"Fascism is the basic emotional attitude of the suppressed man of our authoritarian machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life." Not as it was seen before, just a "political party (...) which advocated an organised political idea." (1) Wilhelm Reich
The question at the heart of the book is "why did the masses turn to authoritarianism which is clearly against their interests? " (2) Wilhelm Reich analysed economic and ideological structure of German society between 1928-1933.
Reich took quite an effective approach to fighting fascism as he was studying it scientifically using methods of psychoanalysis. He recognised that to fight fascism, we would have to be able to recognise the forces of irrationality and stop on focusing on mysticism of it. Also, in his book Reich argues that a big part of the reason that Nazism was chosen over fascism was a sexual repression of the German nation. Sexual repression that began in German middle class child's mind.
Children of members of the proletariat had learnt to suppress sexual desires, hence as adults they became rebellious and filled with anxiety caused by sexual impulses. Hitler would know exactly how that rebellious young minds worked as he came from a middle class authoritarian structure of the family. As I already mentioned on my previous post ("The New Left and Sexual Revolution") Suppression of a natural sexuality in children makes them "reprehensible, shy, obedient, afraid of authority, good and adjusted in the authoritarian sense; it paralyses the rebellious forces because any rebellion is laden with anxiety; it produces, by inhibiting sexual thinking in the child, a general inhibition of thinking and of critical faculties." (4) It is easily recognisable that the aim of sexual suppression is to produce individuals who will "adjust to the authoritarian order and submit to it despite of all misery and degradation." (1)
Going from a child's psychology to a family structure (chapter V) "From the standpoint of social development, the family cannot be considered the basis of the authoritarian state, only as one of the most important institutions which support it. It is, however, its central reactionary and conservative individual. Being itself caused by the authoritarian system, the family becomes the most important institution for its conservation. In this connection, the findings of Morgan and of Engels are still entirely correct." The family is the first cell of fascist society. Nazis political ideology exploited tendencies of a repressive family and religious sadistic educational system. All the above operated in and through individual unconscious psychology of emotions, traumatic experiences, fantasies or libidinal economies. (2)
"Sex-economic sociology was born from the afford to harmonise Freud's depth psychology with Marx's economic theory." The point of view of sex-economic biophysics is "getting more to the root of things [more radical] than that of regular Marxist."
Reich believes that the authoritarian state gains an enormous interest in the authoritarian family, the state's and family's ideology become "molded". Sexual repression in a child makes a child afraid, shy, fearful of authority, obedient and good in the authoritarian sense of the words. It has an incredible effect on "man's rebellious forces because every vital life-impulse in now strangled with severe fear and since sex is a forbidden subject, thought in general and following that, a man's critical faculty also become inhibited."
The University of Winchester Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism, part IV
Inspiration & links:
1. The Mass Psychology of Fascism by Wilhelm Reich - book
2.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich
5.http://veronicafryd.blogspot.com/2010/03/new-left-and-sexual-revolution-week-5.html
