The first researchers to observe chimpanzees in the wild were left with an idyllic impression of our close ape cousins. They appeared to be a peaceful tribe of vegetarians, who cuddled and groomed and cared for one another in extended family units, sharing fruit and showering their young with affection.
Only later, when in-depth studies were attempted, did it become clear that this was merely part of the picture. These serene vegetarians were also capable of shocking violence towards members of their own species, including murder.
Chimpanzees are gentle, loving and family-oriented within their own territorial mating group. But with chimps from outside that circle, they can turn vicious.
In this respect, chimps resemble humans.
You, for example, would never display intentional cruelty towards another human being.
That is – unless you knew that other human being wasn’t like you. Then you might be surprised at what you could do.
Welcome to in-group/out-group psychology.
Consider the guards at Auschwitz. They thought of themselves as nice people.
An album of photos was made public in 2008 containing photographs taken by members of the SS who worked at Auschwitz. These pictures are not what you would expect. Dating from 1944, they show laughing, singing, smiling people reveling at Solahütte, an SS recreation home located just outside the death camp.
There’s even a shot of an SS officer lighting the Auschwitz Christmas tree only a few miles from the place where millions were being starved, beaten and gassed.
The question becomes how you convince yourself that other human beings are not like you – that they are outsiders.
One common method is to place them outside of your religious system. Religion is often credited with teaching morals and enforcing good behavior among human beings. More often, it is used to justify the abuse of out-groups by defining the parameters of an in-group. As Freud put it: “a religion, even when it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and loveless against those who do not belong to it.”
Freud watched Hitler march into Austria during the Anschluss in 1938, as the powerful Roman Catholic church stood by offering no resistance whatsoever. As Peter Gay describes it:
“The Austrian prelates, keepers of the Roman Catholic conscience, did nothing to mobilize whatever forces of sanity and decency still remained; with Theodor Cardinal Innitzer setting the tone, priests celebrated Hitler’s accomplishments from the pulpit, promised to cooperate joyfully with the new dispensation, and ordered the swastika flag to be hoisted over church steeples on suitable occasions.”
Freud managed to escape to England with his immediate family. Four of his sisters, each of them over 70 years old, were not so lucky. These helpless elderly women were murdered in concentration camps.
In-group/out-group psychology, coupled with religion, explains a lot about wars, inquisitions, crusades, burnings at stakes, pogroms, terrorism and the ugly history of mankind in general.
Another way to ostracize a group is to link them to disease. When Glenn Beck calls Progressivism a “cancer” in America, he implies that Progressives, those people like myself who believe in Progressive causes, are the embodiment of that cancer. He is borrowing a page from Adolf Hitler’s playbook. One of the Fuehrer’s favorite tropes was to compare Jews to tuberculosis bacilli infecting the German nation.
If people are tuberculosis bacilli – or cancer cells – it becomes much easier to abuse them.
Still another way to justify dehumanizing a group of people is to isolate them because they have a different ethnic background, or physical appearance. This country began as a slave colony, based on the firm notion that people with dark skin could be beaten, abused, tortured, murdered, and bought and sold as chattel because they weren’t really “human” at all – they were more like animals. This is another example of in-group/out-group psychology at work.
The Tea Party movement lends itself to in-group/out-group psychology because it is a homogenous population – an excellent candidate for an in-group. According to a CNN poll, active supporters of the Tea Party, those who have attended a rally or donated money, are much more likely to be wealthy, male, have graduated from college and reside in rural areas that are already GOP and conservative strongholds. According to a Quinnipiac University poll, 88% of the Tea Partiers are white. They are also almost entirely Republican. It’s a fair guess that most of them are Christian, too, and probably fundamentalist.
This might explain their obsession with attempting to prove that Barack Obama, the President of the United States, was somehow not born here or is somehow not American.
He’s different from them. That makes him a member of an out-group.
Mr. Obama’s out-group status, in turn, permits the Tea Party people to justify treating him in ways they would never treat one of their own. That explains shouting “You lie” at him in the middle of a joint session of the US Congress, or flaunting firearms at events where the President is speaking. Since he is an out-group member, they can justify treating Mr. Obama with a level of disrespect that might otherwise be difficult to fathom, especially from people who claim to respect the office he fills.
More disturbing, perhaps, is the way the Republicans treat their fellow Americans who happen to lack healthcare.
If another human person were injured or ill, and needing to be taken to a hospital, it is hard to imagine anyone, whatever their political or religious beliefs, refusing to come to that person’s aid.
But the Republicans have managed to convince themselves that denying healthcare to their fellow Americans is morally defensible. Perhaps it’s a Christian doctrine that an atheist outsider, like myself or Sigmund Freud, could never comprehend.
More likely, for the Republicans, it’s simply that any American living without healthcare must be a member of an out-group. Perhaps they are all Socialists, African-Americans or Progressives, or even part of the “cancer” that Glenn Beck battles on tv.
