Re: fighting militias

Arne Raeithel (raeithel who-is-at informatik.uni-hamburg.de)
Fri, 21 Jun 1996 07:16:18 +0200

At 08:09 20.6.1996, Peter Smagorinsky wrote:
>... I don't think that CHAT has yet provided any kind of moral
>perspective on human development. When I think of militia-type mentalities,
>I start to wonder: how does one "develop" into a Nazi? a church-burner? a
>racist? etc.? I think that activity theory can potentially account for such
>"development" to some extent.

Thanks, Peter, for bringing up this theme here on XMCA. I am very interested
on hearing from you-all US-natives about how you see these developments.
We have our own comparable NeoNazi groups here.

We also have quite a volume of CHAT texts on this issue, as you might
imagine. Ute Holzkam-Osterkamp has done research on the action groundings
that Nazis give for their deeds and convictions, under the premise that
for all humans there is a choice over how one builds oneself into the
existing, various, contradictive, counter-re-in-forcing societal relations.

The German Journal "Forum Kritische Psychologie" is the major source,
and of course the text in:

Tolman, Charles, W. & Maiers, Wolfgnagn (1991, Eds.). Critical
Psychology. Contributions to an Historical Science of the Subject.
Cambridge etc.: Cambrudge University Press.

Arne.