Jordan Peterson's psychological theory on the Holocaust

[Sannhet]

Inspired by CODOH Forum member Revision's recent research into the origin of a claim that Jews were forced to carry sacks of wet salt back and forth in either regular concentration camps or death camps or both, solely to humiliate them. Revision finds this claim has been popularized in the 2010s primarily by Youtube sensation professor Jordan Peterson. (See "Sacks of Wet Salt.")

______________

Peterson must have read Hitler's Willing Executioners and not only believed it but been influenced profoundly by it.

To search for signs that the strong version of the hypothesis (that Jordan Peterson was directly influenced by Goldhagen's thesis of Hitler having "willing executioners" rather than the old "following orders" theory), I searched to find if Peterson had made any other references to the Goldhagen book in other contexts (other than the anecdote about forcing Jews to pointlessly carry around sacks of welt salt to humiliate them, often until they died, which traces to Goldhagen). I do find one such case from 2017 (which corroborates the "Peterson read and was majorly influenced by Goldhagen" hypothesis), but in it we find Peterson presenting his grand theory of not only the Holocaust itself but of the entire NS movement and related ethnonationalist movements in Europe in the same era.

Peterson is talking about human psychology lessons from Genesis and on the Cain and Abel story but veers into the Holocaust and WWII history and says many interesting things here, which I transcribe fore easier reference in readable, written form:

[1:26:08]

JORDAN PETERSON [lecturing in front of students]: A tit-fot-tat process had begun [after] Cain kills Abel. [...] The story, in its fragmentary manner, ties the individual psychopathology that's resentful and revenge-seeking, to the proclivity for broad-scale warfare.

This really hit me because I was interested particularly in what was happening in the Nazi camps with the guards. Because the guards were gratuitously cruel and I was very curious about that.

So here's an interesting story. This was in a book called Ordinary Germans: Hitler's Willing Executioners, and it was a book written about 30 years ago to challenge the idea that the Nazi phenomenon was "top down, order following" -- which I don't believe, by the way; I believe that's a weak, weak, hypothesis. Fascistic societies are fascistic at every single level of organization. Spiritually, within the family, within the local community. It's like a hologram. It's the same absolutely everywhere. It's not top down. I mean, there are leaders who get produced and maybe they catalyze it, but to blame it on the leaders is to forget about the process through which the leaders come to be. So, no, you don't get "a pass" that way.

So here's one of the things that happened: As the Nazis started to lose the war, here's what you should have done if you were a Nazi and wanted to win the war. You should have enslaved the Jews and the Gypsies and had them work. Right? You should have had them work for the benefit of the victory. And then, if you wanted to, you'd liquidate them afterwards... That's the logical thing to do if you want to win! And we assume that Hitler wanted to win. But that's not a very intelligent assumption. But...he wasn't exactly a good guy! So why should we assume that he was aiming at the good he was promoting, even in his own terms? The glorious, everlasting Third Reich? [...] A bastion of civilization and music. [...]

So what do you do with the Jew and the Gypsies? Round them up, fine. Enslave them, fine. You don't kill them. You certainly don't devote a substantial portion of your war resources, while you're losing, to accelerate the rate of extermination that's taking place. [...]

Hitler and his minions have the choice: You can suspend you run necessary demolition of people, win the damn war, and then pick it up afterwards. Or, while you're losing, you can just accelerate the mayhem, even though it's counterproductive. What do they pick? Well, they pick to accelerate the mayhem.

There's an old psychoanalytic idea. I think this was derived from Jung. If you can't figure out what someone is doing, or why, by looking at the outcome and infer the motivation. If it produces mayhem, perhaps it was aiming at mayhem. You have to use that dictum carefully. If someone's irritating you, maybe it's because you're irritable. Maybe you should sort yourself out. But maybe it's because they're actually aiming at irritating you and that's the actual motivation. [1:29:45]

[1:30:38]

JORDAN PETERSON [lecturing in front of students]: Why do people fight? Well, maybe they fight sometimes for good reasons. But very, very frequently they fight for bad reasons, and those bad reasons are personal -- as well as sociocultural and economic.

You know, if you are a Nazi prison guard, for example, whatever pathologies you were carrying around in your destructive little soul, whatever element of Kane was deeply embedded in you, had the opportunity to be manifest fully at every moment of your waking existence.

