Why are we even talking about Hitler’s DNA? Out of all the news why this. We are seriously weird.
Researchers sequenced his DNA recently from a bloodstained couch cushion, we’ve been getting glimpses into it lately.
Just a weird topic especially with all this neo-nazism happening in the US government.
I am not saying it isn’t newsworthy at all of course. It is just the timing is suspect.
Also he’s dead, why do dead people deserve anything, any rights? What harm happens to Hitler? He’s dead. Did we ask dinosaurs to look at their DNA, for all we know they were sentient? The whole argument is stupid.
Does Tutankhamun’s DNA need consent?
Disregarding the fact that he was evil, Im not sure historical figures qualify for the same rights as we average people do. I think at most, we should respect what they respected, and Hitler did not respect privacy, so get fucked nazi, your DNA is ours.
Ew, undersmencht dna
For fuck sake… Genetists needs to read some social science. What is all with this making Hitler the biggest reason for the existence of Nazism and the occurrence of the Holocaust? This is why people believe that you can beat fascism with a vote, as if it is a leadership problem and not a complete social movement and social transformation problem
It’s both deeply essentialist, and insulting to people’s intelligence. If you’re planning on studying hitler’s DNA, who cares, knock yourself out. But it’s ridiculous to think all but the worst people are going to believe there’s an “evil” gene.
If you’re a scientist planning on cloning hitler, you have a lot more problems on your hands, and are obviously not pursuing any kind of scientific results and just want attention and deserve all the ridicule from other that idiots you will get.
Government and bureaucracy is the duct tape and glue we made to hold society together but actual societal change is a more natural force that is completely separate from government.
The whole study is weird. Do they think there is a correlation between his DNA and the horrible acts he did? Are we going to start rounding up anyone with that genetic marker? Put them in camps?
Hitler had it, Walt Disney had it.
i see BBC is still at the “hard hitting” story telling 🙄
Do dead people have rights? 🤔
They ain’t go no souls.
According to the GOP, since the dead pay no taxes to America, they have no rights.
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?
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.
nah, put it in a Greenland shark so that piece of shit can wallow the depths for 300 yrs
A great white shark with fricken laser beams!
great white shark
I see what you did here.
Well, there’s neither a great black shark nor a great Jewish shark.
Goblin sharks exist!
/j
Ah! I knew it was not a novel approach. Thanks Pr. Farnsworth, you crazy sciency trailblazer.
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.
Does this neolithic prehuman have a right to privacy? If they can’t give consent, what does it say about this project?
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.
We learned he had a micro penis, a potent weapon against his neo-nazi fans. The value is already immense.
Is there any value to make 2 million Hitler documentaries? No, but they do it anyways.
Maybe we want to clone Hitler but raise him to be antifa.
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.
Real ambienposting hours
I’ll allow it.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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 law is an interesting response to an ethics question
Money > humans?
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
Why should doing experiments on ones bodily components be an opt-out situation?
Whether it be an opt-out or -in situation is beyond the topic of this question, but neither are applicable here.
There is nobody who has consented or is still able to consent to any experiments being conducted on his remains. Dudes a fucking disgusting stain on the canvas of humanity. Doesn’t mean consent is void. Opt-out, in my original reply, was pointing to the fact you think that “the absence of a voice against consent” is effectively consenting.
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)
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.
