The Nazi Mind

After my effort to make sense of the Trump mind, it seems appropriate to follow up with a just published book by the British historian Laurence Rees The Nazi Mind – 12 warnings from history (2025). Its a long book based on several hundred interviews (both victims and perpetrators)

In this book, for the first time in my work, I explore how psychology as a discipline can help us understand the mentalities of the Nazis, and aspects of neuropsychology and behavioural and social psychology have all offered me valuable insights. Before talking to academic psychologists and studying relevant scientific papers, I had not been aware of the immense advances that have been made in these areas in recent years. In particular, the relatively new field of evolutionary psychology has been of considerable value. We sometimes forget that our brains evolved while our ancient predecessors were hunting on the savannah, and insufficient time in evolutionary terms has passed since then to allow much change.

His chapters are headed

1. Spreading Conspiracy Theories

2. Using Them and Us

3. Leading as a Hero

4. Corrupting Youth

5. Conniving with the Elite

6. Attacking Human Rights

7. Exploiting Faith

8. Valuing Enemies

9. Eliminating Resistance

10. Escalating Racism

11. Killing at a Distance

12. Stoking Fear

Anthony Scaramucci has linked up with Alastair Campbell to run a Rest in Politics 

US and has just interviewed the very articulate Rees about his book - 

12 warning signs that democracy is dying. 
Another interview on the book was with an American I’ve never heard of, Matt 

Lewis but its a great interview.

At one time, to attribute human motives to Hitler was lese-majeste – but the past 

few decades have seen a significant change – with his personal attributes being 

celebrated 

• Hitler - abridged version Ian Kershaw (2008 – 550pp)

• The Charisma of Hitler – leading millions into the abyss Laurence Rees (2012) only 250pp

• and even a novel - Look Who’s Back Tibur Vermes (2014 180 pp)

• Hitler – only the world was enough Brendan Simms (2019 1250pp) 

• Hitler – a Biography Longerich (2019 1380pp) 

Out of the Darkness – the Germans 1942-2022 Frank Trentmann (2023) is an important book which just happens to begin its account on the year of my birth for the reasons the author explains here

And why did I start in the middle of the Second World War? There's a big moral turmoil 

that is spreading, beginning in the winter of 1942, 1943, the time period we now call the 

Holocaust. A growing number of Germans started asking themselves troubling questions 

about their own possible responsibility for the plight that they were now being exposed to. 

So I choose this as an opening partly because it allows the reader to get into the heads 

of Germans at the time who don't know yet that the war is lost. 

Its a big book - 1077 pages - and presented in videos here and here

Laurence Rees is also a documentarist and this is one of a series he’s produced The Nazis – a view from history

On Not Resisting the Temptation to write about Trump

I had been wanting to write something about anarchism – or Lawrence Ree’s most recent book “The Nazi Mind” or even a post about “contextual analysis” of which Rory Stewart is such a good exponent. 

Instead, I have been seduced by this post about Fascism in America from a site 

called The Rational League to speculate about the state of Donald Trump’s mind 

– and that of his MAGA followers.

You can’t negotiate with someone who sees compromise as surrender. You can’t persuade a person out of beliefs that serve as emotional armor against uncertainty and fear. And you certainly can’t build a functioning democracy when 30–40% of the population interprets equality as an attack, and compassion as weakness. This is the psychological blind spot at the heart of MAGA, and it explains why even policies that make life objectively worse for their own communities are still embraced if they reaffirm authoritarian values or hierarchical dominance. The MAGA movement thrives because it supplies this audience with what they crave: certainty, submission, identity, and an enemy. And once they have that, they will defend it, even to the detriment of their health, their economy, their fellow citizens, and democracy itself. That is why no policy rebuttal, no moral appeal, and no set of facts will shake them. These are not flaws in their thinking; they are features of it.

