So You've Been Publicly Shamed

When you picture the evil guards in Zimbardo’s basement you’re really picturing one man - Dave Eshelman. He was the man who yelled, ‘Fuck the floor!’ and ‘You’re Frankenstein!’ and so on. Social scientists have written papers analysing Eshelman’s every move in there, including the strange detail that the more brutally he behaved the more American South his accent sounded. I saw at least one analysis of the experiment where the author seemed to find it perfectly plausible that if a person was overcome by a violent madness he’d involuntarily start to sound like someone from Louisiana.

After measuring 287 skulls Le Bon revealed in his 1879 paper, ‘Anatomical & Mathematical Researches into the Laws of the Variations of Brain Volume & Their Relation to Intelligence’, that the biggest brains did indeed belong to aristocrats and businessmen. He reassured readers who might have been worried that ‘the body of the Negro is larger than our own’ that ‘their brain is less heavy’. Women’s brains were less heavy too: ‘Among the Parisians there are a large number of women whose brains are closer in size to those of gorillas than to the most developed male brains. This inferiority is so obvious that no one can contest it for a moment; only its degree is worth discussion. All psychologists who have studied the intelligence of women, as well as poets and novelists, recognize today that they represent the most inferior forms of human evolution and that they are closer to children and savages than to an adult, civilized man. They excel in fickleness, inconstancy, absence of thought and logic, and incapacity to reason.’

Until that Sick Nazi Orgy headline the thing Max Mosley was most famous for - unless you were a Formula One racing fan - was his parents. Max’s father was Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder in 1932 of the British Union of Fascists. He gave Nuremburg-style speeches in London during which hecklers were illuminated by spotlights and viciously beaten in front of the crowd. Oswald Mosley stood on stage and watched. Max’s mother was the beautiful socialite Diana Mitford. She and her sister Unity were so besotted with Hitler - with whom they both became friendly - they’d send each other letters like this one from Unity to Diana:

23 December 1935
[…] The Fuhrer was heavenly, in his best mood, & very gay. There was a choice of two soups & he tossed a coin to see which one he would have, & he was so sweet doing it. He asked after you, & I told him you were coming soon. He talked a lot about Jews, which was lovely. […]
With best love & Heil Hitler!
Bobo