It’s PLEDGE DRIVE time again! If you’re a fan of this blog, please help fund its continued existence by clicking the button below. THANKS!
By David Futrelle
In 1941, writer Dorothy Thompson invented what she described as “an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game” called “Who Goes Nazi?” The idea was simple: the next time you’re at a party, or some other social gathering, take a look at those around you and try to guess which ones would, “in a showdown … go Nazi.”
You don’t do this out loud, of course, unless you really want to be punched.
The game feels as relevant at this point in history as it was when Thompson wrote her classic Harper’s essay explaining the rules of the game and offering a series of descriptions of the assorted social types she thought would (or most definitely would not) turn into literal Nazis when the chips were down — from the bank vice president who “has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer” (definitely a Nazi in embryo) to the downwardly mobile editor who manages to be intellectual without being a snob about it, about whom Thompson remarks that she “will put my hand in the fire that nothing on earth could ever make him a Nazi.”
Thompson’s portraits of these assorted social types, and her theories about who would and wouldn’t go Nazi, are a little too pat for my tastes; she basically thinks that nice people are immune to Nazism while mean and bitter types are drawn to it like moths to a lamp.
“Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she wrote.
They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes—you’ll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis.
Not far from the truth, I think, just a little oversimplified.
Still, the game itself is genius.
Over the last couple of years, for obvious reasons, Thompson’s article has been resurrected and passed around on social media, and several writers have proposed modern updates of her famous game, from the “office edition” to one focused on media figures. The only trouble with playing the game now is that so many of those who would have gone gone Nazi in Thompson’s day already have, in ours.
While the original game is still worth playing, let me propose an alternate version that might be even more entertaining for readers of this blog: Who Goes Red Pill?
Think of the various people you’ve recently met — in real life or online — and try to figure out who among them is most likely to embrace the toxic misogynistic ideology that unites the otherwise disparate groups that make up the manosphere, from MRAs to MGTOWS to incels to PUAs. What personality traits do they exhibit? What behaviors are obvious (or not-so-obvious) tells?
Are they NiceGuys (TM) stewing in aggrieved entitlement? Do they like South Park maybe a little bit too much? Do they get suspiciously angry about female superheroes? Are they fans of Pewdiepie, or Joe Rogan, or Jordan Peterson? Do they complain that women are sexually harassing them by wearing yoga pants? Do they know more than Chris Hansen does about age-of-consent laws? Do they describe themselves as “equity feminists” or “egalitarians?”
The game is a little trickier than it might at first appear. Some of these Jordan-Peterson-loving NiceGuys have already swallowed the Red Pill (and sometimes have even embraced the even more nilhilistic Black Pill), thus disqualifying them as candidates for the game.
Others may exhibit several seemingly obvious tells — but their flirtation with the Red Pill may end up being little more than a passing phase. I’m not sure I quite understand just what makes one person a Red-Pill-swallower and another a Red-Pill-spitter-outer. But maybe you do.
Share your own thoughts below as to what personality types you think are most drawn to the Red Pill (or to Nazism, if you’d prefer to play the original version). Let the games begin!
@WWTH
What’s going on at the Good Men Project? Have their standards begun slipping lately, or were they infiltrated somehow?
Now having slightly more time then I did this morning I would also like to apologize more thoroughly for my (Incredibly badly timed even in comparison to the other posts) screed about my possibility of being Red Pilled. I didn’t put any thought into how it would effect the other people in the community or how threatening it could come off as. It was selfish and insensitive of me and definitely reinforces areas that I need to work on.
@Definitely not Steve
Could you please stop? I’m explaining that the question you answered was both upsetting and not the one asked, why do you feel the need to argue about it?
A safe, non-toxic, non-misogynistic place for men to talk about things we do that affect women would be nice. There are a lot of things that a lot of guys need to work out and be guided towards that really aren’t women’s job to educate them about. But I also know from experience that what WWTH (I think) said is right, progressive spaces that aren’t for women invariably drift into misogyny, and I’m not sure what can be done about it (a similar problem exists with race, LGBT stuff, etc now I think on it)..
@Leum
“Invariably” is a strong word. I’m not sure if it’s really the case that any progressive space not for women is simply doomed, that seems almost fatalistic.
I’m sure there has to be some underlying factor that causes it to happen, and if so then it can be controlled for. Having such a space be gender neutral (i.e. for both men and women) in nature sounds like it would work, but if that was the case I’d expect somewhere like that to exist already. Similarly, I wonder if having all the information they need in an accessible and easy-to understand format would work but then I recall that some of them don’t even want to put in that much effort. Anyone think they might know what it is I might be missing here? There has to be something pushing that decline risk.
I would consider starting one but I know from experience that I’m horrible with managing those kinds of large scale projects.
(I still don’t know what happened to Good Men Project, by the way- I’m slightly afraid to look at them this point though I can’t really explain why. Perhaps it’s because seeing whatever they are now would tarnish my memories of what they once did?)
