Thread by @suzannezeedyk

Folks keep telling me they value all that I've been exploring about #BoardingSchools. So here's a THREAD on t emotional formation of political leaders, drawn directly from @BeardRichard book #SadLittleMen.
Your childhood can leave you dangerous.

2. STALIN. "By the end of his boarding school days, he had adapted to hide his damaged self."
And when he asked his mother why, as a child, he was beaten so frequently?..."She replied 'It didn't do you any harm.'"

3. MUSSOLINI. "He is portrayed as a monstrous buffoon, posturing, speechifying ....Angry, experiencing privation, as a child he is supposed to have said, 'One day, I shall astonish the world.'"

4. HITLER. "His early life was a strange existence characterised by roles. He had a bottomless mendacity & was not honest even to his most intimate confidants. He lied to his friends, family, himself."
"Historians have asked: What are the social forces that created Hitler?"

5. DAVID CAMERON. "He retreated from his days at No 10 personally unscathed. He turned his back on the mess he'd made of Brexit with t serenity of a public school boy....He'd been a bit naughty but no harm done. The arrangements to protect his interests were securely in place."

6. JOHNSON. "His political bluster was mock-heroic. Or was he? The candidate he beat to become OxUnion presidnt didn't think so. He warned others not to be deceived. 'This guy is a killer.'"..."His non-stop pantomime both exaggerated & obscured t class & era that made him."

7. "Yes, English private schools could plausibly have bred a tyrant." That's what @BeardRichard is trying to tell us. That's what he is trying to get us to look out for -- the creeping normality that historians use later to spot t birth of fascism. 'Later' isn't helpful today.

8. "What's t basic unit of cruelty? Therapist @JoySchaverien has identified it: 'They hide their feelings and, through projection, attack the child less able to hide theirs.' Along with a useful remoteness, a social disdain, we can flirt w/ extreme solutions to a hostile world."