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Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna

88 points by Thevet 8y ago

pjc50 8y ago
For those that read the comments first - content warning for discussion of Nazi mass murder of children.
JubalHarshaw 8y ago
Echoes of virtue our contemporary signaling social media culture. Very informative book review.
- pjc50 8y ago
  How do you figure that relates to social media?
  - 0815test 8y ago
    Social media relies on populism, i.e. celebrating the "voice of the people" or the "soul" of the people as an axiomatic good. This is highly reminiscent of the Gemüt concept that the article talks about.
- RankingMember 8y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - JubalHarshaw 8y ago
    Edit:"Echoes of virtue signaling [in] our contemporary social media culture. Very informative book review." The article shed light on how an intelligent man adapted himself to get along and even thrive within, what seems from todays perspective to be a culture of incomprehensible evil. The parallel in todays social media 'echo chambers' and the clannish inability, by many of their denizens, to engage their opposition rationally even on any single issue. Instead dehumanizing broad swaths of people as deplorable/elitist, liberal/conservative, sjw/altright. “History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes,” - Mark Twain
nnq 8y ago
Some ideas from this should be rewritten into a more readable/ADHD-friendly piece to warn highly-functioning-Aspergers people and those with somewhat similar "less sociable" personalities against growing fond of any ultra-right-wing/(techno)fascist and neo-natzy ideologies that may seem seem appealing! Some of them, and even some who are normally sociable but more ultra-individualistic, or more order-loving, can be attracted to order and clear patterns, and right-wing-ish groups tend to disguise themselves as being "ordered and rational" despite their hate-spreading and homicidal agendas... Any heavy-right-wing and/or ultra-nationalistic or xenophobic ideology is at its core anti-individualistic anti-"people who develop their minds along their own tracks separate from society". There is a huge difference between people who are less-integrated / less-affective / less-social / Gemüt-poor, and people with hateful, resentful and genocidal-friendly attitudes. "Gemüt-rich people" simply have a higher inertia by being anchored to their societies so they may seem "better" because it's harder to make them do horrible things when they are in a healthy society. But as in physics, inertia works both ways, "Gemüt-rich" or more conformist people will keep doing horrible things (and competing + cooperating to be more horrible) once they start doing them! "Badly socially integrated", asocial, highly-functional-autism or "Gemüt-poor" individuals can also function as a society's immune system that helps it fight back and recover from malignant ideologies like nazism and extremist-communism!
- rezeroed 8y ago
  Anyone care to comment why the drive-by downvote trolls have been at the above comment?
  - tokai 8y ago
    Don't call others trolls for downvoting.
    - rezeroed 8y ago
      Not calling downvoters trolls, calling driveby, non-commenting downvoters trolls. And I stand by it.
- 8y ago
YinglingLight 8y ago
2019 & undiagnosed Autism: You either cultivate gender dysphoria, or you live long enough to become a nazi.
jarmitage 8y ago
Rather than read this review, you're better off reading responses from other experts to this book such as Simon Baron-Cohen and Steve Silberman: http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2018/04/on-hans-asperger-nazis-and-autism.html http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2018/04/on-hans-asperger-... https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-018-0209-5 https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Thank you. This is one area of the Nazi horror that I wasn't very well acquainted with. Makes me sick to think about.
AzzieElbab 8y ago
Somehow every time I read anything about psychology, I think of astrology and alchemy. Such an underdeveloped field, full of self-serving and self-projecting dangerous charlatans.
- jstewartmobile 8y ago
  And at least 16.7% of Americans are in their clutches: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/one-6-americans-take-antidepressants-other-psychiatric-drugs-n695141 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/one-6-americans-t...
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    As someone who was on and then later came off of medication for anxiety and depression I find "And at least 16.7% of Americans are in their clutches" to be a bit extreme of a viewpoint.
- ataturk 8y ago
  Especially when pretty much every real issue requires medication. That said, I am badly socially integrated. I was recently forced to attend a two-day corporate "rah rah" culture training class. I liken it to Maoist or Nazi indoctrination. They even have a "little red book" and a poker chip with values printed on them. All that shit went directly into the trash when I got home. The people at the top of my company are psychopaths. They say nice things and pretend to care, but at the end of the day, they want more billions flowing to them whatever the cost.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- unknownkadath 8y ago
  There's a bit of a hot take...
- dang 8y ago
  Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.
unknownkadath 8y ago
