Mastodawn

Valentino Gagliardi Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke woa. I didn't know this

The Frog Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke

It is kinda new to me. I became aware of Tesla's rotten beliefs only in the past few days. It is good if it is repeated.

🟥 Eveline Sulman 🇳🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke thanks for teaching us, every time again!

Jay 🇺🇦Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke Holy shit; I had no idea.

David 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️NB they/them Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke Well, but in his defense, he suffered from a quite obvious mental illness by his last days.

Most Nazis can't invoke such an excuse.

@riley No.

@riley @mekkaokereke racism is not a symptom of mental illness. Do better.

Shine Mar 11, 2025

@riley @mekkaokereke That is in no way a defense. Quite the contrary, this is also terrible towards mentally ill people.

@shine It depends. An important point, I would argue, is that fascism specifically hooks into cognitive shortcuts typical of people with diminished mental capacity, which Tesla almost certainly had in his old age. The evidence is foggier on whether he suffered a genuine break from reality (which would not have been treatable in his lifetime; the first genuine antipsychotic medicines
weren't invented until years and years after he died), but in my non-doctorly opinion, it's consistent with it.

In light of all of this, I approve of not presenting Tesla as a shining example of antifascism, but I also don't think it's accurate to present him as an ardent conscientious fighter for the naziferious causes. Other than the eugenics ideas, there's no real way to retroactively know if his offensive old-age sayings would have been approved by a younger version of him.

Luckily, he also never had any political power, so not much is lost in keeping him buried. It's only really relevant when a proto-techbro is needed for analysis; to compare him against somebody who has horrible ideas while their brain is still working and while they have political power.

"fascism specifically hooks into cognitive shortcuts typical of people with diminished mental capacity,"

That's just not true.

Black women are not smarter than white women. White women don't have "diminished mental capacity" relative to Black women. And yet, the majority of white women voters, voted for the openly fascist candidate.

People always try to make excuses for why white people choose fascism so often.

Your conclusion is kind of unfair. I would have to cite examples of mass support of fascism arising in the non-white parts of the world. Specifically seeking these out, though, is very hard bcause Google is prone to misinterpret my queries as looking for racists' talking points rather than genuine historic tragedies.

Off the top of my head, I only know of the story of the Rwanda genocide, the story of the Khmer Rouge, and the story of the late-stage Imperial Japan (in which case a solid case could be mad that they imported second-hand proto-fascism from Prussia, and, of course, there were no actual elections in a feudal socity).

Also, diminished mental capacity is not the only design issue in human brains that fascism hooks into. It's just one of the relatively easiest-to-research ones.

Ciggy Bringer of Smoke Mar 11, 2025

@riley

The far more compelling case is made that social replication through identity cohort, using social shortcuts and not intellectual ones, binds smarty and dullard white people into replicating fascism.

The smartest white cookies can simply more articulately argue why there is nothing to do and it's not their problem, but some dullard's.

@ciggysmokebringer I'm afraid I don't understand either your reasoning or your conclusion.

Ciggy Bringer of Smoke Mar 11, 2025

@riley

Have you ever taken a class in college that might speak towards culture and society? You don't need to, but I'm wondering how you don't get it at all, what the major blockage is.

@ciggysmokebringer I have, and I recognise all the words. You're just putting them together in a way that doesn't make sense to me.

Ciggy Bringer of Smoke Mar 12, 2025

@riley

This is all a cultural exercise, not a cognitive or intellectual one as you think. This is why all sorts of white people are about it no matter the metric you're using.

The conclusion is not unfair at all. You can cite whichever country you'd like. You won't find a country where the correlation between "diminished mental capacity," however you'd like to define that (please don't try) and fascism, is stronger than the correlation between other, much more obvious factors, and fascism.

In the case of Rwanda, it was likely "Will I benefit from the slaughter of the people deemed as other?" and "Am I a terrible person that doesn't care about other people?" Highly educated and accomplished people fit into these categories.

And in the US, white people that are very racist and sexist, tend to vote for one candidate. Education level, income level, etc, are much less relevant.

"Economic variables like education, income and employment made a negligible difference."

https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/15/16781222/trump-racism-economic-anxiety-study

The past year of research has made it very clear: Trump won because of racial resentment

Another study produces the same findings we’ve seen over and over again.

Vox

Shine Mar 12, 2025

@riley That example was clearly meant in US, so two demographics in the same location, one benefiting from white supremacy and the other not. Pointing at a completely different country with different situation and going "here the demographic voting for fascist was different" is doing nothing to disprove that point.

