this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
212 points (96.9% liked)
Science Memes
17354 readers
1658 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Is there any value to analyzing his DNA? The idea that evil is genetic is itself feeding into some Nazi ideas about eugenics that are deeply wrong.
Maybe we want to clone Hitler but raise him to be antifa.
Reminds me of a classic AskReddit aneurysm post.
This comment made me reach semantic satiation of the word “Hitler” and it’s kinda nice. A word so associated with disgust has ceased to even register as a word in my brain.
Real ambienposting hours
collapsed inline media
I'll allow it.
Yeah to me that's the biggest objection... he's long dead, he has no surviving family that wants good for him to my knowledge. So to me that's kind of on the same level as, digging up mummies. The evil actions he commited in life don't really come into play here, and agreed it's really stupid idea to think that his behavior is genetic.
Kind of reminds me of when most of the nazi generals swore to have no kids to not carry on their DNA, except one, who said "No I won't sign that pledge, that's eugenics which is nazi ideology".
I don't think this is about "is evil genetic." The first psragraph of the article states it's about his underlying health conditions. Which I think is absolutely worth studying, if it means spotting the early warning signs and intervening before another person ends up like Hitler.
But then I remember the world we live in and realize it's probably not at all going to end up like that. So who knows? But they're definitely not going to find "the Evil Gene."
The "underlying health conditions" they mention are a possible predisposition for schizophrenia, autism, bipolar disorder, and kallman syndrome. Things that most certainly do not create hilters, and if it's being argued by anyone that they may then it is indeed apologia for fascist ideology. The thing that actually does create hitlers.
I think that his genetics might somewhat illuminate or inform historical events, but having it out there in our media environment just begs to have it abused and misconstrued by the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Exaclty my point. It's information that could help us understand what conditions lead to the path he went down and thus help us understand what we can do to better prevent people from tumbling down the facist pipeline, such as better support for people with mental health issues and neurodivergent people.
But that's not how the wider world is going to receive that information. They're going to see "autism causes facism" or some shit and mistreat people even harder without the slightest hint of irony.
Your second paragraph is exactly why this line of thinking is dangerous. People with disabilities aren’t uniquely prone to dangerous ideologies. No matter how good the intentions are this would only create an association between disability and becoming fascist, which does nothing but hurt vulnerable people in the long run. We can support them without fear-mongering about how dangerous they may be otherwise.
I am not trying to imply that. What does lead to dangerous ideology is feelings of abandonment and hurt coupled with propaganda getting you to direct your anger towards people who don't actually deserve it. Which is why baseline support and understanding for everybody is important, not just those with neurodivergence and mental illness.
My interest would be in the potential to understand how, if he had these conditions, the treatment he endured might have lead him down that path. It would not be a stretch. As awful as mental health support is now, it was not just nonexistent in his time, you were downright abused for it.
But I am not saying mental illness/neurodivergence = fascist inclinations, I'm saying rejection and abuse for these things leads to resentment and isolation and these are factors extremists play on to recruit people. It is not unique to these demographics, but it can be a factor, and it should be visible without extracting and studying DNA, but if it gets people to listen, fine.
And it will get them to listen, but as I mentioned in my previous comments, they won't take the right lesson from it, and the responses I've receives prove that. All they're going to see is "mental illness leads to fascism," when I'm saying "abuse and abandonment is the problem," but that isn't coming through. We make our own demons. We have always made our own demons. And we will continue to do so as long as we choose locking them up in cages or killing them to understanding how we got here.
The personality disorders that led Hitler down the path of evil have strong genetic components, so yes there's value in studying his genes.
Is that anything unique to Hitler?
Realistically he was just the right person at the right time with the right ideas to make a righteous mess and end and ruin so many lives in a surprisingly short timeframe.
Also worth remembering that Hitler took heavy inspiration from Benito Mussolini, even coming to visit Mussolini early on to take inspiration from him (and later propping up Mussolini once the anti-fascists got too successful) even the Nazi sulute was inspired by Mussolini, who had lifted it from a series of silent films about a Roman hero which those films had likely invented the concept of the "Roman sulute" in one of the earliest examples of Hollywood fiction influencing reality
Hitler himself was unique, so there's always value to studying what made him that way. Even if the research shows his genes aren't relevant to his evil, that's a valuable finding.
Everybody is unique. Unless I'm an historian, I think there's more harm than good in selecting Hilter of all people as the source for that data.
Like if we want to add context to events in Hitlers life, then this could be useful. But our social discourse isn't immune to narratives that would seek to blame an individual's genetics for a social ideology / inevitable historic symptom of runaway global capitalism.
Is there any value to make 2 million Hitler documentaries? No, but they do it anyways.
We learned he had a micro penis, a potent weapon against his neo-nazi fans. The value is already immense.
not really… identifying and/or ruling out genetic origins of diseases isn’t racism.
my moral objection to this is: we shouldn’t be scanning and storing hitler’s dna; that’s how you end up with Hitler clones.
It's historically interesting to maybe understand who he was as a human being. He's often painted as a monster but he was a human, and is a warning to all of us what evil human's can achieve.
For example, they're revealed he had Kallmann Syndrome (which can cause a micropenis and undescended testes) - he may have essentially been essentially asexual which may explain some of his life choices and why he was so dedicated to politics and gaining power. They've also shown he had high genetic risks for psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as ADHD, autism.
Sensationalist reporting aside, these findings do add something to our understanding of a historical figure who had massive influence on human history.