I can see why Psychology has moved away from using the name "Asperger's." Everything this article describes (and it is a high quality article) is messed up on so many levels.
- hopler 8y ago
  Psychology didn't move on because they didn't like Hans. They changed because they identifir a spectrum from mild to severe. The problem is that by collapsing the vocabulary, it obfuscates communication where one person thinks you're talking about Asperger's and the other is thinking of someone who can't speak or hold down a job and communicates by screaming and kicking.
cwbrandsma 8y ago
Where is the value in this article? It is just gossip. OK, I have aspergers and I have kids with aspergers, all professionally diagnosed. And I have read the history of Dr Asperger multiple times already, it really is not that hard to find. So with that I try to read this article...and I can't. I reads too much like gossip magazine. The entire purpose, whether the author wants to admit it or not, is to create a negative association between Asperger's syndrome and Dr. Asperger. So now, if you find out someone has Aspergers your thought process will start with "oh, that is horrible". This creates a new wave of idiots who start conversations with "Did you know Dr Asperger was a bad man?"...Yes, and he is dead now, so how is that relevant to anything? So, if you like reading gossip, I'm sure this is a fun read for you. But there it contains nothing of value.
- ocschwar 8y ago
  It is not just gossip. He was complicit in multiple murders. His work, such as it was, was based on only 4 cases.
  - ocschwar 8y ago
    Decided to add something. Notice also how Leo Kanner only published about autism in 1943, writing about just one child. Wonder why? The two doctors Hamburger and Asperger replaced, Frankl and Weiss, went to the US to work with Kanner. Yet none of them wrote about specific children until 1943, after the US was in the war, after the US turned about face about eugenics,, and after Kanner could do due dilligence to make sure that he could write about the Donald T case and not endanger the child. You, as your comment indicated, have left a paper trail about having Asperger's. I'm an MIT alum, and know quite a few people who could be diagnosed without raising any eyebrows. But already "autism" is a term of abuse in the chan crowds, and Asperger's history is worth keeping in mind in that regard.
    - klyrs 8y ago
      > But already "autism" is a term of abuse in the chan crowds, and Asperger's history is worth keeping in mind in that regard. Also noteworthy, "autism" is the boogeyman of the antivax movement.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
glhaynes 8y ago
Awful title.
- dang 8y ago
  If you can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, preferably using language drawn from the article, we'll be happy to change it.
  - glhaynes 8y ago
    I'd be up for most anything that's not this unfortunate combination of the article title with the partial title of the book being reviewed; that combo leads to a headline that sounds like it's intending an unfortunate and incorrect (and Nazi-originated, which is the point of the article!) description of kids who have been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. I'd tentatively suggest "Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna (LRB review)" but I'm sure others could come up with better suggestions. Thanks! (To be clear: I'm sure there was zero malice behind this title, it's just an unfortunate display issue.)
    - dang 8y ago
      OK, we've replaced the title. I've been thinking recently that for book review articles maybe we should just use the book title anyhow.
- tshadley 8y ago
  "Unfeeling Malice" is ironic reference to the reviewed book's discovery that Hans Asperger sentenced children to death while using the same phrase himself as a diagnosis of their condition.
harmful_stereo 8y ago
Honestly? This is one of the most reactive discussions of an article i have seen on this site. I assume that suggests something about the concept of asperger's as it exists in the here and now. I haven't read the whole article, and obviously it has a slant, but i don't think it is underhanded writing. If anything of postmodernism or death of the author or critical theory has any merit at all, I don't think it's necessarily a propaganda hit piece to examine the context the diagnosis came from. Psychiatric sorts of labels are still fundamentally pretty nebulous post hoc categories to dump people in and not tests for the presence of a pathogen etc. I have my own slant, so sure, i am agreeing with points that articulate my own feelings better than I have. But even if you disagree there has to be some mechanism for elevating a dialogue, and i think that's one. In my own personal experience, people who had or fit the diagnostic model were socially isolated, basically unfulfilled and uncomfortable in some way, and i could see that by the way they engaged verbally and i was happy to engage back wherever i could. Sure; i don't actually want to talk about star wars novels or what snack foods someone ate 20 years ago at summer camp for two hours. But sometimes if you are socially isolated too, it can feel good just to know you gave someone else the chance to open up and be animated. That requires an investment though, and i can understand how tired a "normal" person would get of doing that essentially as charity. But you guys sure could have been more charitable in the discussion here, and not so deeply polarized. My experience with mental health issues is that they polarize people kind of abusively. You guys are generally the smartest and most mature place i can go to lurk a discussion. I'm sad to see that personal stake being used against that comity and intellectual atmosphere.