OSS Psychological Profile of Adolph Hitler

[Szdfan]

I've heard people of influence here say similar things, but it's possible Hitler was able to control a greater percentage of the population than any before or after. So far.

I think that's possible. I just don't see a similar thing happening these days because, no matter what party or cause, a political figure always generates very loud and significant dissent. Attempts at censorship just fan the flames. There's way too much freedom of information for anyone to control what large populations are allowed to know.

Mass communications (film and radio) was a new tool that emerged during the early part of the 20th century and Hitler used it to his advantage. A film like "Triumph of the Will" might seem rather obvious to us today, but Leni Reifenstahl pioneered cinematographical techniques that are still being used today and during the 1930s were powerful because they were new. Film and radio are both centralized forms of communication and rather easy to gatekeep and control. Today, disinformation and propaganda rely on the freedom of information to create counternarratives that then go viral.

About the only way I can see a similar situation of information control happening is if a country isolates itself from the global internet. Maybe that's the way it is in North Korea or some place, I don't know.

My Dad in Russia uses a VPN to access Facebook and other Western media. He was recently in Shanghai and was unable to access the Internet the entire time he was in China.

[mike]

Mass communications (film and radio) was a new tool that emerged during the early part of the 20th century and Hitler used it to his advantage. A film like "Triumph of the Will" might seem rather obvious to us today, but Leni Reifenstahl pioneered cinematographical techniques that are still being used today and during the 1930s were powerful because they were new. Film and radio are both centralized forms of communication and rather easy to gatekeep and control. Today, disinformation and propaganda rely on the freedom of information to create counternarratives that then go viral.

Just because something is a counternarrative doesn't automatically mean it is disinformation or propaganda. If there would have been a means of spreading a counternarrative in Nazi Germany, it could have been an example of truth being a counternarrative. Contraband radios that received signals from outside German-occupied Europe would have been a possible example of this.

[Szdfan]

Mass communications (film and radio) was a new tool that emerged during the early part of the 20th century and Hitler used it to his advantage. A film like "Triumph of the Will" might seem rather obvious to us today, but Leni Reifenstahl pioneered cinematographical techniques that are still being used today and during the 1930s were powerful because they were new. Film and radio are both centralized forms of communication and rather easy to gatekeep and control. Today, disinformation and propaganda rely on the freedom of information to create counternarratives that then go viral.

Just become something is a counternarrative doesn't automatically mean it is disinformation or propaganda. If there would have been a means of spreading a counternarrative in Nazi Germany, it could have been an example of truth being a counternarrative.

I didn't say that all counternarratives are disinformation and propaganda. I said disinformation and propaganda create counternarratives. I think I'm making a distinction here.

Contraband radios that received signals from outside German-occupied Europe would have been a possible example of this.

Yes, but those radio broadcasts sent to those contraband radios would also have come from a centralized government-sponsored source, such as the BBC or the Voice of America rather than from a social media influencer recording themselves in their bedroom.

[mike]

Mass communications (film and radio) was a new tool that emerged during the early part of the 20th century and Hitler used it to his advantage. A film like "Triumph of the Will" might seem rather obvious to us today, but Leni Reifenstahl pioneered cinematographical techniques that are still being used today and during the 1930s were powerful because they were new. Film and radio are both centralized forms of communication and rather easy to gatekeep and control. Today, disinformation and propaganda rely on the freedom of information to create counternarratives that then go viral.

Just become something is a counternarrative doesn't automatically mean it is disinformation or propaganda. If there would have been a means of spreading a counternarrative in Nazi Germany, it could have been an example of truth being a counternarrative.

I didn't say that all counternarratives are disinformation and propaganda. I said disinformation and propaganda create counternarratives. I think I'm making a distinction here.

Contraband radios that received signals from outside German-occupied Europe would have been a possible example of this.

Yes, but those radio broadcasts sent to those contraband radios would also have come from a centralized government-sponsored source, such as the BBC or the Voice of America rather than from a social media influencer recording themselves in their bedroom.

Good points. Do you think that in a freedom of information environment similar to what we have today, Hitler would have ever happened?

[barnhart]

I've heard people of influence here say similar things, but it's possible Hitler was able to control a greater percentage of the population than any before or after. So far.

I think that's possible. I just don't see a similar thing happening these days because, no matter what party or cause, a political figure always generates very loud and significant dissent. Attempts at censorship just fan the flames. There's way too much freedom of information for anyone to control what large populations are allowed to know. About the only way I can see a similar situation of information control happening is if a country isolates itself from the global internet. Maybe that's the way it is in North Korea or some place, I don't know.

Maybe... but people are still people as they were before the internet. Society may shift for a time before the cycle repeats.

[Szdfan]

Just become something is a counternarrative doesn't automatically mean it is disinformation or propaganda. If there would have been a means of spreading a counternarrative in Nazi Germany, it could have been an example of truth being a counternarrative.

I didn't say that all counternarratives are disinformation and propaganda. I said disinformation and propaganda create counternarratives. I think I'm making a distinction here.

Contraband radios that received signals from outside German-occupied Europe would have been a possible example of this.

Yes, but those radio broadcasts sent to those contraband radios would also have come from a centralized government-sponsored source, such as the BBC or the Voice of America rather than from a social media influencer recording themselves in their bedroom.

Good points. Do you think that in a freedom of information environment similar to what we have today, Hitler would have ever happened?

That's a good question. I think the particulars of early 20th Century Totalitarianism (Nazism and Communism) were unique to that particular moment in history, but I also think that authoritarianism is certainly a possibility even in our time of "information freedom." A totalitarian situation like North Korea is rare, but both contemporary China and Russia demonstrate that it's possible to have a capitalistic economy with an authoritarian political system.

I think we are in the middle of an information revolution in which more information is available more quickly than at any previous time in history. I think that most of us don't have the experience or the skills to sift through the nuance of all this information and to determine what is true, so we tend to adopt whatever metanarrative we resonate with regardless of whether it's objectively true or not.

If there is so much information out that it's impossible to determine what is true or not and sketchy "alternative facts" are treated with the same legitimacy as verifiable facts, then it doesn't matter if we have the free flow of information. If we can't think critically about the information that's blasted at us and sort between what's real and what's false, then we end up in a kind of information paralysis. Having access to information is not enough -- the harder part is sorting and organizing that information into some sort of structure or narrative that has meaning and some basis in reality.

I think that's where the authoritarian danger lies -- if all of our institutions and traditional media gatekeepers are lying to us and if nothing the media says it's true, then it's possible to insert an alternative narrative that serves the authoritarian. Part of the appeal of authoritarianism is that it gives simple answers to complex issues and I think a lot of us hunger for simplicity in an incredibly complex world.

One of the ways that I am conservative is that I am an institutionalist. I trust expertise in areas where I don't know a lot. I don't think that institutions are perfect or that experts always get it right, but it's my natural tendency to trust them over some rando with a YouTube channel. The conspiracy theories that run rampant in this informational free-for-all erode trust in institutions and expertise, which then creates space for an authoritarian figure to step into the vacuum.

So while I'm not sure that we are looking at another Hitler, I think the authoritarian danger is real at this particular moment.

[mike]

So after all that the age of science and information has brought us, we are back to the same place we always were. The question of who to trust.

[Szdfan]

So after all that the age of science and information has brought us, we are back to the same place we always were. The question of who to trust.

Absolutely. I think that's a question that never gets definitively answered.

[Bootstrap]

Who was this profile written for?

It was written for American intelligence.

[mike]

Who was this profile written for?

It was written for American intelligence.

Interesting. And released to the public in 1999 the way it looks.