S4, Part 8, Wilhelm Reich, Socialization, & The Little Fascist

The Subversive Therapist

The psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, MD understood that a specific form of human socialization has created the fascist character via “armoring.” In his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Reich writes that the “mechanistic-mystical character of modern man” has produced “fascist parties, and not vice versa.” The character structure of modern human beings is the universal cause of fascism:

“… “fascism” is only the organized political expression of the structure of the average man’s character, a structure that is confined neither to certain races or nations nor to certain parties, but is general and international. Viewed with respect to man’s character, “fascism” is the basic emotional attitude of the suppressed man of our authoritarian machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical conception of life.” (xiii)

Therefore, when we see a fascist “puffing himself up and has his chops full of slogans, let him be asked quietly and simply in public”:

“What are you doing in a practical way to feed the nation, without murdering other nations? What are you doing as a physician to combat chronic diseases, what as an educator to intensify the child’s joy of living, what as an economist to erase poverty, what as a social worker to alleviate the weariness of mothers having too many children, what as an architect to promote hygienic conditions in living quarters? Let’s have no more of your chatter. Give us a straightforward, concrete answer or shut up!” (xvi)

Recorded on 6/29/2023.

References

Paxton, R. (2005). The anatomy of fascism. Vintage Books: New York.

Reich, W. (1980). The mass psychology of fascism. Ed. Mary Higgins and Chester M. Raphael (3^rd edition). New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. (orig. pub. in 1933)

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