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  I try to let lonely people speak about their passions with me for sort of the same reason. Multiple times I have gotten shocked reactions when they discover after several conversations that I have never played World of Warcraft, or watched Doctor Who, because we have been talking about it for so long. This is usually because the more isolated someone is the less questions they ask and they more 1-way the conversation is, but it can result in hurt feelings if they feel mislead. So now I am sure to position myself early as interested but not experienced for whatever made up reason. This not only helps them connect with someone, but has given me the most fascinating insights into the thought process, inner lives, and domain expertise of people very different from me. But I also wonder if this intense listening, but not participating psychological voyeurism is part of my own personality disorder... and preventing me from fully engaging with the world. I took this strange passion so far that I attempted to make a startup where semi-famous people read Audio Books from OTHER authors, and then paused in between chapters to give you their reflections on what they had just read.
bjourne 8y ago
Speaking as someone with Asperger's, the idea that the disorder would be a "modern invention" or like a thing invented by Nazis is completely ludicrous. It's on the same level as claiming homosexuality is a life-style choice. :) One of the main difficulties for me is determining closeness of relationships. Like a distance metric; close relatives being closer than friends which are closer than acquaintances which in turn are closer than unknowns and enemies are very far away. I have never been able to understand how that distance metric works and therefore been unable to distinguish between friends and foes. Autism is not an evolutionary adaptation. It could be a remnant from the Neanderthal genome, as some scientists suggests, as that species were less group-oriented than Homo Sapiens.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  "One of the main difficulties for me is determining closeness of relationships. Like a distance metric; close relatives being closer than friends which are closer than acquaintances which in turn are closer than unknowns and enemies are very far away. I have never been able to understand how that distance metric works and therefore been unable to distinguish between friends and foes. Autism is not an evolutionary" If someone intends to hurt you, where would you put that person on the friend or foe spectrum? If someone intends to help you, where would you put that person on the friend or foe spectrum? If someone likes you and you like them, where would you put that person on the friend or foe spectrum? If you don't like someone and they don't like you, where would you put that person on the friend or foe spectrum? How about for a person who doesn't like you and you don't like them and they intend to hurt you? Those are the kinds of questions the answers to which would help me to determine whether someone is a friend or foe.
  - kstenerud 8y ago
    Except: How do you know that someone intends to hurt you? How do you know that someone intends to help you? How do you know that someone likes you? How do you know that someone doesn't like you? Unless you can accurately answer those questions, you'll never know the closeness of your relationships.
8bitsrule 8y ago
Some of the remains of those children were not buried until 2002. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/29/world/vienna-buries-child-victims-of-the-nazis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/29/world/vienna-buries-child... When I was six years old, I found in an old 'news annual' book a terrible photo from one of the concentration camps. I was upset for days. To this day, I struggle to understand how such intense psychopaths come into power.
- candiodari 8y ago
  Here you can see a video of how they're treated now in Western Europe: locked up, zero choices for the kid, constantly locked up, isolation cells, ... the Netherlands is even worse. Yes, it's probably better than Nazi Poland. It's still a moral disaster. Note that while it is true that some kids have committed a crime, there's 2 big remarks to be made there: 1) only <10% have been accused of a crime at all, 90% is there "for their own protection". Doesn't save them from the isolation cells. 2) even for those 10%, they have only been accused. Youth laws do not require any kind of proof. Nor is there defense. 3) The same goes for the 90%, all there is to say the home situation is not safe is the word of one youth worker. This youth worker has never seen the child before the trial, they have only received a single document from another youth worker who is supposed to have seen the child (but often hasn't, in fact that they fail to see those children is often a reason for passing the case to the justice system in the first place: "lack of cooperation") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzFaNx1Y-fY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzFaNx1Y-fY (if you set the captions on and to English you should be able to understand)
  - 8bitsrule 8y ago
    Ow. Putting teens who haven't committed crimes into an institution is bad enough ... but isolation without cause is much more wrong-headed, especially at that age. Thanks for opening my eyes to this.