I know it's sometimes hard to accept that people we held in high regard were problematic. But they are just people. Am I disappointed that someone I considered one of greatest mind was a racist? Yep. I am. But I won't make excuses for it like that, because doing that is both bigoted against mentally ill people, and it would also make me a terrible ally to Black people. Smart people can be bad. I really liked Richard Feynman, until I grew up, read his books again, and realized that he was kinda a misogynist prick and a typical STEM ass making fun of social sciences. People doing great things can be bad in other ways. It's just a reality.

I'm also especially allergic to this type of argument, because "he had a mental condition" is just so common excuse it's annoying. I've been literally called ableist after I called Elon Musk asshole for firing people who disagree with him, because "he's just autistic, he can't emphatise with those people".

Androcat Mar 12, 2025

@riley Did you consider that maybe your pet theory is just wrong?

Nazism is EXTREMELY popular in white lawyers.
It's EXTREMELY popular among white scientists in "hard sciences" (the ones which don't have to deal with complexities like the humanities or social sciences do)
It's EXTREMELY popular among the wealthy.

@androcat How insensitive of you to call them "pets"!

They're their own theories. I just politely greet them when I meet one on the street, and may, sometimes, invite one to joyously partake in some pet food, but that doesn't make them "pet theories!"

Androcat Mar 12, 2025

@riley I take this to be your admission of disingenuity.

@androcat I didn't start it.

Androcat Mar 12, 2025

@riley You inserted your know-nothing bullshit into a serious discussion.

Just go play in traffic, k?

@androcat The joke's on you, for where I live, traffic is sparse enough to not be a danger to any player. 🧶

AngharadHafod Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke @riley @shine
If x -> y it does not necessarily follow that y -> x

Just saying. I don't want to get into the general argument about Tesla, but your logic is flawed here.

@mekkaokereke @[email protected] @shine

Jacqueline Mar 11, 2025

Fascism does not arise from a mental illness or defect.

It arises from a combination of a supremacist culture and a socioeconomic crisis of the market economy. Anyone can be a fascist if they are racist enough and desperate enough.

Jacqueline Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke @shine

The people who blame disabled people for fascism are themselves indicating that they have bigotry against disabled people, and therefore telling on themselves.

The Nazis were very anti-disabled and would be very pleased if they saw these people blame intellectual disability for their problems.

Jacqueline Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke @shine

I am myself disabled. I have depression and I am also autistic.

klausfiend has moved Mar 11, 2025

@burnoutqueen @mekkaokereke @shine My mother was a nurse in both Germany and Canada after WWII and will tell you she didn't see a single patient with a disability working in Germany; the Reich murdered as many as they could.

Jasper 🍉Mar 11, 2025

@riley @shine @mekkaokereke my understanding is that liberals actually had quite a lot of eugenics supporters before WWII.
DemocracyNow has a discussion of it.. Somewhere
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=site%3Ademocracynow.org%2Beugenics&ia=web
(Often those also link to an article)

Note.. Amazon immediately wants to sell me a book, the first offered is about 'woke' being secretly eugenicist. And second says eugenicism is disturbingly still present in political beliefs.

site:democracynow.org+eugenics at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

Omnivorous Narrator Mar 12, 2025

@riley Nitpick(?): They are cognitive shortcuts that (almost?) everyone uses to some degree, the difference being that bigots are less likely to verify (and amend) their beliefs in accordance with evidence, due to the sheer strength of these beliefs - usually derived from hatred or despair, but sometimes simply from overconfidence (eg. Dunning-Kruger).
The last one is probably responsible for the abundance(?) of charismatic scientists/inventors who eventually became cranks and bigots.

@omnivorous_narrator Yep. Relying on the first impression, which often comes from heuristic shortcuts, and refusing to revise it based on more sophisticated analysis later, is one of the common authoritarianism-associated cognitive shortcuts. It's called "need for closure", and it's relatively well measurable.

I'll also have to say a couple of obvious things, just so as to reduce the risk of misunderstandings that I can with clear conscience blame people who won't read them:

using tricks to think is not inherently bad; some tricks are very useful (but some are so bad that they should be relegated to slapstick comedy);
there's a lot of cognitive tricks that are extremely useful in thinking about some types of problems, but fail badly at some other types of problems, so successful use requires understaning the boundaries of usefulness;
everybody uses heuristics, and it's not a bad thing per se;
every heuristic is sometimes wrong, and it's a bad thing to not recognise it;
(thanks for reading this far) blame games are stupid, throw rocks at them.