The history of authoritarianism teaches us that these minds will not course-correct. They require a society designed to check them, constrain them, and strip their ideology of legitimacy. If we fail to do that, their psychological needs will continue to override our collective needs. They will vote against healthcare, education, the environment, and equality, not because they are evil, but because fear and order are more important to them than fairness or truth. And once again, as before, they will drag civilization backwards. Not in a fiery revolution, but with the silent obedience of billions, marching to the steafdy beat of “order,” “tradition,” and “the way things ought to be.” The warning is simple: if you do not stop authoritarianism when it is soft and delusional, you will face it later when it is brutal and unapologetic.

Europe, of course, has seen this before – there was a flood of books in the early 

1950s trying to make sense of German behaviour in the 1930s, books like The 

Authoritarian Personality ed Adorno et al (1950) with a later edition – see the link 

- in 2019 and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951. 

At Glasgow University in the early 1960s (when I studied Politics and Economics) 

I had a Romanian tutor (in political sociology) Zevedei Barbu who held me spellbound 

as he introduced me to Weber and Michels, drawing on his own experience (which 

I didn’t know about at the time) of Democracy and Dictatorship – their psychology 

and patterns of life which he published in 1956. He was, after all, a psychologist 

by training. Bob Altemeyer was another psychologist (Canadian this time) who 

published 50 years later The Authoritarians (2006) which I found very confusing 

since it focuses more on the details of his psychological experiments and fails to 

mention Adorno let alone Barbu. 

But he’s published 2 further books on the theme Authoritarian Nightmare – 
Trump and his followers J Dean and R Altemeyer (2019) and a short (60 page) 

addition in the light of 3 important books Updating Authoritarian Nightmare (2021). 

The post with which I start quotes extensively from the first of these books and led 

me to another interesting book on the subject The Politics of Antagonism – security 

narratives and the remaking of political identity (2024) by a writer on war and 

international relations - Georg  Loefflemann 

This book demonstrates how populist security narratives served as the driving force 

behind the mobilization of Republican voters and the legitimation of an ‘America First’ 

policy agenda under the Trump presidency. Going beyond existing research on both 

populism and security narratives, the author links insights from political psychology on 

collective narcissism, blame attribution and emotionalization with research in political 

communication on narrative and framing to explore the political and societal impact of a 

populist security imaginary. Drawing on a comprehensive range of sources including key 

interviews, campaign and policy speeches, presidential addresses, and posts on social 

media, it shows how progressives, political opponents, immigrants, racial justice activists, 

and key institutions of liberal democracy collectively became an internal Other, 

delegitimated as ‘enemies of the people’. Developing an innovative conceptual‑analytical 

framework of nationalist populism that expands on established concepts of political 

identity and ontological security, the book will appeal to students of critical security studies, 

critical constructivist approaches in International Relations, and US politics 

A final article worth reading is Collective Narcissism and Weakening of American democracy Oliver Keenan and AG de Zavala 2021

Who’s Afraid of Dying?

I last addressed this issue some 5 years ago with an annotated post of 21 books which started with Jessica Mitford’s book of 1963 which she updated some 30 years later The American Way of Death Revisited. The second book was On Death and Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross(1969) which detailed the famous five stages of grief -

• denial

• anger

• bargaining

• depression

• acceptance

Since then, I’ve found 10 more which deal with old age and the prospect of dying

Stay of Execution – a sort of memoir Stewart Alsop (1973) just 75 pages
The Human Encounter with Death Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax (1978) 258pp
The Hour of our Death Philippe Aries (1981) 900pp
Wrestling with the Angel – a memoir of my triumph over illness Max Lerner (1990) 200pp
Intoxicated by my Illness and other writings on life and death Anatole Broyard (1992) An amazing 

little book (only 82 pages) from a book reviewer who was diagnosed with late-stage prostate 

cancer

The 100 year life – living and working in an age of longevity L Gratton and A Scott (2016) 327pp

Old Age – a beginner’s guide Michael Kinsley (2016) 83pp

The New Long Life – a framework for flourishing in a changing world A Scott and L Gratton (2020)

186pp
The Lost Art of Dying  LS Dugdale (2021) 185pp

Age Proof – the new science of living a longer and healthier life Rose Kenny (2022) 299pp

The one thing I take from this post is the need to give a higher profile to my blog and the riches it offers – whether it’s

• Diaries, Letters and Memoirs July 2025 which is an annotated list of more than 300 books (with hyperlinks to the original books)

• books about Death and Dying June 2025 – only some 30 books

• Notes on the concept of CHANGE - brief comments on almost 150 books about different sorts of change

• Postmodernity Anyone? Jan 2024 – another short (30 page) essay trying to make sense of this label

• Patterns of decline (Nov 2022) impossible to count the number of hyperlinked books mentioned in this essay

• Puzzling Cultural Values (Sept 2022) annotates some 50 books about cultural differences

WHY DON’T WE REVOLT?