@kupo,
Message thoroughly received. I did not mean to annoy or upset you and I apologize that I appear to have.
AlanRobertshaw:
“ I hope at some stage you get to use your bullwhip to cross a chasm, Indian Jones style!”
David Morgan, who made all the Australian-style whips for the Indiana Jones franchise, put steel wire cables inside 20+‘ braided leather covers for the swinging scenes. The cable-filled whips couldn’t be cracked, although they could be thrown like a coil of stiff rope. The whips actually cracked were 8-12’ long.
I find that asking myself the question of who would go Nazi or Red Pill helpful in formulating my thoughts — but only partially helpful. I’m guessing that most people wouldn’t go self-identified Nazi or Red Pill unless they were both (1) already hateful people, and (2) looking for like-minded individuals. (Yuck.) Alternatively, they might be living under a dictatorship that demands either allegiance or death.
In my experience, people can hold a variety of attitudes, some of them mutually exclusive. But hey, we’re humans with big brains, so I guess there’s room for lots of stuff, some of it hateful, some of it life-affirming.
I have to apologize to Walt Whitman — who seems to have to loved everybody (Sorry, Walt!) — before I quote his immortal lines for my own purposes:
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
Years ago I used to worry about whichever guy I happened to be dating becoming aware of sexist ideas that he was previously unfamiliar with. I was afraid that if he knew about them, he might adopt those philosophies for himself. But once I thought it through, I realized that this was ridiculous: a strong sense of right and wrong will keep a person from doing that kind of thing.
I came to understand my own realization better when I began my relationship with my boyfriend. He’s got a strong conscience. He uses it. What a relief.
You’re definitely right about Thompson oversimplifying things, but you can’t really blame her since people in those days didn’t know as much as we do now about human neurobiology. The sad fact is that our capacity for xenophobia is directly proportional to our capacity to love our families and anyone else we consider a member of our “tribe”. While Nazism is often simply and excuse to engage in wanton cruelty it can also be the result of an otherwise laudable desire to protect loved ones. To be truly immune to bigotry a person needs a certain degree of emotional distance.
By the same token, not everyone who hates bigotry is necessarily a truly decent person. Many, if not most, are just greedy capitalists who want a bigger market to exploit and hate the idea of people having attachments to things other than money and possessions. Many are just sociopaths who see no reason to make distinctions between races because to them everyone is an object (but I repeat myself).
The only way to truly be a good person is through self-discipline. To recognize when the way you feel towards others is simply the result of an animalistic instinct and reign it in. To reject ways of thinking and living that take one further from harmony and to direct one’s hatred only toward obstacles to harmony.
Thanks for this. I’ve been dating and drawing close to a man who has claimed that Maps to Meaning was one of the most impactful books for him, and while he has denied being a Jordan Peterson fan he claims to be interested in JP’s “academic instead of mainstream” material. He’s unironically listened to Ben Shapiro on occasion too, and thinks that Rick and Morty is “the best animated show ever made” (though he would never go as far as a Pickle Rick tattoo or claim it’s for “high IQ people.”)
I can probably hear the alarm bells going off in the head of anyone reading this, and it did in mine too! Hell I’m still a bit concerned. But the more I talk to and learn about him the more I think that he’s unlikely to dive into red pill/misogynist thinking because he’s conscientious of the suffering of others, definitely has a sense of right and wrong, is willing to listen and consider alternative opinions to his and actually think things through, but most importantly he’s very perceptive of others and himself. A trait that is utterly utterly lacking in the Red Pill – if they had an ounce of self awareness they wouldn’t be Red Pill at all.
This man has got conservative undertones, from what I can tell, but I believe that he’s got a good enough heart to avoid falling for the majority of it. We’ll see. For now I’m going to roll with this budding relationship.
ETA: He’s also got a really fucking dodgy friend who has definitely drunk the manosphere Kool Aid, but none of his influence has rubbed off on my date so far. So my fella has already been exposed to misogynistic nonsense, but has assured me he completely disagrees with his friend on that stuff.
@sunnysombrera
You’re welcome.
One of the best pieces of advice I’ve gotten about relationships was, find someone you resonate with.
Best wishes.
OT with apologies, but is this concrete evidence of yer actual prehistoric, mammoth-hunting-era woman-perpetrated consumption of bonbons?????????????????? As reported by PZ over at Pharyngula:
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/12/18/chew-more-gum-for-posterity/
@sunnysombrera
Rick & Morty fanboys are some of the worst, especially the “you need a high IQ to understand it” types, and especially given their tendency to respond to “Oh, so it’s better than The Venture Bros.?” with “The what now?”
The Venture Bros. is basically the show that set the stage for Rick & Morty while being better in every way, actually rewards being knowledgable,* and oh yes, isn’t completely nihilistic.