88 points by Thevet 8y ago

pjc50 8y ago

For those that read the comments first - content warning for discussion of Nazi mass murder of children.

JubalHarshaw 8y ago

Echoes of virtue our contemporary signaling social media culture. Very informative book review.

pjc50 8y ago
How do you figure that relates to social media?
- 0815test 8y ago
  Social media relies on populism, i.e. celebrating the "voice of the people" or the "soul" of the people as an axiomatic good. This is highly reminiscent of the Gemüt concept that the article talks about.
RankingMember 8y ago
Can you elaborate?
- JubalHarshaw 8y ago
  Edit:"Echoes of virtue signaling [in] our contemporary social media culture. Very informative book review." The article shed light on how an intelligent man adapted himself to get along and even thrive within, what seems from todays perspective to be a culture of incomprehensible evil. The parallel in todays social media 'echo chambers' and the clannish inability, by many of their denizens, to engage their opposition rationally even on any single issue. Instead dehumanizing broad swaths of people as deplorable/elitist, liberal/conservative, sjw/altright. “History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes,” - Mark Twain

nnq 8y ago

Some ideas from this should be rewritten into a more readable/ADHD-friendly piece to warn highly-functioning-Aspergers people and those with somewhat similar "less sociable" personalities against growing fond of any ultra-right-wing/(techno)fascist and neo-natzy ideologies that may seem seem appealing! Some of them, and even some who are normally sociable but more ultra-individualistic, or more order-loving, can be attracted to order and clear patterns, and right-wing-ish groups tend to disguise themselves as being "ordered and rational" despite their hate-spreading and homicidal agendas... Any heavy-right-wing and/or ultra-nationalistic or xenophobic ideology is at its core anti-individualistic anti-"people who develop their minds along their own tracks separate from society". There is a huge difference between people who are less-integrated / less-affective / less-social / Gemüt-poor, and people with hateful, resentful and genocidal-friendly attitudes. "Gemüt-rich people" simply have a higher inertia by being anchored to their societies so they may seem "better" because it's harder to make them do horrible things when they are in a healthy society. But as in physics, inertia works both ways, "Gemüt-rich" or more conformist people will keep doing horrible things (and competing + cooperating to be more horrible) once they start doing them! "Badly socially integrated", asocial, highly-functional-autism or "Gemüt-poor" individuals can also function as a society's immune system that helps it fight back and recover from malignant ideologies like nazism and extremist-communism!

rezeroed 8y ago
Anyone care to comment why the drive-by downvote trolls have been at the above comment?
- tokai 8y ago
  Don't call others trolls for downvoting.
  - rezeroed 8y ago
    Not calling downvoters trolls, calling driveby, non-commenting downvoters trolls. And I stand by it.
8y ago

YinglingLight 8y ago

2019 & undiagnosed Autism: You either cultivate gender dysphoria, or you live long enough to become a nazi.

jarmitage 8y ago

Rather than read this review, you're better off reading responses from other experts to this book such as Simon Baron-Cohen and Steve Silberman: http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2018/04/on-hans-asperger-nazis-and-autism.html http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2018/04/on-hans-asperger-... https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13229-018-0209-5 https://molecularautism.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

Spooky23 8y ago
Thank you. This is one area of the Nazi horror that I wasn't very well acquainted with. Makes me sick to think about.

AzzieElbab 8y ago

Somehow every time I read anything about psychology, I think of astrology and alchemy. Such an underdeveloped field, full of self-serving and self-projecting dangerous charlatans.

jstewartmobile 8y ago
And at least 16.7% of Americans are in their clutches: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/one-6-americans-take-antidepressants-other-psychiatric-drugs-n695141 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/one-6-americans-t...
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  As someone who was on and then later came off of medication for anxiety and depression I find "And at least 16.7% of Americans are in their clutches" to be a bit extreme of a viewpoint.
ataturk 8y ago
Especially when pretty much every real issue requires medication. That said, I am badly socially integrated. I was recently forced to attend a two-day corporate "rah rah" culture training class. I liken it to Maoist or Nazi indoctrination. They even have a "little red book" and a poker chip with values printed on them. All that shit went directly into the trash when I got home. The people at the top of my company are psychopaths. They say nice things and pretend to care, but at the end of the day, they want more billions flowing to them whatever the cost.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
unknownkadath 8y ago
There's a bit of a hot take...
dang 8y ago
Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

unknownkadath 8y ago

I can see why Psychology has moved away from using the name "Asperger's." Everything this article describes (and it is a high quality article) is messed up on so many levels.