We are all feeling angry and alienated from “the power elite” (however that’s defined) – particularly in the USA. But why on earth are we not expressing that in outright revolt? Is it simply fear? Whether that is of being different – or of the consequences now that breaking the law is increasingly faced with severe penalties. It’s rare for me preach revolution but 2 books have inspired me to explore that option – the first by a Turkish/US writer Twitter and Tear Gas Zeynep Tufekci (2017) who has this site; and the 2^nd by a Greek/US writer After Democracy – imagining our political future Zizi Papacharisti (2021) whose intro’ puts it this way -

I decided to focus on three varieties of regimes:

1. My first focus was democracies that are vibrant and have a long history but also are somehow flawed. These are democracies under distress. To obtain as broad a representation as possible, I worked with the following countries: Brazil, Canada, Greece, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and the United States. I chose these because of their considerable experience with democracy but also because of their successes and recent difficulties with corruption, economic insecurity, and populism. The countries selected reflect a variety of ways in which democracies have responded to contemporary problems.

2. My second focus was regimes that are labeled as authoritarian by the West but are populated by citizens with democratic aspirations. Democracy cannot be reimagined by excluding those who have not had the opportunity to experience it. Moreover, democracy cannot exist in the imagination of the West only. Therefore, I interviewed citizens in China and Russia. I chose these countries because they are both major forces in global politics yet typically are excluded from discourses on democracy. Any country may undergo a level of authoritarianism in its form of governance. Democracies in the West have had their share of authoritative rulers, and several have emerged out of dictatorships to reclaim democracy. The citizens of authoritarian regimes have a democratic future, and they should have a say in it.

3. My final focus was attempted but failed democracies. In most of these cases, it was not easy for me to travel to these countries, and identifying or interviewing people from these countries presented a danger to them and me. For example, even if I were able to set up interviews in Syria or Afghanistan, the task of networking, obtaining translators, and conducting the interviews would be difficult, would draw too much attention, and would probably not yield meaningful responses from people who felt endangered. So I decided to work with refugees from those countries. I worked with local embassies and refugee centers in countries that maintain an entry port to the European Union, where frequently refugees flee. I interviewed refugees from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Albania, Egypt, Ghana, and Pakistan and used translators provided by refugee centers and embassies to conduct the interviews in the refugees’ native language when necessary.

Recommended Reading

• From Mobilisation to Revolution Charles Tilly (1978) one of 2 great US writers on revolution, 

the other being Sidney Tarrow 

• Revolutions – how they changed history and what they mean today ed Furtado (2020) 

the aim of this book is to look at revolutions around the world and through history: not only at 
their causes, crises and outcomes, but also, for the more distant events, at their long-term 
legacies and their changing, sometimes contested meanings today. Historians, mostly native of or active within those societies, have been asked to reflect on the following questions: What were the essential causes of the revolution? What narrative of events, protagonists and ideologies is most commonly accepted? What impact is it believed to have had? What legacy does it have today in national self-perception and values? Has this changed significantly over past decades?

• People without Power – the war on populism and the fight for democracy Thomas Frank 

one name scholars have applied to this tradition is the “elitist theory of democracy.”

 It holds that public policy should be made by a “consensus of elites” rather than 

by the emotional and deluded people. It regards mass protest movements as 

outbreaks of irrationality. Marginalized people, it assumes, are marginalized for a reason. The critical thing in a system like ours, it maintains, is to allow members of 

the professional political class to find consensus quietly, harmoniously, and without 

too much interference from subaltern groups. The obvious, objective fact that the professional political class fails quite frequently is regarded in this philosophy as uninteresting if not impossible. When anti-populists have occasion to mention 

the elite failures of recent years—deindustrialization, financial crisis, opioid epidemic, everything related to the 2016 election—they almost always dismiss them as inevitable

If only it were possible, they sigh, to dissolve the people and elect another.