You have these people who are completely beholden to you, with no rights whatsoever to you, to whom you could do whatever your evil little heart determines. Well, maybe that was a motivation for putting them there to begin with. And all the cover story about -- We're trying to build the Third Reich and we're trying to stabilize the state and we're trying to do all these good things -- maybe that was just a cover story for the real motivation, which is nothing but construction of death camps that killed six million people. How about that? And the obliteration of 120 million people on the planet. And the leaving of European ruins. Maybe that was the motivation? Or are we going to attribute to Hitler the highest possible motives? No, it's an archetypal manifestation of Cain. He's going to put up a front that says, I'm your savior. Well, destructive people think that Cain is their Savior. [1:31:55]

This is a version of the familiar Holocaust Morality Play spiel, the Western master-narrative of our time. It is somewhat in extreme and negative form -- prison-camp guards a satanic with "evil little hearts" and "destructive little souls," and the "archetypal manifestation of Cain."

As for the "sacks of wet salt" anecdote he often uses, it fits quite perfectly into the framework he is pitching and apparently believes and which I believe the excerpts here give a fairly comprehensive picture.

Peterson also inadvertently makes some classic Revisionist points. Why kill the Jews when you are in a desperate labor shortage and fighting a major war? Why not use their labor? -- but somehow never seems to connect the dots or risk "going there." He just brings it back to the Morality Play. The entire purpose and goal of the NS regime and allied movements and regimes in Europe, says Peterson, was:

The real motivation [for the Nazis] was nothing but the construction of death camps that killed six million people

Peterson is a smart man. But he appears to have a major analysis blind spot here. He is guilty of dealing in the crudest of caricaturing, more-or-less a reverse version of Der Stürmer's crude anti-Semitic caricatures.

What is Peterson's motivation, other than that he may be a True Believer and zealous member of the Holocaust Cult? It appears he seeks to use the Holocaust as a prop for his own psychological theories. Just as he uses the stories from Genesis in this advanced psychology course, he uses the Holocaust for the same. But his conclusions are almost laughably bad -- given that the Nazi regime, the war, and the persecution of the Jews were all real things and not myths of the gods.

(From lecture: "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. Week 11, 'The Flood and the Tower'." Youtube upload date: May 18, 2017. Course code at his university, PSYCH 434.)

[Revision]

Thank you for your analysis and points.

[Hektor]

Peterson still admires the Fuehrers new clothes, too much.



While he makes some points, most of it appears to be the usual rubbish that ignores most of what is remotely verifiable.
- Jews and presumably Gypsies were indeed put to work. And if you call that "enslavement", please be so consequent and do the same with taxation, regulation, conscription, etc. otherwise all you do is actually spin-doctoring. Work was obligatory in NS-Germany, especially during war time.
- Germany did indeed exceed the war effort from 1943 onward. More military production and despite the destruction caused by bombing and the cut-off from resources, Germany fared remarkably well.
- Concentration camp guards generally didn't have any access to prisoners. One reason being indeed the problem one can get with them, when they do. But not only the ones that Peterson mentions.

Peterson swallows the pop-historoid narrative hook, line and sinker, because that's what's hammered into people's mind continuously by media, academia and he cultural industry (and I'm sure the telephone game adds to people's believes in it). That there may be sinister motives behind the mythmaking doesn't seem to come to his mind at all.

He ignores facts, even admitted by main-stream historians. I wonder how well aware he is that psychological warfare units played a major role in creating the narrative that became known as Holocaust later? He is a psychologist after all. But it's a field prone to story-telling, even if that's not limited to this academic discipline.

It seems that Peterson has been controversial in influential circles, because of his deviation from the present main-stream. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that would be more careful with this topic, which I assume he knows is a minefield for anyone that has a public profile.
Knowing this one could live with him not touching on the subject at all. But I think there is some temptation using the myth given that so many people are still lording it over to others with Hitler. A Hitler that is essentially a myth and deviates quite from the historical figure.

[Vukdar]

Peterson swallows the pop-historoid narrative hook, line and sinker, because that's what's hammered into people's mind continuously by media, academia and he cultural industry (and I'm sure the telephone game adds to people's believes in it). That there may be sinister motives behind the mythmaking doesn't seem to come to his mind at all.

Isn't it all very funny when you know the holocaust is a lie? All these "serious" intellectuals making up theories about Hitler (and the gang), trying to analyse psychology behind it, and their starting point is what? Probably movies about Nazi Zombies building a secret base (and probably death camps) on the dark side of the Moon or something.

