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Adolph Hitler is the epitome of what a coward a bully truly is.

Prejudice and bullying go hand-in-hand. They are two sides of the same coin. In order for someone to bully another person (the victim), the bully needs to judge the victim as different from him/herself. To distinguish the victim from him/herself, the bully must engage in prejudicial categorizations. The bully must place the victim in a "lesser, inferior, undesirable" category, much the same way that Hitler had based his Nazi genocide theory of hatred and persecution towards the Jewish and others he considered "undesirable" and undeserving of humanity in the 1930's.

Prejudice is a natural outgrowth of our biophysiology. In order to interpret information about the external world, our senses must organize the data in a meaningful, albeit oftentimes skewed manner. Our perceptual senses and our minds put together categories for things (including people) that we see, smell, touch, taste, hear so that we can use that data. Therefore, it is innate for us to discriminate one thing/person from another. This is the basis for how prejudice arises. In other words, genetically, prejudice is natural, even normal and necessary for data input and interpretation, and we should accept prejudice as a given in society.

However, taken to its extreme, prejudice can lead to abominable, abhorrent, bullying. As already mentioned, the Holocaust in 1933 is one such horrific extension of out-of-control, intense, heinous bullying. Prejudice was one tiny root, but not the sole determining factor for bullying. No, the systematic annihilation of 6 million Jews stemmed from more than simple prejudice or an innate categorical organization of people.

The Holocaust is a result of the mob mentality and Hitler's distorted ideology, which grew out of his own insecurities and fear. Hitler was jealous and afraid of people he did not (and chose not to) comprehend. He saw these "undesirables" as having power and courage that he himself did not feel as a child and young adult. He couldn't understand the source of their personal power and dignity, as he himself possessed none.

Thus, in his craven manner, Hitler honed in on his followers' fears by false propaganda and dehumanization of those he considered "undesirable". He brainwashed the Nazi's in order to control them and force them to comply with his convoluted thinking.

But Adolph Hitler is not the only bully that exists. If you look into any bully's upbringing and social experiences, you will see that there is a common vein amongst all bullies. It is that they underwent extraordinary fear (whether real or imagined) as children and young adults, and they feel a desperate, pathological need to control that insane fear by dominating and disparaging another person.

Often the bully targets the most vulnerable and easily identifiable as prey in society (those with physical handicaps or those who have been previously abused or simply those he knows his friends already dislike based on something obscure and trivial) because the bully lacks any genuine courage to assert himself against people who had degraded him.

In summary, we cannot conquer all prejudice because prejudice is innate and essential for us to function efficiently in society. However, we can eradicate bullying by becoming more self-aware of our our ingrained prejudices and stepping up against bullies when we see others or ourselves being bullied.

Learn more about this author, Dr. Jay.
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