Please help me understand this type of prejudice?

Question

I have met a few people in my life that are prejudice of their own kind. Some are whites that can't stand to be around other whites. In Minnesota there was a Native American kid that joined a Neo-Nazi group before shooting his fellow Native American students. The cases I've seen before came from caring families and were well treated by them. When I've asked this before, I was called a Nazi. Truely, not having any race related prejudice personally, I am having an even harder time understanding this. I also want to use it as a component to the bad guy in a book I'm writing.

Answer 1

A persons' race or upbringing has no bearing on, or to whom, they are prejudiced. It's not externally generated. It comes from inside. People use prejudice to hide their own sense of inadequacy.
Rather than accept responsibility for their own perceived failings, they blame others for them. This frees them from having to solve the problem themselves, because it's somebody else's fault. It's driven by feelings of frustration and impotence.

Answer 2

I am no expert but it is strange that my friends and I have been talking along similar lines to this.

It came out that the best thing that we could come up with is that there are people who have problems - issues, mental - whether that be through nature or nuture - and with these problems come a trait that leads them into cults/extreme politics/religions and they actually hand there issues on the peg of these factions that they relate to.

So - if a 'sane' person were to join the Nazi having thought through the policies and thinks - yep, these guys have got it right - he/she is accepted as a political person, BUT if fellow-me-lad who is not 100% the full shilling - he then joins up because the idea of putting 1000's of people in a gas chamber just ticks all his boxes.

He is hiding behind something that others will think of as crazy - but in fact he is crazy anyway - whoever he hid behind!

I have not perhaps explained this well - AND PLEASE - read it before you all think that I am a Nazi - I AM NOT

At the end of the day - crazy is crazy whatever uniform/banner/icon it marches under.

Very good question though. Very thought provoking.
In fact - DUCK .........................here comes your
STAR!!!!

Answer 3

Like the first guy to answer, I also think this is due to 'self-loathing.'
There is an excellent movie called The Believer, with Ryan Gosling as a Jewish kid that gets into the white supremicist "Jew-hating" movement. It's based on a real story of a man that was a vocal member of the KKK, and when a reporter found out the klansman was Jewish, that guy killed himself.

Answer 4

It's called self-loathing and you hear about it sometimes. Often it starts with someone hating their parents (justified or otherwise) and then extending that anger to the rest of the race or nationality, maybe taking it to actual psychotic lengths by joining a hate group or committing violence. It's sick but it happens ... just shows you how random and unreasonable hate can be.

For what it's worth, it's long been theorized that Hitler had some Jewish heritage on his mother's side. How strange is that?