For years, I've written about Nazism as a collective delusion or shared psychosis. A new concept has gained traction recently called MASS FORMATION PSYCHOSIS.
COLLECTIVE DELUSIONS/SHARED PSYCHOSIS
false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person’s culture or subculture.
Delusions are beliefs “held with great conviction despite little empirical support.” A delusion is a “false belief based on incorrect inferences about external reality that is firmly sustained.” A person is deluded when he holds a particular belief with a “degree of firmness utterly unwarranted by the evidence at hand.” BUT THE DSM-IV does not speak of a delusion that may be embraced by an entire society!
Hitler and the Nazis embraced a delusion about the Jews and Jewish power, believing Jews were acting to destroy the German people and civilized world; asserting Jews were equivalent to bacteria or viruses; claiming that “international Jewry” stood behind Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin--who were acting to unite these leaders and their nations in a conspiracy to cause Germany to disintegrate.
Hitler and the Nazis created a collective delusion that came to define "reality" in Germany, 1933-1945. An entire society was under the spell of a collective delusion. War against the Nazis was waged to destroy this delusion. When Hitler died, the delusion disappeared.
The term “delusion” usually refers to a clinical syndrome associated with paranoid schizophrenia. What are we to say, then, about a delusion that comes to dominate an entire society?
IS THE UNITED STATES TODAY LIVING WITH A COLLECTIVE DELUSION?
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