• Revolution, rebellion, resistance – the power of story Eric Selbin (2021) In particular, 

by using the concepts of myth, memory, and mimesis, it is possible to identify and illuminate four basic stories of revolution which show up in a surprising number of places and cultures across impressive stretches of time. These four stories are the Civilizing and Democratizing story of revolution, the Social Revolution story, the Freedom and Liberation story, and the Lost and Forgotten story.

• Revolutionary World – global upheaval in the modern age ed David Motadel (2021) The 

introductory chapter demonstrates the richness of the author’s 

reading.

UPDATE

https://toussaintf12.substack.com/p/representation-is-not-revolution

Some prominent Brits do respect Iran

Yesterday’s post listed three books about Iran – the country which the US has just bombed - with Israeli agents now apparently In full charge of US foreign policy.

Jack Straw  (2019) is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the Labour governments of Tony Bliar and Gordon Brown. He was Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 under Blair. He was a MP for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015 and shares a birthday with me – being 4 years younger. I had not realised his affection for Iran – expressed in this book of his The English Job – understanding Iran and why it distrusts Britain (2019)

During my time as British Foreign Secretary, I became fascinated, bewitched, infuriated, perplexed by this singular country. I strove to understand it better, and have done ever since. In 2001, I was the first British Foreign Secretary to visit the country after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, and have visited it many times since. I count many Iranians as my friends.

The purpose of this book is to provide some illumination of this country. As I show, Britain’s entanglement with Iran goes back five centuries – far longer than most people may realise. Iran has a powerful sense of exceptionalism, and of its national identity. It is Muslim, but never Arab, Shi’a not Sunni. And it has the most extraordinary system of government, in which factions as disparate as the Tea Party and Bernie Sanders’s left-wing Democrats are in office at the same time. I have great affection for its people, notwithstanding the unwelcome experiences to which my wife and I, with two close friends, were subject in October 2015

And, most ubiquitous of all, ‘Kar kareh ingilisee hast’ – ‘The job is always an English job’ – hence the title of this book.

Further Viewing

The discussions on the “Rest is Politics” about the war on Iran are 

well worth listening to for the light they throw on motives and interests – 

particularly the contextual analyses provided by Rory Stewart – the latest can be 

seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXPZR7MPAb8 

Anthony Bourdain travels to Iran 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB4UE3Vo6jY
Rick Stevens visits Iran https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f16pIXZMio

American Madness – bombing Iran

The closest I came to Iran was when I worked (for 2 years) in Azerbaijan in the early 2000s and was for a few brief hours diverted to Tehran airport where I bought a couple of books (with pictures) about the country. But it did waken an interest in recent developments in the country’s history – which accounts for the 2 books I have in my library -

• The Last Great Revolution – turmoil and transformation in Iran Robin Wright (2000)
• Mirrors of the Unseen – journeys in Iran Jason Elliot (2006)

to which I’ve now added a third (duly downloaded)
Revolutionary Iran – a history of the Islamic Republic Michael Axworthy (2013)
I’ve long wanted to visit the country – inspired by the amazing Riowang site 

but Trump’s sudden decision to bomb the country has made this difficult.

“Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad” is a famous saying – never 

more appropriate than these days 

William Finnegan’s substack put it well -
If there is such a thing as a Trump Doctrine, it seems to go like this:

1. Lie about what’s happening.

2. Do a dramatic thing.

3. Declare victory.

4. Leave the rest of us to deal with the consequences.

This is not a doctrine. It’s a branding campaign wrapped in military 

hardware. If the actual goal is to deny Iran a nuclear weapon, then this 

doesn’t get it done. Taking out a few sites—without follow-up, 

escalation control, or regime-shaping strategy—achieves nothing except 

headlines and hashtags.