Even if Holocaust was real it would be wrong to do this subject like this. It is like they reduce whole WW2 on this Holocaust thing, whole conflict of which I understand/know maybe 3-5% and feel like I will study it for the rest of my life since it is the most important event that happened to us living today. It is like the book of Genesis.

It feels like sin to reduce it like that. It was such a tragedy and completely pointless. Brother nations killing each other over nonsense that could have been resolved so easily.

[Vukdar]

Peterson swallows the pop-historoid narrative hook, line and sinker, because that's what's hammered into people's mind continuously by media, academia and he cultural industry (and I'm sure the telephone game adds to people's believes in it). That there may be sinister motives behind the mythmaking doesn't seem to come to his mind at all.

Isn't it all very funny when you know holocaust is a lie? All these "serious" intellectuals making up theories about Hitler (and the gang), trying to analyse psychology behind it, and their starting point is what? Probably movies about Nazi Zombies bulding secret base (and probably death camps) on the dark side of the Moon or something.

Even if Holocaust was real it would be wrong to do this subject like this. It is like they reduce whole WW2 on this Holocaust thing, whole conflict of which I understand/know maybe 3-5% and feel like I will study it for the rest of my life since it is the most important event that happened to us living today. It is like book of Genesis.

It feels like sin to reduce it like that. It was such a tragedy and completely pointless. Brother nations killing eachother over nonsense that could have been resolved so easily.

[Hektor]

Peterson swallows the pop-historoid narrative hook, line and sinker, because that's what's hammered into people's mind continuously by media, academia and he cultural industry (and I'm sure the telephone game adds to people's believes in it). That there may be sinister motives behind the mythmaking doesn't seem to come to his mind at all.

Isn't it all very funny when you know holocaust is a lie? All these "serious" intellectuals making up theories about Hitler (and the gang), trying to analyse psychology behind it, and their starting point is what? Probably movies about Nazi Zombies bulding secret base (and probably death camps) on the dark side of the Moon or something.

The thing is that this framing isn't limited to C-class movies about Nazis supposedly produced to entertain an audience. That very tone found it into supposedly A class historiographic literature. That makes it a thought-terminating cliche. And well, one would expect a psychologist look through exactly this, but apparently Peterson didn't.

Even if Holocaust was real it would be wrong to do this subject like this. It is like they reduce whole WW2 on this Holocaust thing, whole conflict of which I understand/know maybe 3-5% and feel like I will study it for the rest of my life since it is the most important event that happened to us living today. It is like book of Genesis.
......

The Holocaust narrative is presupposed as to be true and then all available evidences (reliable or not) are interpreted and presented in that way. And well, this sort of interpretation makes the unproven premise then more believable making the whole narrative going in a spin on this. It's a sort of demonology, where Hitler becomes a replacement of Satan, even a deity in the pantheon where all the gods have been erased through secularisation. History starts then out not with Adam and Eve, but Adolf and Eva. So your comparison with Genesis isn't far off the mark here. It's just that the audience doesn't view it in this light (while treating it that way), but thinks that they are dealing with reliable recent historiography. The para-religious character becomes however clear, when you question the premise of it all: The core tenets of the Holocaust.

That the rise of National Socialism has a historical context. That there were some real-life grievances against Jews in Germany for what happened during the 20 years before and that the measures taken were rather mild in the beginning, is however ignored. There for sure was some escalation in that conflict, but it's not like this came unprovoked. "Declaration of War", boycott campaigns and the like did contribute to it. Just as the course of WW2 did. And it's not that Hitler did exclusively blame the Jews for this. In his speeches he mentions also connected finance interests in pushing for war. Jews may have been involved for this, but so were a lot of gentile politicians and war industry investors.

With war escalation the propaganda increased as well. While this was more focused on Hitler supposedly wanting to "conquer the world" an entertaining brutal occupations regimes, from which the world had to be liberated. The Axis did of course crush any opposition to occupation, but depending the situation they were dealing with, the occupation was rather mild. There was a reason that the German forces was made up of up to 1:5 foreign staff (From occupied territory, but also volunteers from other countries). The war in the East was def. more brutal, since they had to deal with partisans within larger space and they had to deal with this problem swiftly. Just as the Allied countries dealt with insurgents in wars they fought or territories they occupied. In the end Germans were accused of all kind of things, while Allied personnel did commit crimes with virtual impunity. As a peak of indignity/hypocrisy this was then portrayed as "justice" - And you'll find that people are responding in that way, when this is pointed out. Although there are quite some people that can see it. They just don't want to be drawn over the coals for it.

