WTF?: How Hitler Ran Amok, Mao Died in Bed, and Your Jerk Brother Ruined Your Thanksgiving

Okay, I know what you’re thinking. But first let me recap:

In six pieces, we have investigated evil, using Barbara Oakley’s 2007 “Evil Genes” as our source. Dr Oakley noted that the type of people who specialize in making your life miserable are best described as Machiavellian, what she calls the “successfully sinister.” These may range from Hitler to the family jerk who ruins everyone’s Thanksgiving.

In her book, Dr Oakley laid out an impressive array of brain science to illustrate that all of us have far less dominion over our thoughts and actions than our over-inflated egos would lead us to believe. Someone whose brain is wired to over-react to stressful situations, for instance, is going to behave a lot differently than someone who isn’t. On and on it goes.

But there is no such thing as a bad gene or a good gene. What may be maladaptive in one environment can be supremely advantageous in another. And so in every generation we find our next crop of Ivan the Terrible’s, out for themselves at the expense of everyone else. Dr Oakley describes these individuals as “borderpaths,” combining traits of psycho/sociopathy and borderline, with a elements of narcissism and paranoia thrown in.

Fine, you may say. That may explain what makes these individuals tick, but what about us - their victims? What is it about us that allows them to get away with it - again and again and again? There will always be another Hitler, and you know that your next Thanksgiving is going to be as miserable as your last one.

What is going on here? As Dr Oakley makes clear, these individuals are successful for a reason. To a person, they are virtuoso manipulators, cut-throats, and con artists. If life is a game of chess, they are four moves ahead. You - what Dr Oakley loosely describes as the altruistic - never see it coming. Eventually we may get smart, but not before the damage is done.

Fine, but we’re talking about Hitler, here. Not to mention Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Milosevic, and a host of others. What gives?

Explanation Number One: Political and economic and social upheaval.

People are miserable, the rules suddenly change - anything goes. Hitler and Stalin and Mao were born with royalty running their respective countries. They came of age in a time when the lunatics were taking over the asylum, awaiting the inevitable lunatic-in-chief.

Explanation Number Two: Exploiting people’s fears and resentments is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

It’s the oldest and most pernicious con game in the world. Hitler was a master at it. Milosevic worked off of Hitler’s playbook. Pick a scapegoat - any scapegoat - shake and bake and serve at room temperature.

Explanation Number Three: Mob mentality.

I picked up some insights into this in my previous life as a financial journalist covering a boom-and-bust cycle in New Zealand and Australia back in the 1980s. If enough people start saying night is day long enough and loud enough, eventually even people with brains start believing it. Soon, everyone is driving in the dark with their lights off.

Explanation Number Four: People will believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts.

This has been a recurring theme here at Knowledge is Necessity. Conspiracy theorists specialize in this sort of thing, but none of us is immune. We all tend to rationalize away inconvenient facts we don’t like, while pouncing on the tiniest shred of innuendo as holy writ. This comes back to Oakley’s theme that our capacity to think things through is vastly over-rated.

Explanation Number Five: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Give someone the position Fuhrer-For-Life and wait for Armageddon to visit your neighborhood.

Wrapping it Up

No doubt I left a lot of stuff out, but this should get us started.

More to come ...

Chairman Mao: A Portrait in Evil

This is my fifth piece on Barbara Oakley’s eye-opening 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend.” I stumbled into her book after a Google search involving Hitler and sociopathy. What prompted the search was Nassir Ghaemi’s recently published “A First-Rate Madness” that, among many other things, raised the extraordinary proposition that Hitler was far more “normal” than people give him credit for.

Yes, Hitler had a lot of stuff going on, including bipolar, Ghaemi acknowledges, but apparently this son of a Schiklgruber would have been just another Newt Gingrich had not his personal physician in 1937 turned him into the kind of raving meth addict that made invading Poland seem like a good idea.

All this begs the obvious question: What about the nutjob who published his lunatic ravings as “Mein Kampf” in 1926 - while serving a prison term for staging a shoot-out in the vicinity of a beer hall that was part of a crackpot attempt at a populist uprising?

We will save Hitler for another day. It turns out that Oakley’s book had a much better poster boy for her study in evil - Mao Zedong, “the perfect borderpath.” As you recall from yesterday’s piece, Dr Oakley views personality as far too complex to lend itself to easy DSM explanations. Nevertheless, the DSM can serve as a rough guide.

Thus, Dr Oakley sees elements of borderline and psycho/sociopathy (plus generous helpings of narcissism and paranoia) feeding into a take-no-prisoners Machiavellian mindset, what she calls “successfully sinister.” According to Oakley:

Mao was the most Machiavellian leader of the many Machiavellian leaders of the twentieth century. For three decades, he held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population.

To give a sense of perspective: All the wars of the world from 1900 to 1987 resulted in 34 million combat dead. Mao murdered twice as many.