*VB does not “require a high IQ” to understand, but neither does Rick & Morty. It does reward people with a broad knowledge base of many different subjects, but you don’t need one to follow the story. Not that Rick & Morty requires “a solid understanding of quantum physics to understand” as the fanboys claim – a thirty-second layperson’s explanation of the Many Worlds Hypothesis is more than enough.
Lord, give me the confidence of a mediocre white man.
@ opposable thumbs
Yeah; that’s a great story. One thing for the author…
They’ve found previous examples of Neolithic chewing gum; and the toothmarks have always been child sized. So the belief is that it was a juvenile activity.
@Allandrel
They remind me very much of fans of the band Tool. For both fans of the band and fans of the show all think they’re smarter than everyone else because they listen to certain music or watch a certain show, and when people express any sort of criticism of either, the fans respond by saying that “you’re not smart enough to get it.”
I doubt most of the fans have any real understanding. This could lead to some demonstrations of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
I haven’t actually watched any entire episodes of Rick & Morty, only clips, but what I saw was not really entertaining enough to warrant watching more.
Men experiencing sexual and romantic frustration. Also, men who’ve had certain nasty experiences with women, the kinds of experiences that MGTOWs and MRAs are always talking about: divorce rape, a cheating wife, a sexless marriage.
A “Red-Pill-spitter-outer” would probably be someone who finds a solution to their immediate problems before they come into contact with redpill ideology.
RE: Quantum physics
I was introduced to the concepts in fourth year engineering and I barely understand it. Hell, the specialists barely understand it.
@ Anonymous, Naglfar
It was actually my RPG playing that got me into writing smutty fiction, coming up with backstories for my Diablo II characters. From there, I created my own original characters, most of whom are in open relationships. I haven’t really published any of them, but I’m astonished at just how much I’ve written. My problem is that I get the framing set up and get kinda bogged down in the mechanics of who’s putting what organ where, particularly in group scenes, then kinda get bored and write something else. It’s left quite a few half-finished stories that have the beats in place, but just need to be elaborated on. That’s what I’m working on now, particularly with a longer multi-part epic where my kinda more straight-laced characters go on a vacation road trip through my universe’s equivalent of Nova Scotia and boink their way across the province.
That’s my New Year’s Resolution: fill in the missing parts of my longer stories (along with start colouring some of my older drawings). Then comes the editing. I hope to eventually illustrate some of these stories too, but that would be a “later” thing.
@ dreidl
Sorry; didn’t see your earlier response; my apologies! But thank you for that info; that’s really interesting. I wonder if a regular whip could support the strain. I would love to try something like that; like the chasm swing in Star Wars. I’m not sure how hard it is to wrap a whip/line around a suitable anchor; but I do have a knack for snagging belt loops on door handles; so I’m sure it’s a transferable skill.
@Katamount
*gasp* so an animated television show doesn’t make you the smartest person in the world just by watching? Devastated. /s
@Alan Robertshaw,
The TV show Mythbusters did a Star Wars episode where they tested out three scenes from the original trilogy: Luke and Leia’s swing across the chasm, Han stuffing Luke in a tauntaun carcass to keep him alive for a few hours in subzero temperatures, and the Ewok’s swinging log attack. Don’t know if the full episode is up online anyplace, but the results were published here:
https://mythresults.com/star-wars-special
Interesting stuff, what they found out recreating those scenes.
@Alan
A braided rawhide bullwhip can definitely support someone’s weight. The hard bit is wrapping it around the bar firmly enough that it won’t unwrap when your weight comes onto it. A weight at the tip (like your belt buckle) would help with that part, while making the whip completely useless for anything else.
I’ve been writing a lengthy fanfic adventure story that involves a scene of Indiana Jones hanging by his whip for several minutes on a levitating magical object. If this isn’t a realistic prospect, I’ll be damned.
(Eventually the whip breaks, though not from the strain alone but from catching fire, and Indiana goes splash into a lake.)
I still can’t post links here, but if you check this story on the Guardian’s science news, there’s a cool artist’s portrait of the girl. The artist is Tom Björklund; I gushed about his mammoth hunters in a recent thread.
I think what Dalillama says about the hard part being to wrap enough to hold in the first place is true but then too you would have to hit whatever bar you are going to swing from with either half way or two thirds down the thong. At least that what you do like when you do a sidearm flick to wrap a person. I’ve seen mostly cutting tricks at whip arts events but wrapping tricks are so amazing too. But I only know a little (and haven’t practiced much with wraps but want to more) but the popper and fall go way past the person or thing you are trying to wrap. I don’t know how it works if you are wrapping something small and above you like a bar rather than like a person standing in front of you. But still if it works the same you would need a lot of room over the bar you’re trying to wrap.
@ redsilkphoenix & dali
Thanks for that info; I like that it’s plausible. I’ll have to track down a bullwhip. Obviously not a leather one. (I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it; but I’m vegan.)
I did once manage to snag a guitar neck with a chain. That was actually an accident. Looked cool though and luckily have a still of it.