Meanwhile that thought-terminating cliche and narrative is what eroded the culture in their countries, serving as guidelines for policies to be made. And it continues to do so, since the false or unproven premise persists. "We can't be nationalists rejecting gov. policy and Cultural Marxism, because that would be NAZI". They are willing to risk social collapse or even a medico-globalitarian regime in their home countries, as long as nobody calls them a Nazi. This behaviour is virtually unprecedented. But to be expected, if one understands hegemony.

[stinky]

Peterson is a fraud, dancing a tune for the usual suspects.
His apologetics regarding J's disproportionate representation in positions of power are comical. He waives away their overt over-representation by deferring to the claim that J's have such high IQ. Even if true, it doesn't even begin to account for their statistical over representation.
Even funnier is his defence of free speech. Such a staunch defender, oh except the hoax. Somehow this doesn't apply to Peterson's free speech advocacy.
I'm sure he could explain why in a lengthy word-salad.

[Breker]

Peterson is a fraud, dancing a tune for the usual suspects.
He waives away their overt over-representation by deferring to the claim that J's have such high IQ.

I saw this quote recently:

If Jews were really so smart they would have conjured up a better, more believable story than their impossible, fake & stupid '6,000,000 Jews, 5,000,000 others, & gas chambers'.

Exactly.
B.

[borjastick]

Often one hears the claims about jews and israel as follows; jews are so clever, really clever, more clever than any other race or people. More Nobel prize winners from israel than any other country in the region. israel is the only democracy in the middle east and as such is more worthy and superior than other countries in the same area.

Both claims are wrong and misleading.

[Breker]

Often one hears the claims about jews and israel as follows; jews are so clever, really clever, more clever than any other race or people. More Nobel prize winners from israel than any other country in the region. israel is the only democracy in the middle east and as such is more worthy and superior than other countries in the same area.

Both claims are wrong and misleading.

Well yes, when you demand and get preferential treatment because of the fake 6,000,000, those casting the votes who are not The Chosen Ones (and many are) feel they need to show that they are not 'anti-semitic'. The classic 'suck-up to Jews' routine.
Should we mention 'The Oscars' / Academy Awards, which are totally run by Jew supremacists.
Quite a handy, self-serving little racket they have going.

The claimed high IQs for Israel (claimed mostly by Jews, of course) is not supported by actual IQ rankings by country.
IQ compared by countries:
https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php

It's even more significant when realizing that the low IQ levels of 3rd world "immigrants" (which Israel bans, only allows Jews in) actually drive down the high IQ levels in European countries like Germany, the UK, & Scandinavian countries in those rankings.
B.

[Revision]

https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php

From your link:

The intelligence quotients by countries are taken from the studies conducted by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen (2002), Heiner Rindermann (2007), Khaleefa and Lynn (2008), Ahmad, Khanum and Riaz (2008), Lynn, Abdalla and Al-Shahomee (2008), Lynn and Meisenberg (2010) as well as the PISA tests in 2003, 2006 and 2009.

Richard Lynn is the main man behind these statistics. He has written a whole book about the Ashkenazi Jewish intelligence: "The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement" (2011). According to Lynn, the average IQ of the Ashkenazi Jews is 110.


Wikipedia: American Jews (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews):

Today the Jewish community in the United States consists primarily of Ashkenazi Jews, who descend from diaspora Jewish populations of Central and Eastern Europe and comprise about 90–95% of the American Jewish population.

Richard Lynn, "Why Are the Jews So Smart" (PFS 2013)

[12:39]
"They are, by virtue of their high IQ of 110, an immensely powerful subgroup in the United States, as is probably very well known, [they] control American foreign policy and have a very powerful influence throughout virtually all professions and occupations in the United States."

---

Why Israel has an average IQ of only 94

Wikipedia: Demographics of Israel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Israel):

The State of Israel has a population of approximately 9,227,700 inhabitants as of July 2020. Some 74.24% are Jews of all backgrounds (about 6,829,000 individuals), 20.95% are Arab of any religion other than Jewish (about 1,890,000 individuals)

Wikipedia: Israeli Jews (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Jews):

About 44.9% percent of Israel's Jewish population identify as either Mizrahi or Sephardi, 44.2% identify as Ashkenazi, about 3% as Beta Israel and 7.9% as mixed or other.