As a boy, Mao rebelled against his teachers and staged highly manipulative showdowns with his father - unheard of behavior in traditional Chinese society. The pattern continued into adulthood with a succession of wives and womanizing and the neglect and cruelty he visited upon his children. As an aspiring revolutionary, he was ousted from the Communist ranks six times for his lack of ability to play well with others.

The following appeared in one party circular:

He is extremely devious and sly, selfish and full of megalomania. To his comrades, he orders them around, frightens them with charges of crimes, and victimizes them ... His customary method regarding comrades ... is to use them as his personal tools.

Mao had the last word. Ultimately, he had his critics tortured to death.

His manipulative behavior continued as “Great Helmsman,” playing off members of his inner circle against each other and bringing aboard new sycophants. Li Zhisui, Mao’s doctor and longtime associate - described his hero as “devoid of human feeling, incapable of love, friendship, or warmth.”

Li recounts sitting next to Mao at a performance. A young acrobat slipped and was seriously injured. The crowd was aghast, but Mao continued talking and laughing with no show of concern. There were occasions when Mao expressed sympathy, but according to Oakley, he lacked true empathy, the ability to put himself in the shoes of others.

But to write off Mao as a garden variety sociopath is far too simplistic. Dr Oakley contends a lot of borderline stuff was going on, as well, including wild mood swings and lack of impulse control, not to mention lack of continuity with his own identity. In all probability, Mao did not even believe in Communism. As he said of himself: “My words and my deeds are inconsistent.” Speaking with a forked tongue is normal in politicians, but Dr Oakley maintains Mao took it to pathological levels, such as admiring America in private while vilifying it in public. Observes Oakley:

There is no evidence, for example, that British prime minster Winston Churchchill secretly admired the Nazis or despised Roosevelt.

Complicating matters was a heavy addiction to barbiturates, which may have exacerbated his underlying pathologies. He was also addicted to sex, any form, possibly as a comfort from psychic pain. Hypocritically, Mao required his own people to endure ultra-puritanical constraints.

Meanwhile, Mao launched his country on a ruinous course with one daft economic enterprise after another. Thirty million peasants died of the ensuing famine from his “Great Leap Forward” of 1958-60. Mao’s response was to pretend it never happened. This type of “magical thinking” was a trademark of Mao’s behavior. The trait is identified with schizotypal personality disorder (schizophrenia lite). Mao’s second son had full-blown schizophrenia.

Another schizophrenia connection was his paranoia, which most likely served him well in his rise to power. Those who found themselves on his wrong side were decidedly less lucky.

Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” beginning in 1966 resulted in at least three million dead and the persecution of another one hundred million. As opposed to Stalin, who conducted his crimes against humanity mostly in secret, Mao made a spectacle of his personal reign of terror, delighting in the public torture and execution of his victims.

For all this, Mao was a charmer, a trait he shared with Stalin and other dictators. Another trait in common was his own mystical notion of his role as leader and messiah, fed by a brand of narcissism that morally justified doing whatever he thought right, no matter how wrong.

Mao died in bed in 1976 at age 82, venerated as a God-figure while leaving his country destitute and in shambles. How, you may ask, could one man get away with wreaking such havoc? The only explanation that remotely makes sense is that time and place and circumstances created Mao, just as similar conditions had spawned Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and all the rest. Social, political, and economic chaos gave Mao his head start. And once he gained absolute power no force stood in his way to stop him.

One could argue that in a more stable society, Mao’s outrageous psychopathy would have taken him out of the game at a very early age, but Dr Oakely reminds us that Mao was the ultimate Machiavellian, one inclined toward success. Thus:

In a capitalistic economic structure, Mao might have made his way to the top of a business enterprise. There, like a surprising number of managers today, he would have run roughshod over colleagues and subordinates while devising unreasonable programs even as he took out anyone who objected.

In politics, says Dr Oakley, an American-born Mao might have become a populist demagogue in the 1930s Huey Long mold (I will leave the obvious contemporary examples to others), rising to a high level of electoral success, but saddled with the major inconveniences of a free press and checks and balances.

Lest we congratulate ourselves on how Mao-proof our democracy is, the mini-Maos in our midst did a splendid job in running amok through the first decade of this millennium, thereby bringing the entire world economy to the brink of extinction in 2008. Ironically, the US was bailed out - at least temporarily - by post-Mao China. Scary thought ...

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This is the fifth in a series based on Barbara Oakley's book, "Evil Genes." Previous pieces:

Figuring Out Evil
Figuring Out Behavior
Brain Science and Recovery
Why Evil Works

Why Evil Works

What does Mao Zedong have to do with that jerk brother or sister who wrecks everyone’s Thanksgiving? Funny you should ask. Barbara Oakley’s 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend” masterfully connects the dots.