hopler 8y ago
Psychology didn't move on because they didn't like Hans. They changed because they identifir a spectrum from mild to severe. The problem is that by collapsing the vocabulary, it obfuscates communication where one person thinks you're talking about Asperger's and the other is thinking of someone who can't speak or hold down a job and communicates by screaming and kicking.

cwbrandsma 8y ago

Where is the value in this article? It is just gossip. OK, I have aspergers and I have kids with aspergers, all professionally diagnosed. And I have read the history of Dr Asperger multiple times already, it really is not that hard to find. So with that I try to read this article...and I can't. I reads too much like gossip magazine. The entire purpose, whether the author wants to admit it or not, is to create a negative association between Asperger's syndrome and Dr. Asperger. So now, if you find out someone has Aspergers your thought process will start with "oh, that is horrible". This creates a new wave of idiots who start conversations with "Did you know Dr Asperger was a bad man?"...Yes, and he is dead now, so how is that relevant to anything? So, if you like reading gossip, I'm sure this is a fun read for you. But there it contains nothing of value.

ocschwar 8y ago
It is not just gossip. He was complicit in multiple murders. His work, such as it was, was based on only 4 cases.
- ocschwar 8y ago
  Decided to add something. Notice also how Leo Kanner only published about autism in 1943, writing about just one child. Wonder why? The two doctors Hamburger and Asperger replaced, Frankl and Weiss, went to the US to work with Kanner. Yet none of them wrote about specific children until 1943, after the US was in the war, after the US turned about face about eugenics,, and after Kanner could do due dilligence to make sure that he could write about the Donald T case and not endanger the child. You, as your comment indicated, have left a paper trail about having Asperger's. I'm an MIT alum, and know quite a few people who could be diagnosed without raising any eyebrows. But already "autism" is a term of abuse in the chan crowds, and Asperger's history is worth keeping in mind in that regard.
  - klyrs 8y ago
    > But already "autism" is a term of abuse in the chan crowds, and Asperger's history is worth keeping in mind in that regard. Also noteworthy, "autism" is the boogeyman of the antivax movement.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

glhaynes 8y ago

Awful title.

dang 8y ago
If you can suggest a more accurate and neutral title, preferably using language drawn from the article, we'll be happy to change it.
- glhaynes 8y ago
  I'd be up for most anything that's not this unfortunate combination of the article title with the partial title of the book being reviewed; that combo leads to a headline that sounds like it's intending an unfortunate and incorrect (and Nazi-originated, which is the point of the article!) description of kids who have been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome. I'd tentatively suggest "Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna (LRB review)" but I'm sure others could come up with better suggestions. Thanks! (To be clear: I'm sure there was zero malice behind this title, it's just an unfortunate display issue.)
  - dang 8y ago
    OK, we've replaced the title. I've been thinking recently that for book review articles maybe we should just use the book title anyhow.
tshadley 8y ago
"Unfeeling Malice" is ironic reference to the reviewed book's discovery that Hans Asperger sentenced children to death while using the same phrase himself as a diagnosis of their condition.

harmful_stereo 8y ago

Honestly? This is one of the most reactive discussions of an article i have seen on this site. I assume that suggests something about the concept of asperger's as it exists in the here and now. I haven't read the whole article, and obviously it has a slant, but i don't think it is underhanded writing. If anything of postmodernism or death of the author or critical theory has any merit at all, I don't think it's necessarily a propaganda hit piece to examine the context the diagnosis came from. Psychiatric sorts of labels are still fundamentally pretty nebulous post hoc categories to dump people in and not tests for the presence of a pathogen etc. I have my own slant, so sure, i am agreeing with points that articulate my own feelings better than I have. But even if you disagree there has to be some mechanism for elevating a dialogue, and i think that's one. In my own personal experience, people who had or fit the diagnostic model were socially isolated, basically unfulfilled and uncomfortable in some way, and i could see that by the way they engaged verbally and i was happy to engage back wherever i could. Sure; i don't actually want to talk about star wars novels or what snack foods someone ate 20 years ago at summer camp for two hours. But sometimes if you are socially isolated too, it can feel good just to know you gave someone else the chance to open up and be animated. That requires an investment though, and i can understand how tired a "normal" person would get of doing that essentially as charity. But you guys sure could have been more charitable in the discussion here, and not so deeply polarized. My experience with mental health issues is that they polarize people kind of abusively. You guys are generally the smartest and most mature place i can go to lurk a discussion. I'm sad to see that personal stake being used against that comity and intellectual atmosphere.