IQ's of different Jewish groups according to Richard Lynn (from his book, using British IQ as the base (100)):
Ashkenazim - 110
Sephardim - 99
Mizrahim - 91
Ethiopian Jews - 66

Palestinian IQ using the same British base IQ according to Lynn: 85
(A study of the IQ in Palestine - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... 9614001093)

[Breker]

Well, we knew this would come up, hence the reason I wrote:

It's even more significant when realizing that the low IQ levels of 3rd world "immigrants" (which Israel bans, only allows Jews in) actually drive down the high IQ levels in European countries like Germany, the UK, & Scandinavian countries in those rankings.

Let me explain.
If we want to talk about Ashkenazis vs. real Germans, real Brits, real Scandinavians for example, the IQs of real Germans, real Brits, and real Scandinavians are higher than that of Ashkenazis.
The game played is to select out Askenazis while not selecting out real Germans, real Brits, and real Scandinavians.

And why would anyone believe Zionist dominated Wikipedia for honest Jew / Israel population numbers, or for that matter, anything pertaining to Jews and of interest to Jews.

Zionist Wikipedia Editing Course
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/139189
How Israel and Its Partisans Work to Censor the Internet
http://www.unz.com/article/how-israel-a ... =wikipedia
B.

[borjastick]

The jewish IQ levels as shown above are indeed very interesting. I don't know if IQ averages are a linear measure or a steeper gradient than I understand. IOWs is 110 just 10 points higher than the european average or does it represent a much higher measure?

I also wonder what regulars here know about their own IQ. I have taken a couple of IQ tests over the years and was surprised that they both revealed an IQ of somewhat higher than 110. I do wonder whether IQ is hampered if the subject comes from a closed group and small gene pool such as jews.

[Revision]

Having an IQ of 110 means that you are more intelligent than 74,75% of the compared population. Here is a IQ Percentile Calculator based on normal distribution: https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/i ... stribution

According to Business Insider (https://www.businessinsider.com/smartes ... ?r=US&IR=T)

Most people fall within the 85 to 114 range. Any score over 140 is considered a high IQ. A score over 160 is considered a genius IQ.

IQ-1.png (6.41 KiB) Viewed 3627 times

The IQ of the Ashkenazim has been examined in Britain, Canada, the United States, and Israel, where it has been calculated at 110, 109, 110, and 110. From these results, we conclude that the Ashkenazi Jews have an average IQ of 110 in relation to a European Gentile mean of 100 (standard deviation of 15). This 10-point advantage should give Ashkenazi Jews approximately four times the percentage of individuals with an IQ of 130 and above and approximately six times the percentage of individuals with an IQ of 145 and above. The effect of this should be that Ashkenazi Jews should be considerably overrepresented among the highly successful. We have seen that this is the case in all of the 17 countries and regions we have considered. Everywhere, Jews are considerably overrepresented in the professions, among the wealthy, and among intellectual elites.

(Richard Lynn, The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement, p. 316)



The figures depend on the compared population:

Row 28 gives an IQ of 112.6 for Jews put forth by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (1994) in The Bell Curve, a figure derived from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. The test was the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT), which consists of subtests of word knowledge, verbal comprehension, arithmetical reasoning, and mathematics. This figure is in relation to 100 for Whites, not for the whole American population including Blacks and Hispanics, in comparison with whom, the Jewish IQ is 115.

(Richard Lynn, The Chosen People: A Study of Jewish Intelligence and Achievement, p. 278)

There are numerous studies about the average IQ of American Jews so Lynn puts the figure of 110 as a good estimate based on these studies.

---

About Richard Lynn (from his book):

Richard Lynn graduated in Psychology and took his Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge. He has been Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Exeter, Professor of Psychology at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, and Professor and head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Ulster. Currently, he is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland. His main work has been on intelligence and personality.

[Breker]

None of that addresses my previous points.
We merely see comparisons using terms like 'European gentiles' & 'whites'.
Gentile simply means non-Jewish, which would of course include Muslims & any other religion.
White can include Middle Easterners, Latin Americans, and N. Africans; per sources like the US Census, which would necessarily include numerous low IQ 3rd worlders, while not selecting for real Europeans or of true European origin

Also and very importantly, within all of that we have the fact that they are selecting Ashkenazi Jews from other Jews, while not selecting real Germans, real Swedes, real Brits, real Dutch, etc. from actual Europeans, the result would further show that those mentioned have higher IQs than Ashkenazis. That lack of mutual selection further exposes the flaws in their 'studies'. I dare to say that such shoddiness may be intentional by some and just poor work by others.

In general, those efforts are very unreliable, obviously so, as described.
B.