Her starting point is “the successfully sinister.” As I explained in an earlier piece, Figuring Out Evil, these are your classic Machiavellians - charismatic and ruthless - out for themselves at the expense of anyone unfortunate enough to happen to breathe the same air. The “high-Machs” have long been known to correspond to sociopathy, but not all sociopaths wind up in prison.

No, the successfully sinister have a way of ending up in far more desirable places. We are led to believe the cream finds its way to the surface, but at the end of the day we find the scum also rises. But don’t pin the rap on pure sociopathy. It seems high-Machs have an equally high correspondence to borderline personality disorder.

The two conditions overlap, but in key areas they are in diametric opposition. While sociopaths have no problems with their inflated sense of self (so much so that sociopathy is easy to confuse with narcissism), those with borderline tend to suffer from a breakdown in personal identity. But it’s not a case of one or the other. Dr Oakley steers clear of over-reliance on DSM labels, but is comfortable in their use as a rough guide.

Your boss from hell may lean toward sociopathy, for instance, with an assist from borderline, and a bit of paranoia thrown in. Someone else may major on borderline and minor in sociopathy with some extra credits in narcissism. In previous pieces, Figuring Out Behavior and Brain Science and Recovery, I mentioned how Dr Oakley and I rely on the same brain science (in particular the work of Daniel Weinberger of the NIMH) in support of the proposition that our genes are not coded with the DSM in mind.

The same brain science also makes it abundantly clear that we are not as in control of our thinking and behavior as our over-inflated egos would have us believe. Someone who is genetically wired to over-react to stressful events, for instance, is prone to act a lot differently in social situations than those who are not. This is neither good in and of itself. Indeed, panic is often the appropriate response. But when we need to dismantle a bomb or talk our way through airport security, cool as a cucumber is desirable.

Cool as a cucumber also works when sticking a knife in your best friend’s back.

Now multiply all the complicating factors by infinity. Certain genetic tendencies and environmental influences may either mitigate or amplify other ones. Different parts of the brain may be over-communicating or under-communicating with each other. It may be this way in that individual or that way in this individual. We’re a long way from understanding evil, or for that matter just plain being an asshole, but we all know what being victimized is like.

According to Dr Oakley, it all may have started in earnest about 10,000 years ago with the introduction of agriculture. Prior to that, there was little advantage in gaming the system. But with the beginning of densely-populated permanent settlements and sophisticated social structures came unlimited opportunities to climb to the top on the backs of others, with disproportionate benefits accruing to the successful.

The trusting and naive majority were no match for this new breed of Machiavellian. From their new positions of wealth and power, the successfully sinister acquired the opportunity to breed in vast numbers and thus pass on their genes.

But there was a major catch. As the ranks of the successfully sinister grew, there were fewer altruists left to prey upon. Moreover, the remaining altruists had picked up their own new set of coping mechanisms. Dr Oakley compares these back and forth shifts to a Darwinian arms race. Indeed, our higher cortical regions with their highly developed social software may have evolved eons earlier as protection against our scheming and opportunistic fellow humans.

Meanwhile, altruism carries its own selective advantages. Not everyone wants to mate with a Visigoth, for instance, much less have one in the neighborhood. The altruists (I’m using the term very loosely, here) may eventually gain the upper hand, but in the process they wind up sowing the seeds of a new generation of victims - ripe for plucking by a yet more sophisticated breed of the sinister. On and on it goes.

Fast forward to the chaos of the twentieth century and the type of environment the Emperor Caligula would have felt very much at home in. Hitler and Stalin certainly did. So did Mao.

More to come ...

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This is the fourth in a series based on Barbara Oakley's book, "Evil Genes." Previous pieces:

Figuring Out Evil
Figuring Out Behavior
Brain Science and Recovery

Figuring Out Evil

I just started reading Barbara Oakley’s 2007 “Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend.” Trust me, this is a must-read.

Dr Oakley is a bio-engineer, and in her past lives served as an Army private (who rose through the ranks), a translator aboard Russian trawlers, a radio operator at the South Pole, author, and a mom. What got her started on her new voyage of discovery was coming to terms with her deceased sister, Carolyn, who really did steal her mom’s boyfriend.

Chances are there is someone like Carolyn in your own family, probably at least two or three. At other times in your life, you’ve had to contend with abusive bosses, backstabbing colleagues, clients from hell, and other forms of human unpleasantness. Call me a proctologist - I’m forever dealing with assholes.

Dr Oakley’s term is “successfully sinister.” These are your classic Machiavellians, out for themselves at the expense of anyone unfortunate enough to cross their field of vision. It turns out that “high-Machs” correspond very well to sociopathy, psychopathy, and borderline, though it is not as simple as that. We tend to associate a sociopath, for instance, as someone who resides in a maximum-security prison, but his or her more successful counterpart could be running a Fortune 500 company or heading up a university department or leading a government.