The latest example of in-group/out-group psychology at work has appeared in the form of threats of violence by radical Right-wingers against Democratic politicians who supported the healthcare bill and voted it into law last week. Black and gay politicians have had nasty names shouted at them. One Democratic congressman was called “baby killer” by his Republican colleague on the floor of the US House of Representatives. There have been death threats and acts of vandalism.
You wouldn’t do these things to someone whom you considered an equal.
The truth seems to be that, for the Republicans, anyone who disagrees with their political agenda is an outsider. The code word for “outsider” is that you are not a “real American.” Sarah Palin warned you about those people, the “fake Americans” – the outsiders. You can place gun targets over their faces. You can threaten their lives.
As I’ve said time and time again, this column is strictly without political bias.
But perhaps it is time for the Republicans and their Tea Party minions to rise above the level of chimpanzees and Nazis, and to recognize the humanity of their fellow citizens. For decades, tens of millions of us have been denied access to decent healthcare. As a result, each year tens of thousands of us have died.
The issue of healthcare is finally being addressed with a mainstream political solution, thanks to President Obama and the Democrats.
But the Republicans still need to learn a basic lesson in citizenship.
They are not the in-group, and everyone else is not the out-group.
There is no out-group.
There is one America, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The People's Therapist 
Why waste your time even thinking about the Glen Beck’s of this world, he’s a TV personality looking for ratings. The American Public figured it out, look who’s President. With Georgetown, Syracuse and now Kansas out of the final 4, the pundit’s brackets are all broken, the health care bill is signed into law, Scott from Mass. was a comet that expired almost instantaneously, so Fox TV, Sarah Palin, Rush, Beck is all the pundits have to talk about Sunday Morning. Born and raised in DC, we know better.
You have got to be kidding that this column is unbiased. I like everything about what you write EXCEPT when you write “without political bias.” It’s almost a passive aggressive statement. Seriously, it’s pretty offensive.
Democracy is an inefficient form of government, and it is laden with frustration, but the gov’t needs the mandate of the electorate in order to affect great change – and it doesn’t have it.
Speaking as a teapartier (although not as a representative of them), we do recognize the humanity of others. One could easily say that the left doesn’t recognize the individuality of others, while being such great lovers of humanity in general. No doubt you were just as outraged at the “BusHitler” signs that were prominent in Manhattan when the Republican National Convention was in town five or six years ago.
Many just feel that the gov’t is an inefficient provider of social services and this is a radical change from the gov’t’s traditional role – as a protector of negative rights instead of the provider of positive ones. It’s offensive that you are objectifying those who disagree with you and insist that they need lessons in citizenship. Perhaps if you were more open – at least on the surface – to dissenting views on a contentious issue, you would have a better understanding of their intentions without having to talk down to them. Perhaps you could even persuade them.
I don’t sanction the threats (which have been leveled against GOP congressmen, as well, if you have been following the news) in any way. But the violent frustration of the electorate isn’t a shock when they have been disenfranched by their representatives. It is obvious from the polls that this bill is not popular with the American people and there is anger that they’ve been ignored.
It’s almost like you become a typical therapist when you discuss this issue.
For the record, I AM kidding when I say that this column is unbiased. I thought that was pretty clear in the context.
I’m fine with dissenting views, but some of the Tea Party people have turned to hateful attacks and even threats. Plenty of Americans support the healthcare bill for the good reason that they don’t want their fellow citizens to be abandoned and die without the care they need. And yes, a BusHitler sign would have been offensive, too. But I was marching and protesting at the Republican National Convention and I don’t recall ever seeing one.
I think there is a deeper problem here that you touch on but don’t recognize. I would argue that the very idea that you have some responsibility whatsoever to “the nation” is the real Nazi comparison. This idea that a person owes something to the community leads to a lack of individuation and autonomy that is dangerous both to the individual and in the long run the community. You can’t become self actualized, and therefore give your best to the world, if your responsibilities in life is to your parents, your religion, or the state. Whether its the Democrats pushing the need for universal healthcare or the Republicans pushing the need to fight the war on terror, it amounts to the same idea. They say “Give your mind and body to the “nation” and we’ll fix all the bad things in the world”. It’s a fairy tale and leads to an immature people and culture.
If a nation doesn’t group together to address the concerns of the whole, then it fractures into anarchy. I believe in citizenship – the duty to care for one another. To me, that is the definition of a nation. That is its purpose. We can’t all sit on our porches clutching shotguns. Some of us are poorer, sicker and weaker, and some of us are richer, healthier and stronger. I believe it is in all our best interests to take care of one another.
Oh, and no one has been “disenfranchised.” You might have noticed that the Republicans got clobbered in the last election. That was because Bush nearly brought down the entire economy with his misguided tax cuts, endless wars and wasteful spending. There are very few Republicans in Congress because the party is on its way out. There are very few Republicans left in this country, period. Without the de-populated states of the West – the Dakotas and Montana and Wyoming, etc., the GOP would have no power whatsoever. It is simply because of the unfair way that the Senate is organized – 2 senators for every state, even the ones that have next to no population – that the Republicans are still clinging to power. It’s those ranchers out West, a tiny fraction of the population, and their out-sized representation in the Senate, that keep the Republicans going at all. If anything, they’re disenfrancising us liberal Democrats.
