Expression of radicalism and conformity to natural human mechanisms

Dietrich Eckart was the one who introduced Hitler to the ideas of racial pseudoscience. These ideas at the time were naturally due to societal divide and advancements that were geographically concentrated. But I feel like it just goes deeper than that, it's this logic of a person having blue eyes and fair skin, that makes him a part of the superior race. The whole concept of a superior race within that pseudoscience is really interesting to me, it's almost like a human tendency to categorize, to see patterns and often very unfortunately to assign value to those patterns. These shorthand markers were just something that was categorized as "other" or "better". It gave them a false sense of certainty. Just like all the blond women were considered prostitutes in the early Roman Empire, which later changed after the Roman women started dying their hair blond; similarly these people just through - this very human instinct categorized it in a different way. But it's such a convincing narrative to that society - just as the planets revolve around the sun the people revolve around the master race narrative to a hungry society seeking for a sense of purpose and certainty. Those are not just random traits that they chose, no - those were traits that were more likely to sell amongst the weak logic of the hungry people. All these traits being overemphasized as the master race activated instinctive social responses within people. Then another interesting thing is using the roman salute. It evokes some sort of show of strength or power. The uniforms - these mysterious, clandestine, and all mighty forces that show the power through their uniforms. They conveyed the message in a very strong way. That was not even the real Roman salute it just came from 19th-century artistic depictions of Rome. But it felt ancient and imperial, which mattered more psychologically than historical accuracy. The movement constantly borrowed symbols that evoked permanence, destiny, masculinity, discipline, and transcendence.

But what's even more interesting is that the lead people. Who comes up with stuff like that? As I think everything we do and the way we do it is somewhat of an expression of ourselves.

Hitler was a struggling artist in Vienna, family was unstable and he was deeply resentful, especially about class and perceived failures.

Himmler was couldn't find purpose anywhere, a failed chicken farmer would be the best gig he did, his family was insanely conservative and the man himself was obsessed with order and authority from a very young age.

Goebbels was a failed writer from a working class family, he was very insecure.

Göring was WW1 fighter pilot from a noble family, who had a bad case of morphine addiction.

This short description already gives enough information to understand the coping, the self-doubt, and the insecurities that were covered through each and every step of the machine that was created. It was boys playing dress-up, with a thirst for validation and power, just in the right moment, just with the right charisma, just at the right time for them to ascend to power and impose their deranged ideas upon the society. It's genuinely fascinating to me that if things went sideways on a lot of different ends, there would be a massive society based on those very ideas.

It offered millions of people a chance to externalize their inner abyss. Every weakness, every sexual shame, every fear of inadequacy or meaninglessness could be projected outward onto the “racial other,” the degenerate, the parasite. A pornography of superiority. A feverish, almost masturbatory obsession with purity, hardness, blood, and breeding. The formula works because it speaks to something ancient and pre-rational in us. The same part that once demanded blood sacrifice to the gods so the tribe could feel chosen. The same part that still whispers, when life feels chaotic and meaningless: If only we could "purify…" if only we could become "One…" if only we could become hard enough, then the terror of being human would finally go quiet. The ingredients are still inside us. The hungry need for certainty. The seductive pleasure of othering. The erotic charge of submission to something “greater.” The willingness to trade our individual conscience for collective ecstasy, where we feel special, with a divine purpose.

I do not mean to reduce the rise of Nazism entirely to personal insecurity. This is just an aspect that fascinates me, that translates a lot of the things we see nowadays, but at a critically different scale.