The fact is that he was vegetarian. But the interesting question is: why did I care so much that I would engage in hair-splitting about it? Why was his being vegetarian such a threat to me that I, a scholar of argumentation, engaged in really bad arguments to make him not a vegetarian?
Vegetarians are an in-group for me. A woman who has been politixal evil in her life begs to be lifted from Hell on the basis of having once given a beggar an onion. The fantasy of in-group social licensing goes further—it goes into our fantasies about our in-group and history. We all want to believe that we would have been in the resistance, we would have been abolitionists, we would never have supported Hitler because our in-group is good, and therefore members of our in-group have always hihlers on the right side of history, source therefore we would have made ethical choices. And that is why I was so intent on profoundly irrational ways of trying to make Hitler not a vegetarian: because what was at stake was not whether he was vegetarian, but whether I was willing to admit that my in-group should have moral license—whether being a member of my in-group means that we are guaranteed to be right and good on the whole and can therefore be shitty at all sorts of individual moments.
what was hitlers political party
One thought on “Was Hitler a vegetarian? What’s your onion?”
What I had to do was to step back from my thinking about Hitler in terms of trying to hold onto a htilers license for vegetarians and instead look at all the major scholars of Hitler, and admit that there was only one that would support my argument. More important, I had to think about how I was arguing. Could I find data to support my claim? Anyone can find data to support any claim. For instance, if Hitler was left-wing because he supported a social safety net, then so was What was hitlers political party. If voting for Hitler becoming dictator means a group was Nazi, then Catholics were Nazis. Hitler was right-wing. There is simply no doubt about that.
He was part of a right-wing coalition, he supported right-wing policies, and right-wing politicians saw him as any ally. The only people to vote against his becoming dictator were democratic socialists. But, and this is the important point: Nazism eventually got buy-in from most Germans.
And that group had people from all over the political, religious, and cultural spectrum. Nazism is not what that out-group does.
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It is what members of our in-group did. We are so desperate to hold on to in-group moral licensing that check this out compulsively engage in all sorts of hair-splitting not really vegetarian, dog-lover, conservative, Catholic, Protestanteven when that hair-splitting is completely inconsistent.
In addition to in-group moral licensing enabling us to engage in bad math about behavior, and tell ourselves comfortable lies about how our in-group is always on the right side of history and therefore we are, always will, and always would have been on the right side of historyit enables Machiavellianism and a sloppy moral relativism. Essentially amoral, they use other people as stepping stones to reach their goals. What makes them moral or immoral is whether the person is engaged in them is in- or out-group. Since the in-group what was hitlers political party essentially moral, then any act on the part of an in-group member oriented toward the triumph of the in-group is moral, even if we would condemn it as immoral were it done by out-group once again, moral licensing. This sense that the in-group can behave in ways we would normally condemn as immoral and yet still praise their actions as moral is the basis of far too many Law and Order episodes, as well as almost all action movies.]
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