Why are the ideologically evil personally nice?

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British journalist Louis Theroux spent some time with the Phelps family as he made the documentary "The Most Hated Family in America". He couldn't help but notice that, apart from the (VERY MAJOR) homophobic religious extremism, they seemed nice.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCSshfI_ZlY&feature=related[/youtube]

During the slaver era, Northerners often spoke nicely of "Southern Hospitality" - even those these hospitable southerns weren't that nice to their slaves.

Many liberals have went to Bob Jones university and commented on how nice the people seem there, in spite of the fact that only very recently did the University get rid of racial segregation.

And I also recall Muhhummad Yunnus (the Bangeldeshi man who developed the notion of microcredit loans as a means to alleviating poverty) talked about how communist insurgents, when they gave up their arms, often proved very reliable and committed volunteers

My question is why do so many people who believe horrible, intolerant, and narrow-minded things happen to be so personable?

I dunno, interesting question... My grandparents were hugely racist against blacks, but they were strangely fine with my mother (who is asian) and I.

I wonder if it's the difference between thinking about people in the abstract vs. dealing with people as individuals. When you know someone as an individual they sort transcend labels, until (at least for me) the "label" on their file in my head is just who they are.

OTOH, thinking about people in the abstract, the vacuum of actual knowledge seems to get filled up with labels. "Those people" are always like this-and-that in huge generalizations. It's kind of cliche`d (sp??), but it does seem that people meeting individuals can (sometimes) change prejudiced views. And can also lead to the "well, you're one of the good ones; you're an exception (whether you are or not)" thing.

My $0.02

It may be related to the personality trait of conscientiousness. Conscientious people can feel strongly about their beliefs about the proper ordering of things in the world, but they also tend to be polite, reliable, and hardworking; some highly conscientious people develop a more personal sense of idealism that challenges the status quo, but many become staunch defenders of the prevailing social norms and customs. If they grew up in a racist area, they may absorb that sense of racism and even become one of its most vocal enforcers. Privately, though, they may feel an obligation to be civil and polite towards all guests. A communist insurgent may have a similar sense of idealism (after all, communism proposes a utopian society of sharing and direct democratic cooperation—in theory) although in this case their ideals conform to a rebel group.

It also relates to that old division between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group qualifies as deserving of civil, even empathetic treatment while the out-group may be reviled, demonized, and often treated with hatred and cruelty.

What does ideologically evil mean? Does it mean that someone has an opinion you disapprove of? Who are you?

ruveyn

Right. A book that this made me think of was a free e-book by psychologist Bob Altemeyer. It talks about the psychology of right-wing authoritarians.
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

I don't have speakers on this pc, so haven't watched the video, but I saw the end of a Louis Theroux documentary where he interviewed this girl and she did seem like a nice genuine person. The thing the struck me though, was he asked her if she was scared of going to hell. She said yes and she did look genuinely scared. I reckon that she really does believe that she is doing something loving by warning people of a thing that she is very scared of, the prospect of fiery torment. She doesn't see her actions as evil. She doesn't see it as offensive. She just sees it as telling the truth. But then she got out of the car to picket a grieving family by a graveside and I lost all sympathy for her.

Hitler, Stalin and Reagan were fun to be around, I think.

Isn't it obvious?

• Social conservatives
• Religious conservatives
• Libertarians
• Fascists
• Nazis
• Stalinists
• Maoists
• White supremacists

Actually your list isn't "obvious". Some are obvious, but generally speaking, this forum itself has a few libertarians, so it seems a lot harder to say that they are ideologically evil.

Even further, libertarians are likely a group that does not hold to our earlier explanations of this issue, as they are not as conscientious as most others, and certainly not so much right-wing authoritarians.

"Strictly adhering to the doctrines of all the mainline religions..." - first woman interviewed. That's just not sounding the least bit right.

Does anyone not recognize something is wrong with this? Or at the least that it certainly isn't Baptist.

It was a joke. I mixed in somewhat mainstream (in the U.S.) political points of view with more extreme ones. From a left point of view, though, right-libertarianism's foremost concern with business/economic needs—efficiency, productivity, free markets, the deficit, and less regulation—sometimes looks like a politicization of a personal fault (i.e., greed or a lack of compassion).

Yeah, I read once that if you got to know Hitler, he could be a pretty nice guy. He liked children... not in a creepy way. o_o
And he always loved his dog. Though he tested the cyanide capsule on her.

Isn't there a quote of him saying he'd jump on Neville Chamberlain's stomach if he had to see him again and frustration at his handlers for treating him like "some bourgeois diplomat" after negotiating the treaty that let him take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia? I got that from Wikipedia at least.

Don't forget Bush Jr.

Wasn't Hitler a really good artist? I remember in my 11th grade history class my teacher showed us a painting done by him. It was a nice painting of nature, but when we found out it was done by Hitler, I was a little creeped out. How could such an evil man paint such a lovely picture?

Because no person is truly pure evil. What he did to the Jewish people in Europe was completely evil though.