@omnivorous_narrator For a citation, I today like this one:

The dispositional need for cognitive closure indirectly predicts mock jurors’ sentencing decisions through right-wing authoritarianism

One reason people are motivated to hold right-wing authoritarian beliefs is the need to manage uncertainty. Right-wing authoritarianism provides a stable source of black-and-white ‘answers’ about the social world – obey established authorities and norms and show hostility to deviants. Right-wing authoritarianism, in turn, is positively associated with more punitive attitudes and judgements. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between mock capital jurors’ need for cognitive closure and sentencing decisions through right-wing authoritarianism. Four-hundred and fifty-one jury-eligible adults read a hypothetical capital case, weighed aggravating and mitigating evidence and chose a sentence. They also responded to items measuring right-wing authoritarianism and the need for cognitive closure. The need for cognitive closure was indirectly related to choosing a death sentence through right-wing authoritarianism and the weighing of aggravators and mitigators. Theoretical and practical implications, as well as directions for future studies, are discussed.

Keywords: death penalty, motivated social cognition, need for cognitive closure, right-wing authoritarianism, sentencing

Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11018026/

The dispositional need for cognitive closure indirectly predicts mock jurors’ sentencing decisions through right-wing authoritarianism

PubMed Central (PMC)

Inflatable Tradwife Mar 12, 2025

@riley you're spending a massive number of words blustering around something you could easily just cite. If it was a fact.

Provide a citation for your assertion "fascism specifically hooks into cognitive shortcuts typical of people with diminished mental capacity" or abandon it.

@shine @mekkaokereke

@coolandnormal Did you check the citation I gave above?

@shine @mekkaokereke

Regine Mar 11, 2025

@riley @mekkaokereke I haven't heard of any human beings suffering from mental illness and wanting to be erased by eugenics. On the contrary ... soooo, no, this is not an excuse but an insult to those who suffer from mental illnesses.

@regineheidorn The crucial component is not mental illness at large, either cognitive decline or break with reality in particular.

Here's a relevant study:

Abstract

Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.

Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22222219/

In the modern day, the Fox News effect, of pulling the elderly into extreme politics as they age, is easy to see. Fox News as such might not have existed in the early 20th century, but the Hearst newspaper empire definitely did.

@mekkaokereke

Bright minds and dark attitudes: lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice through right-wing ideology and low intergroup contact - PubMed

PubMed

Regine Mar 11, 2025

@riley @mekkaokereke That may be but none of all this is any excuse. In fact there is no whatsoever excuse for fascism or eugenics.

@regineheidorn

I'm afraid I must requst you to restate my argument.

@mekkaokereke

Regine Mar 11, 2025

@riley @mekkaokereke "Most Nazis can't invoke such an excuse." Mental illness is no excuse and there is no excuse for Nazis anyways.

I'm afraid but I suffer from a mental illness and I must request you now to accept my excuse to not continue this discussion.

Gabbo the wafrn dev guy Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke we can have no idols and not gona lie, this one has hurted like a baseball bat

Jeff Byrnes Mar 11, 2025

@mekkaokereke Welp, TIL. Thanks Mekka.

@mekkaokereke Ouch! 🤦🏻‍♂️ Any source for that info? 🤔

Michael Busch Mar 11, 2025

@joxe @mekkaokereke

Wikipedia provides an overview and links to documentation of Tesla's support for eugenics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla#On_society .

Tesla also made a variety of sexist statements and was friends with American supporters of Hitler.

Nikola Tesla - Wikipedia

@michael_w_busch @mekkaokereke Thank you very much! o.O

@michael_w_busch @joxe @mekkaokereke

Russ Sharek Mar 11, 2025

Today I learned. :/

Ornella 🍉Mar 11, 2025

@joxe @mekkaokereke The Smithsonian article: https://famichiki.jp/@gullevek/114143962011766098

And his full opinion, very clearly establishing his full support of eugenics, published in Liberty magazine in 1935 is republished on this fan website (the editor's note totally doesn't address the eugenics, funny enough)
https://teslauniverse.com/nikola-tesla/articles/machine-end-war

gullevek ☢️ (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] Because people might say this is bollocks. Here is an article from 2012 about this: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nikola-tesla-the-eugenicist-eliminating-undesirables-by-2100-130299355/

Famichiki

@being @mekkaokereke Thanks!

The Animal and the Machine Mar 11, 2025

@being @joxe @mekkaokereke
This is probably why the brand was available for Tesla, the car maker. Everyone else did their research.

@taatm @being @mekkaokereke That makes a lot of sense, and makes calling Teslas 'swastikar' a bit redundant...

Holy shit, what a horrible world! 🤦‍♂️

@taatm @being @joxe @mekkaokereke

DB Schwein Mar 11, 2025

Ford was also a eugenicist, that's not the issue.

I look to Tesla for his hatred of capitalism and patents limiting the spread of public good.
I look to Ford for wanting his employees to be able to afford his product, and getting mass-production to where he did.
Historical figures *never* survive if you require them to be perfect, and if you require them to be perfect, you'll never learn from them...and we lose too much history as is 🫤