That is just absurd, sorry to say so forcefully. North Dakota and Montana each currently have two Democratic senators. You are engaging in a charicature, which only serves the purpose of dismissing alternative arguments. Because I like your blog, I am engaging with you and really would like to debate this with you without that.
Obama ran as a moderate. He lied when he said that if you have your health care, you get to keep it without changes. The added “benefits” will lead to added expenses whether or not you want to pay for them as that is simple economics and the CEO of Aetna just said so in BusinessWeek. Those Democratic Congresspersons who ran and won in +McCain districts would not have been hesitant to vote for the bill if they thought their electorate would reward them for the vote. They know that this vote could end their careers and it is probably not because their voters are racists or in the out crowd. If you were right, they would not have hesitated because, after all, there aren’t any Republicans left. While there aren’t many left in New York City, past the Hudson there are a few left, in addition to independents who are displeased with the spending. It is myopic to think that one or two elections – in either direction – cannot be reversed with the electoral pendulum swinging the other way.
I am pleased to hear that you are opposed to wasteful spending, however. No doubt that you will be punishing the Dems for the rampant spending that has occurred in the past year. This is why the tea party movement has even emerged – they were dissatisfied with Republicans as well as the Democrats.
Because of my long duration with working for an investment bank, I could go on about the causes of the recession, but that is beyond the scope of this blog about personal behavior. Suffice it to say that it was structural, McCain certainly did not respond to it as well as Obama during the campaign, and that it is not as simplistic as tax cuts+war=bad.
Gosh…they don’t even have any Republican senators left in N Dakota and Montana…that is amazing. They’re disappearing like the dinosaurs. So is the notion that “cost” is a reason to leave people uninsured. If you want to control cost in healthcare, you do it by installing a single-payer, public system. But that would mean the death of hugely profitable health insurance companies, and getting over the anti-government paranoia in this country. I’ve lived in the UK and Switzerland, and I would kill for a system like one of those in the US. Also, I’m hardly going out on a limb saying that huge tax cuts + endless wasteful war in Iraq = destruction of US economy. I mean c’mon – under Clinton we were looking at surpluses. Under Bush we’re in debt as deep as we were after WWII. And what did we get for all that money? Zilch. A recession. At least with Obama, our children might be able to see a doctor.
Really appreciate the comments. As a law student, I’ve become a daily reader. Keep up the good work!
Without taking a side, politically, I will say: This is a pretty good blog when it sticks to (what I see as) its primary topic, psychotherapy (and to a lesser degree, practicing law). I’d urge you not to turn this into a political blog even though I’m sure you feel strongly about it. One, there are plenty of political blogs out there. Two, they are all tedious.
The ability to psychologically put other groups outside one’s own moral circle is an important topic and can be addressed meaningfully without turning this very good blog into yet another forum to shout at each other about health-care reform.
You have reduced difficult concepts to easy to understand constructs. Thanks.
I think Bjorn has a point. There are lots of political blogs out there, and the back-and-forth seems to follow the same pattern.
On the one hand, you have the liberal point of view: Bush = reckless tax cuts, irresponsible government, misguided foreign policy, the Katrina / New Orleans debacle, gutting environmental regs, fuelling climate change, cultural backwardness, merger of church and state, catastrophic home ownership policies, cronyism, alienating allies, abrogating domestic rights during the war on terror, etc. Whereas Obama = prevented economic disaster with a timely bailout package, passed much-needed healthcare reform, inspiring millions of disenfranchised Americans, restoring reputation abroad, advocating for better environmental policy, etc.
On the other, you have the conservative point of view: Republicans = more efficient allocation of scarce resources, more realistic view of human nature, more respect for individual choice and freedom, less of the liberals’ unearned tendency to spend other peoples’ money, more concern about staggering levels of public debt, less interference in individuals’ private lives, etc. Whereas Obama / Dems = reckless spending, excessive catering to special interests (e.g., unions) at the expense of a productive and competitive economy, charisma / cult of personality in lieu of substance, more self-indulgent boomer narcissism, constructing an unsustainable, highly regulated socialist economy that can’t compete with China, India, etc.
The point is, the arguments are endless. No one ever wins, and no one ever really becomes more enlightened.
great blog. great article. dont you just love readers that tell you on your own blog what topics to write about and what should be forbidden? wonder if they would say the same if they agreed with your views.
The Nazis were progressive socialist with a party platform that read as if it’s from any Democratic convention. I’m sure they would have shot any TEA party people on site.
Look how easy it is to debunk the myth that republicans are racist… Two words: Alan Keys….Again, here are five words: I am a Hispanic Republican. It is very damaging to label someone a racist, especially with a long-shot article that you have posted here.
What revelatory piece
Could be your best article on here!!
This post could not be more on the level!!