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
I try to let lonely people speak about their passions with me for sort of the same reason. Multiple times I have gotten shocked reactions when they discover after several conversations that I have never played World of Warcraft, or watched Doctor Who, because we have been talking about it for so long. This is usually because the more isolated someone is the less questions they ask and they more 1-way the conversation is, but it can result in hurt feelings if they feel mislead. So now I am sure to position myself early as interested but not experienced for whatever made up reason. This not only helps them connect with someone, but has given me the most fascinating insights into the thought process, inner lives, and domain expertise of people very different from me. But I also wonder if this intense listening, but not participating psychological voyeurism is part of my own personality disorder... and preventing me from fully engaging with the world. I took this strange passion so far that I attempted to make a startup where semi-famous people read Audio Books from OTHER authors, and then paused in between chapters to give you their reflections on what they had just read.

bjourne 8y ago

Speaking as someone with Asperger's, the idea that the disorder would be a "modern invention" or like a thing invented by Nazis is completely ludicrous. It's on the same level as claiming homosexuality is a life-style choice. :) One of the main difficulties for me is determining closeness of relationships. Like a distance metric; close relatives being closer than friends which are closer than acquaintances which in turn are closer than unknowns and enemies are very far away. I have never been able to understand how that distance metric works and therefore been unable to distinguish between friends and foes. Autism is not an evolutionary adaptation. It could be a remnant from the Neanderthal genome, as some scientists suggests, as that species were less group-oriented than Homo Sapiens.

pmoriarty 8y ago
"One of the main difficulties for me is determining closeness of relationships. Like a distance metric; close relatives being closer than friends which are closer than acquaintances which in turn are closer than unknowns and enemies are very far away. I have never been able to understand how that distance metric works and therefore been unable to distinguish between friends and foes. Autism is not an evolutionary" If someone intends to hurt you, where would you put that person on the friend or foe spectrum? If someone intends to help you, where would you put that person on the friend or foe spectrum? If someone likes you and you like them, where would you put that person on the friend or foe spectrum? If you don't like someone and they don't like you, where would you put that person on the friend or foe spectrum? How about for a person who doesn't like you and you don't like them and they intend to hurt you? Those are the kinds of questions the answers to which would help me to determine whether someone is a friend or foe.
- kstenerud 8y ago
  Except: How do you know that someone intends to hurt you? How do you know that someone intends to help you? How do you know that someone likes you? How do you know that someone doesn't like you? Unless you can accurately answer those questions, you'll never know the closeness of your relationships.

8bitsrule 8y ago

Some of the remains of those children were not buried until 2002. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/29/world/vienna-buries-child-victims-of-the-nazis.html https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/29/world/vienna-buries-child... When I was six years old, I found in an old 'news annual' book a terrible photo from one of the concentration camps. I was upset for days. To this day, I struggle to understand how such intense psychopaths come into power.

candiodari 8y ago
Here you can see a video of how they're treated now in Western Europe: locked up, zero choices for the kid, constantly locked up, isolation cells, ... the Netherlands is even worse. Yes, it's probably better than Nazi Poland. It's still a moral disaster. Note that while it is true that some kids have committed a crime, there's 2 big remarks to be made there: 1) only <10% have been accused of a crime at all, 90% is there "for their own protection". Doesn't save them from the isolation cells. 2) even for those 10%, they have only been accused. Youth laws do not require any kind of proof. Nor is there defense. 3) The same goes for the 90%, all there is to say the home situation is not safe is the word of one youth worker. This youth worker has never seen the child before the trial, they have only received a single document from another youth worker who is supposed to have seen the child (but often hasn't, in fact that they fail to see those children is often a reason for passing the case to the justice system in the first place: "lack of cooperation") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzFaNx1Y-fY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzFaNx1Y-fY (if you set the captions on and to English you should be able to understand)
- 8bitsrule 8y ago
  Ow. Putting teens who haven't committed crimes into an institution is bad enough ... but isolation without cause is much more wrong-headed, especially at that age. Thanks for opening my eyes to this.