activities by the creation of a center to which all anti-Semitic material would flow for distribution. Only Aryans pf pure descent were allowed to become members. After the First World War the Order began to be used as a cover organization for the recruitment of political assassins who revived the practices of the Vehmgericht, a medieval vigilante society whose only sentence was death.

The leader of the Thule Society was Rudolf von Sebottendorf, but its chief organizer was Walter Nauhaus, a former member of the Wandervoegel movement. Members of the Thule Society who figure prominently in the rise of Nazism included Hans Kahnert, Dietrich Eckart and Rudolf Hess. In 1919 Kahnert founded Germany's largest gay rights organization, the Bund fuer Menschenrecht, which counted SA Chief Ernst Roehm among its members. Eckart, meanwhile, was a founding member of the German Worker's Party and became Hitler's mentor. Eckart was one of the most enthusiastic followers of Otto Weininger, a leading homosexual supremacist, whose theories denigrated women. Though Hitler would later ridicule many of the occultists and their ideas, he dedicated his "Mein Kampf" to Eckart and called him his John the Baptiser.

The Thule Society member who would rise the highest in Nazi circles, however, was Rudolph Hess. Hess, a homosexual who was called Fraulein Hess, Fraulein Paula, and Black Emma, in inner Party circles, was one pf Hitler's closest friends, eventually becoming the Deputy Fuehrer of the Nazi Party. In addition to his involvement with Thule, Hess belonged to yet another offshoot of the Theosophical cult, the Anthroposophical Society formed in 1912 by Rudolf Steiner. Hess was also a firm believer in astrology.

Yet another prominent Nazi who was strongly influenced by the German occult movement was Heinrich Himmler. He maintained a close relationship with a prominent occultist named Karl Maria Wiligut, who became known as the Rasputin of Himmler. Wiligut claimed to have a gift of clairvoyant ancestral memory, certainly quite useful to the racial purists of the Nazi Party concerned with proving their own Aryan heritage. Wiligut was responsible for the designing of the Death's Head ring worn by members of the SS. Under Himmler, the SS became a veritable occultic order. Christian names of SS soldiers were replaced with Teutonic names, and all members were required to maintain the highest secrecy and detachment from the rest of society. Himmler fostered the cult of mannerbund among his men. SS special forces training required recruits to soap each other's bodies during showers to establish mutual dependency.

[Chauffeur]

vicariously, I would chalk the "occult" thing to Nazis' being paranoid, suffering from delusions of grandeur and persecution.

Hitler takes us with our "equation" to the extreme, but in general, for any authoritarian, hierarchically-based system, we would likely say

Leader/Paranoid/Homoerotic/Homophobic

Here it is a post already dealing with the issue:

I believe it's the exact opposite, Flat -

Paranoids => latent/fear of Homosexuality
Need to deny oneself Homosexual Desires => development of Paranoid Delusions

Take a look at this other thingy thing:

Take Hitler: They say there is insufficient evidence that Hitler was an overt homosexual. But it seemed clear he had latent homosexual tendencies, and that he worried a lot about them. He was terribly concerned, for example, lest he give the impression of showing feminine traits - which, indeed, he did. A colleague of the himself-homosexual English diplomat and historian Sir Harold Nicolson, spoke of Hitler as being "the most profoundly feminine man that he had ever met, and that there were moments when he became almost effeminate."

Hitler also revealed fears of homosexuality by protesting so much that he had no feminine characteristics whatsoever. He was totally masculine - tough, hard, cold, ruthless, brutal. His tendency to think in terms of disjunctive stereotypes about men and women (strong, iron-willed, effective males vs. weak, emotional, incompetent female) is in itself revealing. Such thinking demonstrates a strong conflict and confusion between masculine and feminine natures. To him, sexual differences appeared as exaggerated and mutually exclusive opposites, as roles to be played, rather as natural attributes of human personality. In Hitler's case, as in Himmler's, the fantasized tough male role developed into sadism, murder and destruction.

The question of Hitler's latent homosexuality can also be approached indirectly. It can be stated with some confidence that Hitler must have had latent homosexual tendencies because he showed clear indications of paranoia. This does not mean that all homosexuals are paranoid, but it does mean that all paranoids have fears of homosexuality. The direct connection between homosexuality and paranoia was first noticed by Freud, who concluded that paranoia "invariably arises from an attempt to subdue an unduly powerful homosexual wish."

There is a terrifically strong need to deny homosexuality; the very thought of sexual contact with another man is "completely intolerable." Moreover, the need felt by a paranoid for approval is especially acute; his megalomania is in itself an expression of his need for proof that he is important. There is a high incidence of constipation in paranoid individuals. All paranoids have strong anal components, problems with order and cleanliness, and obsessions with purity and vice, as well as impurity and infections of others. Anal sadistic fantasies are directed towards the father, because he is seen as the rival for the mother's love; the intensity of the drive to be loved is supported mainly "by the intense need to neutralize and erotisize a tremendous hate." When the unconscious hate is so great, the attempt to erotisize it fails, and the individual turns to sadism.

While homosexual feeling and paranoid delusions may be in bitter conflict, both are, in a sense, dependent on each other and are defenses against one another. Thus, it seems quite possible that Hitler developed paranoid delusions, in part, to fight his homosexual feelings. As long as he persecuted and attacked homosexuals, he felt he was successfully combating his own inadmissible inclinations toward homosexuality.