Even if we accept the premise (that Iran is actively developing a bomb), 

this was never going to stop them. Delay? Maybe. Deter? Not a chance.

Here’s the darker truth: the Trump Regime has been itching for a reason 

to reawaken the War on Terror—with all the domestic powers that come with it. 

I helped write some of those laws. Back then, even as we pushed boundaries, 

we held the line. We debated. We self-restrained. The current regime has no 

such scruples. Trump has turned the DOJ into his protection detail. 

He controls ICE, the National Guard, and increasingly the military. 

He governs not by law, but by loyalty.

If Americans start dying—if Iran retaliates and the body count rises—expect 

the response to be immediate and authoritarian. The Patriot Act was just the 

dress rehearsal. This time, the gloves come off.

Iran’s Response Menu: From Posturing to Pandemonium
So what does Iran do next? Here are their options, in rough order of 

plausibility:

Option 1: Do Nothing
Low probability. Tehran doesn’t think it started this. Sitting still would 

be domestically humiliating and strategically unrewarded.

Option 2: Hit U.S. Interests Abroad
Most likely. Think: Americans in Europe. Embassy staff. 

Energy contractors in Iraq. Targets that are symbolic but just outside 

the red line of triggering all-out war.

Option 3: Strike Military Assets
Also plausible. Swarm attacks in the Gulf, drone strikes on ships, 

leveraging the Houthis to disrupt Red Sea traffic.

Option 4: Cyber Retaliation
Dangerous but probable. Iran’s cyber wing is competent. A major U.S. 

infrastructure hit—if attributable—would trigger a scorched-earth response. 

They may try smaller disruptions first.

Option 5: Hit the Homeland
Least likely. Highest risk, highest reward. A suicide bomber in a 

New York subway? Mailboxes filled with C4? Iran gets one shot before 

America turns Persia into glass. And they know it.

Oh, Right… the Nuclear Problem
And through all this, we seem to have forgotten: Iran’s nuclear program 

still exists. Did we destroy it? Doubtful.
Did we delay it? Maybe six months.
Did we give them another reason to finish building the bomb? Absolutely.
I don’t care what Tulsi “Shampoo Commercial” Gabbard says—I think Iran is 

either near breakout or pretending very convincingly. 

And if they weren’t before, they’re incentivized now.

Suggested Reading/viewing

Trump bombs Iran – to view

George Galloway on the Iran war 23 June

US strikes Iran Vijay Prashad

Chris Hedges on Al-Jazeera – to view

obliterated? Michael Sellers

Gangster Empire Thomas Fazi

https://substack.com/home/post/p-166719706 
Netanyahu did not achieve regime change in Tehran—the real objective 
of his years-long campaign. Instead, he faced a resilient and unified 
Iran that struck back with precision and discipline. Worse still, he 
may have awakened something even more threatening to Israeli ambitions: 
a new regional consciousness.
Iran, for its part, emerges from this confrontation significantly 
stronger. Despite US and Israeli efforts to cripple its nuclear program, 
Iran has demonstrated that its strategic capabilities remain intact and 
highly functional. Tehran established a powerful new deterrence equation
—proving that it can strike not only Israeli cities but US
bases across the region. Even more consequentially, Iran waged this fight 
independently, without leaning on Hezbollah or Ansarallah, or even deploying 
Iraqi militias. This independence surprised many observers and forced a 
recalibration of Iran’s regional weight.
Iranian Unity
Perhaps the most significant development of all is one that cannot be 
measured in missiles or casualties: the surge in national unity within Iran 
and the widespread support it received across the Arab and Muslim world. 
For years, Israel and its allies have sought to isolate Iran, to present it 
as a pariah even among Muslims. Yet in these past days, we have witnessed 
the opposite. From Baghdad to Beirut, and even in politically cautious 
capitals like Amman and Cairo, support for Iran surged. This unity alone may 
prove to be Israel’s most formidable challenge yet. Inside Iran, the war 
erased, at least for now, the deep divides between reformists and conservatives. 
Faced with an existential threat, the Iranian people coalesced, not around 
any one leader or party, but around the defense of their homeland.