And additional question: even if it was technically feasible, was it really ethical to surgically implant Hitler's cloned brained into the body of a silverback gorilla and make it fight against Tigerstalin?
this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2025
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Everybody's so concerned with preserving Hitler's brain. But when you put it into the body of a great white shark, ooh, suddenly you've gone too far.
Ah! I knew it was not a novel approach. Thanks Pr. Farnsworth, you crazy sciency trailblazer.
great white shark
I see what you did here.
Well, there's neither a great black shark nor a great Jewish shark.
A great white shark with fricken laser beams!
But in the 80s, we transplanted Donald Trump's brain into a house cat addicted to cocaine.
It would be to more unethical to not do that.
Stalin disappeared thousands of people. Tiger Stalin "disappeared" a few, but there was no hiding it, the pile of intestines and bones was a dead giveaway.
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.
I'll allow it.
Reminds me of a classic AskReddit aneurysm post.
If Hitler was Hitler today, and Hitler cloning machine. You hold world hostage with Hitler Clone Hitler Unlimited Hitler. What hold hostage with exchange for Hitler Hitler?
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.
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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.
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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
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Is there any value to make 2 million Hitler documentaries? No, but they do it anyways.
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.
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I find it curious that they talk about privacy for Hitler but don't mention Henrietta Lacks who this very thing happened to. Her cell cultures are being used to this day.
that's how you know the whole argument is a dog whistle...
Does this neolithic prehuman have a right to privacy? If they can't give consent, what does it say about this project?
He's been dead for 80 years, that's plenty long enough for anyone's feelings to not matter.
USA: IP right is 100 years after the creators death.
So when did hitlers parents die?
US IP rights are only a good example of a bad example.
Also, it is internationally generally agreed upon that criminals forfeit their rights to personally identifying information, such as fingerprints and DNA evidence.
Given Hitler's regime has been internationally agreed to be war criminals and have committed crimes against humanity, even if Hitler himself chose the coward's way out to avoid being convicted for these crimes, I think we can all agree on him being responsible for these crimes thus is essentially convicted posthumous.
Therefore combining the two, Hitler was and is a criminal therefore privacy protection laws don't apply, therefore his DNA should be freely usable by the scientific community.
Did he get convicted or does the ICC or ICJ need to do a court process? If any state can just allege someone being a criminal to exhume and extract dna without judicial oversight we open a door quite wide for abuse.
Edit: "Everyone knows he did it so no court is necessary" havent given humanity perfect scores in human rights before
Also while the UN/ICJ/ICC did not commit him due to the suicide, the UN War Crimes Commission did indict him as a war criminal, which, in civilised countries, does mean the withdrawal of certain rights, including the right to privacy, therefore the DNA is still processable.
I do see your point, however the fact that Hitler gave the direct orders (often well documented) that were later deemed criminal, I'd presume that would be enough to assume criminal status.
Also, yknow, defending Hitler on technicalities is like defending a paedo on the distinction between paedophilia, hebephilia and ephebophilia - legally speaking you'd be correct, but in reality it just makes you sound like you're supporting the person in their acts...
Lol, yeah I really should choose my battles of technicalities better. According to another user he seems to have been properly and lawfully declared a war criminal so my point was moot :)
Edit: oh, that user was you!
I think that's an easy one: Hitler is dead and, as far as I know, never had any direct descendants or relatives that could object on valid reasons.
Hitler's (half?) nephew served in the US Navy during WW2. ~~I don't think William has any remaining kin though.~~ Looks like William has four children, 3 of whom may still be alive. None of those 4 have had any children of their own.
A niece or nephew isn't a direct descendant
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What a pointless question. There's literally nothing we could hope to learn from examining his specific DNA.
This is like how some scientist stole Einstein's brain to see what made him so smart and didn't find anything. Pointless.
The fact that this is being used as an argument against right to privacy is an ad absurdum strawman.
Don't worry, the Mormons did one better and posthumously baptized him ("baptism for the dead") so he's able to get into heaven if he accepts mormon Jesus. No need to wonder if he was evil!
(I'm joking about the last part but they really did do that)
There's propaganda value to "Hitler was quasi-Trans" as same revisionist demonism as "Hitler was a socialist" to revive a (neo) naziism without the baggage of Hitler, that can better serve Zionist first Christofascism in erradicating Islam, humanist governance, and whatever "the woke" needs to mean.
Beyond privacy rights, is what is the usefulness of the messaging, and could that usefulness be more important to someone/agenda than the moral failures of completely fabricating it.
Most arguments for using Hitler's DNA end up supporting the eugenicist trash Nazi scientists espoused. There is little practical use for it.
This article make a big stink about how mentioning that he had genes that showed "very high" scores for a predisposition to autism, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and how we shouldn't mention that because it might make people with these disorders feel more Hitlery. It also says he had similar genes for having a micropenis but doesn't show the same concern for people with this affliction. Well, Lemmy, does this new information make you feel more Hitlery?
Ethically, it may be questionable, personally, IDGAF.
The DNA would probably fall in public domain before any significant research could be done with it.
Yes, fascism negates the rights of the fascists. It has to in order to protect free society.
It's call the Paradox of Tolerance, and is very difficult for centrist liberals to understand.
The faster you string fascists up, the better off society will be. The body? Who cares, do what you want with it.
It's not fascist, to be "fascist against fascism".
The way I've reconciled the Paradox of Tolerance for myself is to view tolerance as part of a social contract. The social contract demands that tolerance be extended to everyone who in turn accepts that social contract themselves. "Being tolerant" doesn't necessarily require that tolerance to be given out indiscriminately. Like how I wouldn't consider a vegan any less a vegan if they ended up having to kill something in self-defense, even if they had to kill it by biting chunks out of it.
I know my institution wouldn't allow this without informed consent from himself pre-death or legally responsible family members. Plus you have to be able to withdraw consent at any time and we have to destroy all data, including sequencing analysis, upon request. Not sure how that affects published data but we'd have to strip it out of any data repositories the publications may point to as well.
What is the scientific value of it and why can't those values be realised in a way that does not even raise ethical concerns?
The best argument for it was that eventually someone would do it and they may just as well do it rigorously.
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