These are your master schemers and manipulators, socially charming, charismatic, and smart, not prone to making mistakes, indifferent to your needs, willing to squash you like a bug with no remorse.

But then we have the people who don’t grow up to be CEOs or professors or dictators. They simply make your life miserable. People like Carolyn, who break their mother’s hearts. 

The human condition is complex, and psychiatric/psychological labels and descriptors can only take us so far, as Dr Oakley makes abundantly clear. But we all know what it’s like to be abused and violated and taken advantage of, not to mention recoil in the presence of evil. But, what, precisely, are we contending with?

Ah, that is the question.

Much more to come ... 

Reckoning with Evil

This is my third installment in our conversation on Nassir Ghaemi’s “A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness.” In our previous two pieces, Dr Ghaemi indicated he is no fan of normal, at least not in crisis situations that call for individuals (such as Churchill) with at least some practical experience in crazy

In my second installment - Normal: It Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be - I mentioned a study reported by Dr Ghaemi that found that so-called mentally healthy individuals suffered a bad case of average-itis. These well-adjusted individuals tended to fit in rather than rock the boat. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just that, in a crunch, you don’t send in a normal person to do a crazy man’s job.

So far, so good. But in our first installment - The Normal Paradox - I also outlined an extremely contentious proposition advanced by Dr Ghaemi, one having to do with “normal” as a strong contributing factor to Nixon and George W Bush making bad decisions. In other words, humans are perfectly capable of exercising appalling judgment on their own account, with no assist from any condition with a DSM pedigree.

But Nixon had to have been crazy, you may well counter. Indeed, maybe he was. But the point is that he didn’t have to be, and neither does anyone else. Normal people have committed the worst atrocities imaginable. Enter Ghaemi’s next case study, Adolph Hitler.

First the black box warning: Reconceptualizing Hitler is bound to raise intense reactions. I totally respect that. I’m not even asking you to keep an open mind.

Way way back, on mcmanweb, I reviewed Hershman and Lieb’s “Brotherhood of Tyrants,” which attributed Hitler’s atrocities to bipolar. No, I said in effect. True, the evidence for Hitler’s bipolar is compelling, but not everyone with a mood disorder invades Poland. It had to have been sociopathy.

Not really, says Dr Ghaemi. We start with impossible-to-ignore documentation of Hitler’s depressions and (hypo)manias, but until 1937, Ghaemi contends, Hitler’s condition “seemed manageable.” That changed when he started to take amphetamines.

In 1937, Hitler began treatment with a new personal physician, Theodor Morell, who stayed on till nearly the end. Dr Morell prescribed amphetamines for depression (and a narcotic and other drugs for GI problems and barbiturates for sleep). Confidantes such as Hess and Himmler immediately noted the change in their boss’ behavior. In 1941, there is evidence Hitler was taking amphetamines intravenously on a daily basis, supplemented by oral doses. By 1943, he was receiving multiple daily injections.

Dr Ghaemi points out that oral amphetamines cause mania in about half of individuals with bipolar, with a much greater certainty with intravenous injections. Rats are deliberately injected with amphetamines to produce an animal model of psychosis. As thoroughly odious has Hitler had been, Ghaemi observes, citing Bullock, he was a realistic and astute politician. Moreover, he hadn’t invaded any countries, nor had he turned genocidal. As Ghaemi describes it: “Morell lit a fuse that exploded the entire world.”

Thus, up to 1937, Hitler’s bipolar benefited him in a way that influenced his rise to power, “fueling his charisma, his resilience, and political creativity.”

Ghaemi acknowledges that Hitler had always been an angry man, but that he had generally been “courteous and proper” in social settings. By 1942 (after the war had turned against him) Hitler was routinely screaming at his generals. Whereas he used to have no trouble delegating authority, now he became obsessed with details. His doctor only made things worse by intensifying the quack treatments.

Okay, so how do we account for Nazism in the first place? Or, for that matter, any evil?  What about Hitler’s henchmen? How sick were they?

After the War, Ghaemi tells us, the Allies put two dozen high-ranking Nazis  (including Goering and Ribbentrop) through extensive psychiatric evaluation and psychological testing, which went on for two years. The evaluations revealed that these men were normal. Goering, for instance, according to one investigator, had a “normal basic personality,” though “he was cynical and filled with mystical fatalism.”

Hitler’s criminals went to their deaths, totally impenitent, very pleasant people to talk to, righteous to the end.

Are we ever going to understand evil? Probably not. Are we making a serious mistake always associating evil with crazy? Definitely so. Evil, unspeakable evil, lurks everywhere. Crazy is not a requirement. Normal works very well with evil. Until we come to terms with this shocking fact of life, evil will continue to flourish, barely contested. That’s been our long past. Our futures may turn out short.