Is Extreme Racism a Mental Illness?

To an extent I would agree research in that area might be in order.

It goes back to the question of Nature vs Nurture and the reasons for HATE. I feel that as long as the Religions claim the domains of love, hate, and forgiveness, there is little hope of the little pill to cure all the ills.

Rage almost looks for any trigger for those who fill themselves with anger.

There is a counter arguement on the same site: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC107163...

Is Extreme Racism a Mental Illness?

No

It is dangerous to ask psychiatrists to enforce social policy

ME!

Perhaps I should have also shared that the little pill is almost allways STRONG POISON in my Spiritual belief system. Food is the first best medicine, followed by herbs in addition to those for cooking...

See what I ment about everyone argueing the Nature vs Nurture... Now concider it against this: Mind Control Cults http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnNSe5XYp6E&feature...

Extreme Racism is the product of cult brainwashing in every case I have been around, from SKIN-HEADS, to KKK, to BLACK PANTHERS. While I have spent time with all of these groups, and a few gangs as well, the Religions are the ones that scare me the most.

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There's at least three things to consider first: I rank Robert Bilder's theory of rating Mental Illnesses on a "continuum" more practical than rating them categorically. Why? Because the body is like a vessel of water, and some people are more pure, and others are contaminated. This is an example of Masaru Emoto's water theory. If you are nurtured (tortured?) in a negative environment that's what you will reflect. The medical community, and CDC also needs to recognize and address the serious mental impairments and side effects of various toxins that many people have been exposed to. . Our society needs to adapt to these three concepts before a wise strategy can be developed to efficiently and fairly treat mental illnesses. The real answer and solution to your question is far greater than classifying the specific case you mention. The whole system needs an overhaul, as the latest science and natural medical therapies understand what causes mental illnesses better now.

Pay no attention to the people on here who are being rude and defensive.

Your question clearly states Extreme and anything in the extreme can be categorized as a mental illness, including extreme racism. We all know this, so I am not sure why that is being ignored.

Anyway, yes they are totally mental and like all mental illnesses, will take the person to realize it and get help (or to be forced to be helped) in order to see any improvement.

In fact, I think the extreme racist has many mental conditions---it stems from fear--so it is a phobia. Also there is unfounded extreme hatred. There's a over defensiveness, possessiveness, unbelievable insecurities, irrationalism, paranoia, etc. etc.

To say that extreme racism is not a mental condition (or many mental conditions) is to ignore all facts and reasoning.

Thanks for the article and the question :)

I was going to say yes, based just on the top line question...

...but I'll add one very strong caveat. In legality, a label of illness could be used by some to enable their freedoms & rights. Our culture can be just sappy enough to miss the reality & severity of the situation. Can you picture trying to get the US to go to war against those "poor Nazis who have this unfortunate mental illness?"

You've pointed out one great benefit - it would allow monitoring & protecting the public from people with this disconnect from reality. We need a better system than we have now.

One other hesitation, is that mental illness rarely leads to endangering others in the way people picture (schizphrenics with delusions usually don't result in danger to others). Lumping these people in, could set back an already difficult fight on image.

Absolutely I would agree that beyond prejudice, when people vilify others & project awful images onto them, there is an evident disconnect going on in their brains. Where is the line drawn though? How do you identify it? ALL humans have ablity to hate, so what distinguishes this type? Chances are there is something unique happening in their limbic systems, around danger & fight & flight that is off. This type of hate is primal. It isn't based on facts or lies but self-perpetuates regardless of the info available & reshapes any dissenting info, so it can continue. It self-justifies it's actions as well, so morality about how to treat others is no longer clear even when the person could verbalize & use it in other areas of their own lives.

It reminds me of Eichmann. He could completely disconnect during the day & murder Jew after Jew, yet go home & play lovingly with his grandchildren. Once caught, he expressed no regrets & really very little emotion as though disconnected from the happenings even then to him. There is room to find a mental illness in there somewhere.

There is one great thing about labeling it. It shifts the entire discussion about hate. Extreme leaders doing it - could now be seen in a different light. Could it, reduce humans following such a leader? In the past delusions were sometimes seen as from God, & gathered followers. Now it's seen as a bad thing, mental illness. Could the same shift happen from, "following an ego boost", into "look at that not well guy"? While hate would still exist, reducing the following of charasmic leaders that whip it up in humans would change the peak levels it reaches, & therefore one would assume it could change the baseline levels to a lower point.

One other question too, as it is now, it is known that many serial killers, & horrid leaders have a mental issues of emotional disconnect, narassism. They are charming because they have no sense of needing to be true to their own emotions & can lie as needed. How does this relate to the type of illness you are describing? Which does have different features it seems? Or does it? Both are very deluded.

PS While I agree that a lot of extreme racism can be a symptom of otherwise identifable illness.... some extreme racists are completely functional. Most of the Nazi leaders had what appeared to be good functional family lives, & careers to that point.

No, it's not a mental illness, it's a learned value that is assisted by several cognitive social biases that are inherent in all humans. To say that racism is a mental illness is is undermining the struggle of people who actually do suffer from real illnesses like schizophrenia who truly do not choose the way they are. The psychiatric industry wants to medicalise every cultural and social condition to make a few bucks...common sense.

It's not the disease itself, but it's a symptom of it. That is, people who have problems with anger, or paranoia, or not knowing the difference between reality and fantasy, will have certain thoughts congealing on them. That's why so many crazy people think they're the messiah--it's a common, appealing fantasy of power and importance. It has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of the religion itself. Likewise, people who are angry and/or paranoid will select easy targets for their anger and paranoia. Racial minorities are an easy target--these crazy folks have been hearing for their whole lives that [fill in minority of choice here] have been out to get them/are taking over the world/are evil etc. A rational person will see it's bullshit. A crazy person will grab onto it as an easy explanation for those persistant feelings that someone is out to get them, or that the whole world is against them. So they're not crazy BECAUSE they're racist--they're extreme racists because they're crazy. Of course, then there's enormous ground in between the rational and the irrational, where you've got the plain old normal racists.

There is plenty of evidence to show that racial prejudice exists today because those who have it seem to lack the ability to light their brain neurons and the intelligence pathways completely die. Modern examples include the Klan in the U.S. and the Nazi's who spread their dead neurons

across the European Continent and beyond. Treating those they target as inferior provides tormentors the will to kill them and they did. Prejudice may be classified as anti-social personality disorder. Saddam,

Bin Laden, Stalin, Hitler, and terrorists all fit in to the category One time I like to pin labels.

Race in general is as made up as religion or F-cup t*ts. But, like anything in this world, it's all squeezed inside your head when you're a dumb kid and don't know any better, so technically it's not a mental illness, it's the fact that kids are too f*cking retarded for words.

In my eyes, racists are not ill, they are illiterate, uninformed and full of inferiority feelings and by devaluating their counterpart, they themselves get the feeling of revaluation, but they're only poor people who can't bear the truth. To say racists are mentally ill is a bit too simple I think and sounds more like an excuse.

To put racism in the mentally ill category would only put the rest of society into question. Would we stop there, or would we target Religion as well. Mental illness isn't taught, and these people are doing it by choice.