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/index.php?topic=3002012.msg5398379#msg5398379

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/index.php?topic=3004117.msg5399935#msg5399935

Society (today's)/Institutions/Homoerotic/Homophobic

For one Freud has pointed to the sexual, and indeed the homoerotic, origins of political authority. He studied totemism and sought to locate the origins of the group, publishing "Totem and Taboo" in 1913. Although this is a very debatable work on his part, he did maintain in his later works that paternal proscription of sexual relations with the women of the clan passes to exogamy through homoerotic bonding. Freud locates the origins of the sons' collective organization, their ability to challenge the father's sexual monopoly, in "the homosexual feelings and activities which probably manifested themselves during the time of their banishment." The father's imposition of heterosexual austerities on his sons pushes them into mutual erotic identification, "into group psychology." After killing the primal father, the sons agree that all the clan's women would be denied them. In "Totem and Taboo" Freud made homoerotics into a substitution for heteroerotics, one standing at the origin of the first social contract, the sons' renunciation of the women of the clan as sensuous objects, and their conversion into sexual property to be exhanged exogamously. If exogamous heterosexuality is an original consequence of social organization, endogamous homosexuality is its original source. He never wavered on this foundational basis of modern social organization.

Indeed in "Group Psychology and the Analysis of Ego" Freud makes heterosexual desire into an enemy of social organization, whereas "desexualized, sublimated homosexual love for other, which springs from work in common" is a "civilizing factor." There is no room for woman as a sexual object, he writes, in the great artificial groups of society. The implication is, of course, that there is a place for men as sexual objects. "It seems certain," he writes, "that homosexual love is far more compatible with group ties, even when it takes the shape of uninhibited sexual impulsion..." If in his mythico-history he makes the homoerotics of the rother clan the mediation between the primal horde and exogamous patriarchy, in his clinical studies he makes homoerotics integral to the formation of the male individual ego, to masculine identification, and to the psychic operation of authority more generally.

[...] Paternal identification solves not one, but two problems in this sexual economy. Group formation likewise operates through paternal identification, which, like his murder, is enabled through homoerotic solidarity among the sons. Immediately after explaining in "Group Psychology" that the introjected paternal object is a substitute for the libidinal object tie with the woman, Freud launches into the genesis of male homosexuality, the boy's failure to give up the mother as a cathected object, the "negative" Oedipal complex, the transformation of the male ego on the model of the female. Boy becomes girl mirroring the way in which he has the man, through the matrilineal totem, becoming woman. Group formation is a quintessentially masculine, yet involves men being womanly.

Freud makes homosocial energy the basis of solidarity in complex groups and locates the origin of the social in a renunciation of heterosexual desire. He derives the experience of consubstantiality of totem and man from a fleshy family, from the mother-child bond and the son's deferred identification with the father. [...] Freud's is an imaginary resolution to a scarce heterosexual economy [...] For what in Freud is a feminizing, violent subordination to masculine hierarchy [...] Freud eroticizes power [...] Is it possible that the establishment of the state is itself a sexual act, a double separation of two sexes, woman and man, heterosexual and homosexual, that the state not only has a sex, but is a sex?

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/index.php?topic=3003617.msg5385905#msg5385905

With all this meaning, that homoerotics/homosexuality appears to be "crucial," rather than "marginal," doesn't it?!

[Chauffeur]

With open-for-the-masses homosexuality being a "nuisance" (thus "marginal," not "crucial") for the current authoritarian system, as "qmo" post says it:

I would like to comment on the above part of copain's post -

Marcuse basically says that, 'surplus repression' designates sexual repression beyond that's necessary for the civilization; being the result of social domination in an economically and politically authoritarian society. Capitalism, as a system dependent on extracting surplus labor from workers, so that the latter will produce more value for less cost, must pull from somewhere the extra physical energy necessary for this exploitation. That "somewhere" turns out to be the most marginal aspects of our sexuality, specifically non-genital and "perverse" sexuality, or those kinds of sexual activity that are designated as taboo by the patriarchal, monogamous family structure because they are unnecessary for the biological reproduction - the form of sexuality considered "necessary" by the capitalism.

It appears, at least according to H. Marcuse, that the repression of sexual energy not necessary for monogamous, heterosexual family life, is diverted into labor; simultaneously people's erotic lives are shaped to conform to the demands of a hierarchically organized, patriarchal society. As a result, "perversions" such as homosexuality are, for Marcuse, at least potentially encouraging signs of rebellion against repression, rather than symptoms of excessive repression. He says that the perverts express rebellion against the subjugation of sexuality under the order of procreation, and against the institutions that guarantee this order.

So, while some sexual repression is necessary for the building of civilization, capitalism requires an extra degree of surplus repression in order to extract a greater amount of labor from people and to blunt their capacity for pleasure, since an understanding of pleasure can fuel one's desire for liberation. Sexual deviants, including homosexuals, are thus part of a vanguard rejecting the surplus sexual repression of capitalism.

It stands, thus, to reason, that the non-productive act of anal sex and the unrestrained promiscuity of "cruising," stand as examples of the boundlessness of human desire and possibility for bodily fulfillment. This unregulated pleasure, he argues, is too disruptive and too undisciplined to be conducive to authoritarian society or capitalist production. Gay men, through guiltless cruising and hook-ups, exemplify a free sexuality that's incompatible with capitalism and that is more natural and freer than mono heterosexuality.

http://www.lawschooldiscussion.org/index.php?topic=3003577.msg5400187#msg5400187